The American-Russian Struggle over Syria

It may be hard for us to guess the consequences of Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Damascus based on the statements he made in his brief press conference after meeting with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. But we can be sure that the Syrian crisis has entered a stage of an actual internationalization; Syria has become a battlefield among the U.S. and its Arab and European allies on one side, and Russia and China and their Indian, South African and Brazilian allies on the other side.

It is obvious that the U.S. camp wants to change the Syrian regime using a recipe that involves an economic embargo, followed by a military intervention similar to what they did to Libya and Iraq in the past and will do to Iran in the future. Meanwhile, the Russian-Chinese camp keeps its steadfast position, preventing regime change or at least not granting it a UN legal cover.

It is not a matter of a Russian military base in Tartus; it is way more than that. The primary issue is oil; the secondary issue is the Iranian aspiration to possess nuclear weapons. China, which used its veto in the UN Security Council against the Arab demand for President Bashar al-Assad to step down, does not have any military bases in Syria, and its trade balance with Syria does not even represent half the trade balance with the smallest Gulf state. Besides, China has not sold a single weapon to Syria for the last 30 years!

Two major developments occurred in the Syrian situation in the last 24 hours. The first is the common Arab-American-European decision to withdraw their ambassadors from Damascus. The second is Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential nominee, calling for his country to immediately arm the Syrian opposition and enable them to defend the Syrian people against the massacres they are facing currently.

Withdrawing the ambassadors as a step toward closing the embassies is meant to achieve more than the stated goal of increasing the Syrian regime’s diplomatic isolation. Actually, it is a plan to remove the international and Arab legitimacy of the regime as a first step to changing it militarily later; this could start by arming the opposition and dragging the regime into long attrition warfare.

Senator McCain, due to his position very close to the decision-making circle of the American administration, would not have made such serious statements he knew that the U.S. president has real intentions to indirectly intervene militarily in the Syrian crisis.

The Syrian regime, supported by Russia and China, is very aware of this fact. Therefore, it wanted to settle things militarily in Homs by committing bloody massacres, hoping that settling things this way would close the door on the American plans should they take place. In the next few months, Syria is going to be a battlefield for the American and Russian bears, and this will hurt the whole Arab region in turn, including all Syria’s neighboring countries. As the English proverb goes, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”