Between the United States and Russia

A crowd of fans was beside itself with excitement. It’s not every day that such a competition takes place in the big leagues. Two contenders will challenge each other in the international ring: one a black American, the other a white Russian. Will the American contender press the cruise missile launch button? Will the Russian war ships aim their artillery at the American ships, or will they back down? The dissatisfaction of the crowd will immediately give way to the following questions: Who lost and who will benefit? Will the rate of support toward Obama plummet below the red line? Is Putin the real leader?

It’s hard to believe, but for a moment, it seemed that a marginal spark, this time in Syria, was about to ignite a third world war. What really transpired? A brazen Arab violated a moral agreement not to use chemical weapons and about 1,000 people were killed. Yet this same notion of morality allows India and Pakistan to have chemical weapons; this morality has not successfully penetrated the fortified walls of Israel’s core; this morality thrashes and deliberates with Iran and kneels before North Korea.

Those who speak of this morality have forgotten that the United States did not attack Iraq when it launched chemical weapons at Iran or bombed Halabja. Despite having signed the Nonproliferation Treaty, Moammar Gadhafi had chemical weapons for decades. However, since American oil companies made a fortune off of Libya’s oil fields, no one dared demand he part with his weapons. The past tells us that it has long been the identity of the perpetrator and not the victims that determines whether international morality will be incited or silenced.

So then, why Syria? Is it really only because Syria used chemical weapons on its own citizens?

This recent use of chemical weapons pales in the face of the muteness and silence that gripped the West when 110,000 people were murdered. The answer must be sought elsewhere. The war in Syria revived the spirit of the Cold War in which each superpower acted as a beneficiary and protector for another country. Should any harm befall a superpower proxy, it would serve as an excuse to fight or threaten the other superpower. Now, too, Obama relied on the argument of having to protect Israel, Jordan and Turkey (the Syrian civilians are less important because they will be killed anyway) ito justify an attack on Syria. Russia, for its part, used its responsibility to protect Syria, and, in effect, Iran, by stopping such an attack. Syria simply served as a table on which both leaders participated in an arm-wrestling competition. The use of chemical weapons is just the starting pistol that propelled the superpowers into a race against each other on the path to a formidable conflict.

And then it became clear to both sides that they were racing on an irrational track; they might be required to display their deterrent strength in military action on behalf of victims that don’t interest them anyway, and without being able to guarantee a clean victory. They were about to lose the most important asset to all superpowers — the element of threat. So at the last minute, they composed themselves and declared a tie. Syria returned to its local arena, and the fuse for igniting an international conflict was pulled from Assad’s hands.

But this tie has dramatically increased the threshold of external military involvement in every conflict. “Red lines” will have no meaning, and local conflicts can take place till death as long as they do not threaten the balance of power. There are already those who rush to see this result as a license for Israel to attack Iran, but it’s better to immediately calm down. Iran, like Israel and Syria, is a protected country, an integral part of the balance of superpower influence. Israel cannot be sure that the United States will want to face Russia in order to allow Israel to do in Iran what the United States did not do in Syria.