The
fruits of epic incompetence
Charles Krauthammer
Krauthammer writes a
politics column that runs on Fridays.
The president of the United States
takes to the airwaves to urgently persuade
the nation to pause before doing something it has no desire to do in the first
place.
Strange. And it gets
stranger still. That “strike Syria, maybe” speech begins with a heart-rending account of children consigned to a
terrible death by a monster dropping poison gas. It proceeds to explain why
such behavior must be punished. It culminates with the argument that the proper
response — the most effective way to uphold fundamental norms, indeed human
decency — is a flea bite: something “limited,” “targeted” or, as so memorably
described by Secretary of State John Kerry,
“unbelievably small.”
The mind reels, but
there’s more. We must respond — but not yet. This “Munich moment” (Kerry
again) demands first a pause to find accommodation with that very same
toxin-wielding monster, by way of negotiations with his equally cynical, often
shirtless, Kremlin patron bearing promises.
The promise is to rid
Syria of its chemical weapons. The negotiations are open-ended. Not a word from
President Obama about any deadline or ultimatum. And utter passivity: Kerry
said hours earlier that he awaited the Russian proposal.
Why? The administration claims (preposterously, but
no matter) that Obama has been working on this idea with Putin at previous
meetings. Moreover, the idea was first publicly enunciated by Kerry, even
though his own State Department immediately walked it back as a slip of the
tongue.
Take at face value
Obama’s claim of authorship. Then why isn’t he taking ownership? Why isn’t he
calling it the “U.S. proposal” and defining it? Why not issue a U.S. plan
containing the precise demands, detailed timeline and threat of action should
these conditions fail to be met?
Putin doesn’t care
one way or the other about chemical weapons. Nor about dead Syrian children.
Nor about international norms, parchment treaties and the other niceties of the
liberal imagination.
He cares about power
and he cares about keeping Bashar al-Assad in power. Assad is the key link in
the anti-Western Shiite crescent stretching from Tehran through Damascus and
Beirut to the Mediterranean — on which sits Tartus, Russia’s only military base
outside the former Soviet Union. This axis frontally challenges the pro-American Sunni Arab
Middle East (Jordan, Yemen, the Gulf Arabs, even the North African
states), already terrified at the imminent emergence of a nuclear Iran.
At which point the
Iran axis and its Russian patron would achieve dominance over the moderate Arab
states, allowing Russia to supplant America as regional hegemon for the first
time since Egypt switched to our side in the Cold War in 1972.
The hinge of the
entire Russian strategy is saving the Assad regime. That’s the very purpose of
the “Russian proposal.” Imagine that some supposed arms-control protocol is worked
out. The inspectors have to be vetted by Assad, protected by Assad,
convoyed by Assad, directed by Assad to every destination. Negotiation,
inspection, identification, accounting, transport and safety would require
constant cooperation with the regime, and thus acknowledgment of its
sovereignty and legitimacy.
So much for Obama’s repeated insistence that
Assad must go. Indeed, Putin has openly demanded
that any negotiation be conditioned on a U.S. commitment to forswear the use of
force against Assad. On Thursday, Assad repeated that demand,
warning that without an American pledge not to attack and not to arm the
rebels, his government would agree to nothing.
This would abolish
the very possibility of America tilting the order of battle in a Syrian war
that Assad is now winning thanks to Russian arms,
Iranian advisers and Lebanese Hezbollah shock troops. Putin thus assures the
survival of his Syrian client and the continued ascendancy of the anti-Western
Iranian bloc.
And what does America
get? Obama saves face.
Some deal.
As for the peace
process, it has about zero chance of disarming Damascus. We’ve spent nine years
disarming an infinitely smaller arsenal in Libya — in conditions of peace — and
we’re still finding undeclared stockpiles.
Yet consider what’s
happened over the last month. Assad uses poison gas on civilians and is
branded, by the United States above all, a war criminal. Putin,
covering for the war criminal, is exposed, isolated, courting pariah status.
And now? Assad, far
from receiving punishment of any kind, goes from monster to peace partner.
Putin bestrides the world stage, playing dealmaker. He’s welcomed by America as
a constructive partner. Now a world statesman, he takes to the New York Times
to blame American interventionist arrogance — a.k.a. “American exceptionalism” — for inducing small states to
acquire WMDs in the first place.
And Obama gets to
slink away from a Syrian debacle of his own making. Such are the fruits of a
diplomacy of epic incompetence.
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