Making it Up

The U.S. is looking for a reason to follow the Libyan model in Syria.

It seems that U.S. President Barack Obama has stopped hiding the fact that all that remains is for him to find an excuse to invade Syria. Meanwhile, NATO has openly declared its readiness to overthrow the Syrian regime by following the Libyan model.

After the conclusion of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama stated, “I’ve instructed my teams to work closely with all other countries in the region, and international organizations and institutions to find out precisely whether this red line was crossed.” This statement was made in response to the events that occurred two days ago, when it was reported that chemical weapons had been used on Syrian territory. Damascus officially stated that rebels are fighting government troops in this inhumane manner. Of course, the Syrian revolutionaries tell a diametrically opposite version of the story.

On Wednesday, Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Gennady Gatilov explained, “The claims of using chemical weapons in Syria should be thoroughly investigated. As of yet, we do not have any decisive evidence about this.” It seems that Obama and Moscow agree on the matter of thorough investigation, but Obama apparently has already made up his mind, saying, “I am deeply skeptical of any claim that in fact it was the opposition that used chemical weapons.”

Statements made on the eve of Obama’s trip to Israel by NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Admiral James Stavridis also circumstantially confirm that the U.S. president is prepared to take decisive action. “No end in sight to the vicious civil war [in Syria]. We are prepared if called upon to be engaged as we were in Libya … My personal opinion is that it would be helpful in breaking the deadlock and bringing down the Assad regime,” said the admiral.

However, NATO has admitted that it won’t risk opening a new Syrian front without the approval of the U.N. Security Council. That being said, everyone knows that Moscow and Beijing have learned lessons from what happened in Libya. Then, NATO used a Security Council resolution — forgetting about all the agreements on the U.N. side — as a cover for the military invasion of an independent government and implementation of its own rules of the game.

In other words, there is no way that Russia and China will allow it to happen again. This is well understood in Washington; it is assiduously looking for a way to prove to the uncooperative Russians and Chinese that there is no other way besides the repetition of the Libyan scenario in Syria. The use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government troops is entirely suitable for this purpose.

The U.S. administration already pulled off such a diplomatic “operation” in February 2003, when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell shook a vial of white powder at a session of the U.N. Security Council. According to Powell, it was evocative of Iraq’s chemical weapons. At the time the gesture turned out to be sufficient to get the Security Council to sanction the entry of U.S. forces into Iraq with the goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Then it became known that there wasn’t any kind of chemical weapon in the vial, and Powell knew this well. But no one can go back in time and change history.

Obviously, this time a vial with white powder will not be sufficient. There is also no doubt that the U.S. intelligence services are using satellites to carefully monitor all of the Syrian military warehouses where chemical weapons are stored. Israeli intelligence is also watching; Moscow is paying attention to everything that is going on.

It’s hard to imagine that Syrian leader Bashar Assad doesn’t understand the catastrophic consequences he would bring to official Damascus if he ordered the use of chemical weapons against the rebels. The revolutionaries also realize this; they have long waited for NATO to topple the regime, like manna from heaven. So that’s why these masters of provocation will use chemical weapons with great pleasure —if, of course, they can really get their hands on them — and then accuse Assad and his circle of all sorts of sins. And this will be good enough for Washington to go and demand decisive action from the Security Council, because it is too expensive to keep troops at constant readiness along the Syrian borders.