Much is being made of a Russian proposal to resolve the “Crisis in Syria.” In sum, it calls for Syria to turn over its chemical weapons arsenal to international demolition experts and sign the international convention against their use to avoid military strikes by the United States.
Notwithstanding understandable skepticism … on both sides, a fearful Syria and a war-weary United States are grasping at this proposal as if it were a life-saving buoy. Indeed, reports are that Syria rushed to sign the international Chemical Weapons Convention today – after decades of defiantly refusing to do so. And the United States rushed to Geneva today to begin talks with Russia about the details. But the United States and Syria know full well that if they rely solely on this proposal, their risk of drowning is very high indeed.
However, if this peaceful disarmament works against all odds (given that Russia’s Vladimir V. Putin is no more trustworthy than Syria’s Bashar al-Assad), it would save Obama from having to launch a stupid war of his own – complete with disruptive, hornets-nest potential that would make the fallout in Iraq seem tame by comparison.
If it doesn’t work, it’s Putin’s machinations, not Obama’s reputation, that should incur global scrutiny … and wrath. More important, Obama would then have far greater justification to launch military strikes – not just to deter Assad’s use of chemical weapons, but to take him out as well.
But it might be helpful to know that Putin has his own existential interest in either controlling or destroying Assad’s chemical weapons; above all, to avoid them falling into the hands of Islamic terrorists who hate Russians more than they hate Americans.
What’s more, far too few commentators seem to appreciate the irony that, just as Obama purportedly got himself into a box by threatening military action if Assad crossed his red line, Putin has now put himself into one by assuming responsibility for Assad’s disarmament. (In so doing, he may have also unwittingly provided Obama an escape hatch to get out of his.)
Still, it is not lost on me that past seems prologue here. For Putin seems to be testing/daring Obama with his diplomatic and military maneuvers with respect to Syria today just as Nikita Khrushchev tested/dared John F. Kennedy with similar maneuvers with respect to Cuba 50 years ago.
This is why, instead of even threatening to bomb Syria, thereby incurring blame for turning it into another ungovernable mess like Iraq, Obama should test/dare Putin in turn by:
- Aggressively training and arming (vetted) opposition forces to enable them to not only outgun Assad’s ragtag army, but also purge al-Qaeda jihadists from their ranks.
- Countering Putin’s threat to supply Iran with sophisticated missile systems and help it build a second nuclear reactor “for peaceful energy purposes” with his own threat to do the same for a friendly Gulf State like Saudi Arabia (while of course still maintaining the military edge Israel enjoys over all Arab states in the region … combined).
- Openly flirting with the prospect of supplying sophisticated missile systems to the newly independent states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and helping them build new nuclear reactors too….
Such an arms race by proxy would surely give Putin pause; not least because he would have just cause to fear Obama bankrupting his Russia the way President Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union with a similar arms race during the Cold War. After all, not only can the United States afford to donate more; its pawn state(s) can afford to buy more arms than Russia’s as well.
Checkmate!
Finally, much is also being made of a Putin op-ed the New York Times published today. In it he criticized Obama’s foreign policies and lectured the American people on the fundamentals of international law and the universal truth that all men are created equal. Unsurprisingly, Obama’s critics in the United States are taking umbrage at Putin’s brazen hypocrisy and pointing to his op-ed as just another reflection of his contempt for a “weak Obama.”
But I think it betrays Putin’s own weakness that he used a U.S. publication to take cheap shots at Obama. After all, his dictatorial rule is such that he would not allow his fellow Russians, let alone a foreign leader, similar freedom of expression to criticize his policies. Not to mention the hypocrisy of this man who invaded the newly independent state of Georgia, massacred hundreds of thousands of people in the unruly Russian region of Chechnya, and decreed that LGBT people are not only unequal but unnatural.
This is why it makes Obama’s critics look weak and foolish for taking his plainly mischievous op-ed so seriously. To his credit Obama rebuffed exhortations by reporters to even dignify it with a comment.
Far more troublesome, though, is the media’s determined intent to pursue their venal, vested interest in an open, Cold War-like confrontation between the United States and Russia. Accordingly, on the one hand they will do all they can to goad Putin into overplaying his hand by stroking his Napoleonic ego (e.g., by hailing him as the new power broker in the Middle East); while on the other hand they will do all they can to goad Obama into overreacting by challenging his Mandingo manhood (e.g., by dismissing him as a clueless, feckless and hopeless figure who prefers to lead … from behind).
In any event, for the record, America’s foreign policies might be a mess of compassion, contradiction, cunning, and confusion, but the world has been and remains far better off with its policies reigning supreme than those of any other country, especially Russia.
NOTE: Remember Egypt? It’s just another example of the obsessive, myopic, and herd-like nature of the media that, after months of covering the explosion of every Molotov cocktail in Egypt as if it were the opening salvo of World War III, you’d be hard-pressed to find any mention of the ongoing unrest there in the news today; i.e., now that the media has turned its sights on Syria. This, notwithstanding that, after deposing the democratically elected government of Mohamed Morsi two months ago, the Egyptian army issued orders just yesterday extending martial law and daily curfews for at least another two months.
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* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Thursday, at 5:28 pm