The Syrian Crisis: Russia’sHypocrisy and the US’ Weakness

Where is the Syrian crisis today? It is hostage to the hypocrisy of international diplomacy. The United States and Europe put the responsibility on Russia. Vladimir Putin replies that comrade Kofi “Annanof” is still fit for solving the crisis. Putin denies arming comrade Basharovsky; yet, Russian assault tanks with their small, cramped size have taken the place of the heavy, enormous tanks. As for mortars – the pride of Russian manufacturing – they are busy flattening rebellious cities and villages.

Diplomatic sweet talk is covering up the entrance of new Russian armaments funded by “bankrupt” Iran. This is met by the United States and Europe’s inability to intervene, which is postponed until Bashar’s regime commits bloody massacres, in the manner of the Houla massacre, at which point intervention may become admissible through international legitimacy (the Security Council) or outside of it.

How can Bashar be kept in check if comrade Annan is content with following the situation through a telescope from Geneva, and not from Damascus, which he only visits in order to flatter it. With the U.S. absent, Annan is adopting Russia’s hypocrisy, for the cease fire and the opposition’s sitting down at the same table with the butcher. The farce was revealed by Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who informed the invalids’ home (the Security Council) that dialogue is “impossible” at the present moment.

So, Syria will remain hostage to the whirlpool of international diplomacy while Bashar’s regime goes about its bombardment, armed with the protection of “Rasputin.” Then, it pays the “shabiha” militias to storm the houses of bombed civilians and slaughter them, and then … then it takes the advice of the Sunni sheikh, al-Buti, and orders the mosques to pray for the comfort of the “martyrs.” But there are other martyrs: those soldiers who are executed when they refuse to fire on peaceful protests.

Why is Russia taking this negative stance toward a humanitarian issue? Because Russia—coming out of the skin of an ideological, totalitarian regime, and now led by an officer of the intelligence service who engaged in the Cold War as a spy in Germany—possesses no deep-rooted traditions of freedom. After more than twenty years of shaky democracy, there are no serious organizations or movements in Russia that take up the issues of human rights, as in Western Europe.

In any case, the clash between Russia and the United States over Syria is not ideological. It has not yet reached the climax of the Cold War’s confrontations over Cuba, Vietnam, or Afghanistan. Reaching a compromise between Obama and Putin, therefore, is conceivable.

How does the U.S. envision this compromise? The Obama administration, in its insistence on personally removing Bashar, believes that guaranteeing Russian interests in Syria—the Tartous naval base, oil investments, standing alone in export of armaments, the security and safety of Orthodox Christians—is enough for the Russian president to abandon Bashar, but not his regime. Thus, the U.S. government believes that the popular Syrian, and official Gulf rejection of Bashar, who has turned into a heavy burden on Russia because of his massacres, constitutes a sufficient basis to remove his dynasty. For Syria’s future is wagered on this dynasty not staying, as expressed by the judge and attorney Haitham al-Malih, the most prominent of the Syrian opposition, who spent long years in the prisons of al-Asad, father and son.

As for the mechanism to remove the tripartite al-Asad clan (al-Shalish, al-Asad, Makhlouf) which dominates the security apparatus, the government administration, the party, the economy, and corruption, the U.S.-Gulf conception evokes the mechanism used to remove the former Yemeni president. Putin may be able to convince the Syrian army’s Alawite leadership to abandon the ruling dynasty in exchange for their retaining control over the striking power of the army for the “protection” of the Alawite sect from attempts to take revenge on it.

But why is the U.S. incapable of military intervention? The United States is military capable, especially after its withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. But the spirits of the American people and the Obama administration are weak after bitter failure in those wars.

The U.S. president, as an educated person who rejects war, is playing a big role in this incapacity. And, as a political official, he does not want war at a time when he is engaging in the electoral war to renew his term. At the same time, half of the American people think he is a “soft, hesitant” president, and that he failed to treat the suffocating economic crisis.

As for Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential candidate (opinion polls put him on equal footing with Obama) and radical conservatives like John McCain, they scold Obama for growing feeble. But they will take his cautious position if they come to power. Hillary leans more towards intervention, bringing to mind her husband’s decision of successful military intervention against Serbia in 1995, after the Srebrenica massacre that cost the lives of eight thousand Muslims.

The Pentagon’s generals say that they have completed devising plans for emergency military intervention, including in Syria, but Defense Minster Leon Panetta is more cautious. As the former head of the CIA, he realizes the extent of the Syrian crisis’ complexity on the Arab, regional and international, scales, and in relation to religion, doctrine, and race.

Does Russia oppose U.S. and European military intervention in Syria? Yeltsin’s Russia did not intervene to save their Slavic cousins in Serbia when Clinton’s United States intervened in the Balkans during the 90s. But Putin is more determined, since he is leading a Russia that is today stronger politically and militarily and has greater determination to preserve an influential role in the world, especially in the neighboring Middle East.

The war to topple al-Qaddafi demonstrated that the United States has developed an air strike force that removes the need to deploy ground troops in Syria. Turkey, perhaps with Arab forces, would be able to establish “liberated” areas, under U.S. and European air protection, which the opposition’s armed forces could use as bases to go and wear down an army that has lost its national legitimacy, and to attract the tens of thousands of Sunni recruits in its ranks.

Syria is not Libya. Syria possesses a strong air defense system that makes up for the weakness of the air force. This system, which, along with Egypt, participated in neutralizing the Israeli air force in the October 1973 war, is stronger today. But military experts’ assessments indicate that it would not hold out for but a few days in the face of air strikes. Syria also possesses an enormous store of chemical weapons. If the regime risked using them against neighboring countries or giving some of them to Hezbollah, then Western intervention would become certain.

I do not think I need to comment on the flare-up in Tripoli, on the situation in northern Lebanon, since I anticipated it in last Tuesday’s conversation. Prince Saud al-Faisal’s statements suggest that he is not convinced by the theory of “aloofness” that the Lebanese president brought with him on his tour of the Gulf. Al-Faisal’s accusation that Bashar is pressuring Lebanon is an extremely well-mannered sign by Saudi Arabia that the (biased) Lebanese government has started using the army against the Sunnis of Tripoli and Akkar, with the pretext of preventing fighters and arms from slipping over the border.

I have said many times before that Lebanese politicians’ analysis of events gravitates toward sentiment, and not toward logic and reality. The official Lebanese analysis is betting on the “triumph” of Bashar’s regime, Iran and Hezbollah’s Shi’a in the current crisis. From here came the mistake of entangling the Lebanese army in a confrontation with the Lebanese Sunnis sympathetic to the Syrian revolution, while Najib Miqati’s government remains silent about the heavy flow of Iranian-Syrian weapons over the border to the Shiites’ party.