News that the United States and Russia have reached an agreement concerning chemical weapons in the possession of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has spurred a rush by critics of President Obama on the political Right and Left to declare Russian President Vladimir Putin as the brave champion of peace for whom the world had been awaiting.
The peering back of such lofty propaganda, however, will reveal Putin for who he is, a cunning opportunist, forced by fear of a US military strike to abandon years of obstructionism, in order to protect his political interests.
My favorite tweet of the past week was from United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, who said:
Three days ago there seemed no diplomatic way to hold Assad accountable. Threat of U.S. action finally brought Russia to the table.
She also recently
told an audience:
“We have exhausted the alternatives,” Power said in a 20-minute speech at the Center for American Progress. For more than a year, she said, the United States has tried to use diplomacy to warn the Assad regime of the consequences of using chemical weapons. Despite such efforts, Power said, “Assad began using chemical weapons on a small scale several times this year” – a move that caused the U.S. to “redouble” its diplomatic efforts. The U.S. even shared evidence that it believed could convince Russia or Iran, but to no avail, she added. “Russia, often backed by China, has blocked every single action,” Power said.
Power is right, for more than two years, Bashar al-Assad has waged a brutal war against his own people in an effort to squelch insurrection, which began as a series of peaceful protest against the 48-year rule of his Baath Party.
The world has called for a peaceful end to the conflict. The United Nations has convened on many occasions to consider a diplomatic solution and to hold the Assad regime responsible for its actions, but each attempt has been met with obstructionism from Russia and its fellow Assad supporter China.
In June of 2011, Syrian’s in support of the regime of Bashar al-Assad rallied outside the embassies of Russia and China to thank them for thwarting UN diplomatic effort.
In August of 2011, after reports that at least 2200 had perished in the Syrian conflict, the U.N.’s Human Rights Council launched an investigation into the violence that included reports that there had been crimes against humanity committed during the now fully developed war:
The U.N. Human Rights Council launched an international commission of inquiry into Assad's crackdown, condemning what it called "continued grave and systematic human rights violations by Syrian authorities such as arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and the killing and persecution of protesters and human rights defenders."
The 47-member forum easily adopted a resolution presented by the European Union, the United States and Arab countries including Saudi Arabia.
The council launched the inquiry to establish the facts "and where possible to identify those responsible with a view of ensuring that perpetrators of violations, including those that may constitute crimes against humanity, are held accountable."
The delegations of Russia, China and Cuba all took the floor to denounce what they called interference in Syria's internal affairs and said that they would vote against the text. Ecuador also voted against the resolution.
On August 26, 2011, efforts to impose U.N. sanctions on Syria were once again
thwarted by Russia and China:
A U.S. and European push to impose U.N. Security Council sanctions on Syria for its bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators is meeting fierce resistance from Russia and China, U.N. diplomats said. Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, has hinted that Moscow would use its veto power to knock down the draft if it were put to a vote at the current time
In October of 2011, Russia and China once again came to the aid of the Assad regime and blocked a U.N. Security Council resolution, which
sought to levy sanctions on Assad for his continued brutality against his people.
A double veto at the United Nations is rare, in this case driven by similar if not exactly parallel concerns in Moscow and Beijing about losing influence in the Arab world as one authoritarian government after another built on the now-faded Soviet model collapses.
“They are gambling that Assad can hold on now; it seems to be an expression of confidence that he can cling to power,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution.
Stymied at every step by the Russians and Chinese, there seemed to be no way for an international prevention of Assad from brutally killing his own people. As the Economist
wrote in February of 20012:
The world looks on impotently. At the U.N. Security Council on February 4th, Russia and China raised Western ire by vetoing a mild resolution that would have urged Bashar Assad, the president, to adhere to a peace plan drafted by the Arab League. It pressed him to cede at least some unspecified powers to a deputy, pending the outcome of reconciliation talks. Russia objected to this, and more generally to the West imposing a diktat on a sovereign state it considers an ally.
There are many other examples of obstructionism by Russia, as well as China within the body of the U.N. to derail or prevent the international community from reprimanding Syria or enjoin a peaceful solution to a civil war which has seen over 100,000 people dead. It is therefore beyond disingenuity to hear the critics of the President suggest that Putin’s offer to assist in the confiscation of Assad’s chemical weapons was due to his desire to achieve peace.
The degree to which some have attempted to deny the President a foreign policy victory in all of this is wonderfully illustrated by Forbes:
The noticeable changes are in the leadership, both in Washington and in Moscow. Unlike Bush, Obama — once trigger happy — has paused and listened to a very unlikely man of reason. Russian president Vladimir Putin, the patriarch, the czar, the slouching strong man in Moscow, has presented a solution that has stopped the war drums.
Of course, Putin’s motivation is to protect his interest in Syria from a possible pernicious attack from the United States, but, beyond that, even as Putin has admitted, the offer Putin presented the President is one that he and the President had already been
discussing:
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama discussed the idea of placing Syria's chemical weapons arsenal under international control on the sidelines of a G20 summit last week, Putin's spokesman said on Tuesday. "The issue was discussed," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said by telephone. He would not say who raised the issue or give other details.
A major resentment of those on the Right stem from their inability to overcome the revelation that their foreign policy prescriptions have destroyed this nation. That they are not what the frequently nettlesome Chris Matthews giddily characterize as the “daddy party”, and, oh yes, they were unable to capture Osama bin Laden and the Democratic president, Barack Obama, was successful in doing so.
This explains why their commentary on this President in the realm of foreign policy is filled with additional (as if that were possible) venom, hatred, and, oh yes, always present, an ample dose of racism, as is exhibited here by Ann Coulter:
Look at how the vote in Congress is going to go, not looking food for Obama. Obama is desperately looking for an exit strategy. No, these Democrats think being president is a Hollywood movie, if they just come out and say it is in America's national security interest Americans will swoon like they do in The West Wing when Aaron Sorkin is writing it. But it's not that way in life. Americans do have a vague grasp of what our national security is which is why they supported the war in Iraq and they do not support this nonsense.
I just tweeted out -- as for Putin in particular, he is making a monkey of Obama. I tweeted out a very interesting article from the Tablet suggesting that this whole thing was set up by Putin to make Obama look like a monkey.
Despite an almost legendary record of foreign policy accomplishments, from pirates on the high seas, the aiding in the vanquishing of a Libyan dictator, the stopping of the man primarily responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans and the worst foreign act of aggression on US soil in modern history, the ending of one war and the almost completion of a second on his watch, and now on the verge of finalizing an agreement that will assist the world in the furtherance of the eradication of chemical weapons, Barack Obama is constantly being described as being “weak” and “incompetent”.
There are also other accomplishments that he has added to his legacy, which, although not considered in the realm of foreign policy, are certainly world impacting, such as the BP oil spill, and the probable saving of the world economy, through the saving of the US economy.
Still the penchant for portraying this President as being “incompetent” or “weak” is not a predilection solely of the Right-wing, there are those on the Left who are just as skilled in rendering Barack Obama through unflattering imagery. Going forward, I shall never forget the words of Joe Klein as singularly sweeping in its unadulterated contempt. It is not an exaggeration to say it is utterly shocking to read.
He willingly jumped into a bear trap of his own creation. In the process, he has damaged his presidency and weakened the nation’s standing in the world. It has been one of the more stunning and inexplicable displays of presidential incompetence that I’ve ever witnessed. The failure cuts straight to the heart of a perpetual criticism of the Obama White House: that the President thinks he can do foreign policy all by his lonesome.
What can one say about such words? Especially since they bear little resemblance to the situation that unfolded before us. I suppose the specter of Barack Obama devising and executing his foreign policy prescriptions without the assistance of other more "worthier" men has been an indescribably galling proposition for Joe Klein.
Still, throughout his presidency, Barack Obama has managed to, at the very worst, make fools of people like Joe Klein, and, at the very least, reveal some of his critics to being either too short of the facts or too short of reason.
In terms of who should be declared the winner in this brief crisis, it is worth recalling the President’s stated goal in his consideration for wanting to launch a military strike at the chemical weapons manufacturing facilities of Bashar al-Assad. It was enunciated quite succinctly by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, during a hearing before Congress on September 3rd:
“Our military objectives in Syria would be to hold the Assad regime accountable, degrade its ability to carry out these kinds of attacks and deter it from further use of chemical weapons.”
His goal was not to fight a war, or remove Assad, his goal was to degrade Assad’s ability from once again using chemical weapons on his people. The agreement that was announced yesterday between the U.S. and Russia concerning Syria’s chemical weapons was as
follows:
The removal of Syria's arsenal of about 1,100 tons of blister and nerve gases by the middle of next year. No country has ever been disarmed that quickly.
The President in his usual Saturday address stated that the agreement is an important step....
toward eliminating Assad's chemical arms "in a transparent, expeditious, and verifiable manner." But he left open the possibility that he would order military action unilaterally to punish Syria if the deal collapses.
Sure sounds like a win to me, and without having to fire one shot.
As a postscript, Barack Obama has been concerned about the issue of chemical weapons for quite some time, as he made clear while speaking at a forum convened by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2005.
Good morning. As some of you know, Senator Lugar and I recently traveled to Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan to witness firsthand both the progress we're making in securing the world's most dangerous weapons, as well as the serious challenges that lie ahead.
SNIP
Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union was engaged in a massive undertaking in the field of germ warfare. At its height in the late 1980's, this program stockpiled of some of the most dangerous agents known to man - plague, smallpox, and anthrax - to name just a few. As one book says, "disease by the ton was its industry."
Besides the devastation they can cause to a civilian population, biological agents can also be effective in asymmetrical warfare against U.S. troops. While they are often difficult to use, they are easy to transport, hard to detect, and, as we saw in Kiev, not always well secured.
Here in Washington, we saw what happened when just two letters filled with just a few grams of Anthrax were sent to the U.S. Senate. Five postal employees were killed and the Senate office buildings were closed for months. This was two letters.
Fortunately, however, we've made some good progress on this front. For years, Nunn-Lugar programs have been effectively upgrading security at sites in six countries across the former Soviet Union. And the Kiev story is heading in the right direction - while we were in Ukraine, Dick, through his tireless and personal intervention, was able to achieve a breakthrough with that government, bringing that facility and others under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program.
But because of the size, secrecy, and scope of the Soviet biological weapons program, we are still dangerously behind in dealing with this proliferation threat. We need to be sure that Nunn-Lugar is increasingly focused on these very real non-proliferation and bioterrorism threats.
One of the most important steps is for Russia to permit the access and transparency necessary to deal with the threat.
Additional steps should also be taken to consolidate and secure dangerous pathogen collections, strengthen bio-reconnaissance networks to provide early warning of bio-attack and natural disease outbreaks, and have our experts work together to develop improved medical countermeasures.