The August 21 chemical attack in Syria has ironically left Assad more securely in power than before, while increasing Russian influence in the region. [Credit: ABC]
This much is: Assad’s position is more secure now than before the August 21 chemical attacks, his opponents disheartened, Russia’s Middle East stature greatly enhanced, ours diminished. Putin spared his client from military attack. The President avoided a potentially embarrassing vote in Congress and difficult questions about what the attack might accomplish. Instead, Assad will engage over the next several months in a familiar cat-and-mouse game with UN inspectors sniffing about for chemical weapons that he now admits having but still denies having used.
Avoiding war is the right result. The President never clarified his intentions, much less our nation’s interests, in bombing Syria. He was clear on what he didn’t want: boots on the ground, regime change, tipping the military balance in favor of the rebels, all of which are the usual goals of military intervention. Why intervene in a war whose outcome you don’t want to affect?
His curious address last Tuesday, in which he asked Congress not to enact a resolution that he’d been lobbying them to pass, after having spent the previous week insisting that he would act without Congressional authorization, suggests that the bombing would serve a cathartic purpose. He asked all of us to watch the videos of the ghastly deaths that the chemical attack inflicted, assuring us that we would be persuaded that Assad deserved to be struck – not with a “pinprick,” though with something “unbelievably small,” in the words of our Secretary of State.
It was a different off-the-cuff remark by Mr. Kerry at a press conference last Monday that led the President to abandon his cathartic assault. Musing aloud, Kerry said that Assad could avoid military intervention by turning over his chemical weapons, but “he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done obviously.” But at Russia’s urging, Assad announced that maybe it could be done and that he would be happy to welcome international inspectors. That prompted Kerry, whose subordinates had dismissed his comments as rhetorical, to later proclaim that he had “purposefully made the statements,” employing the “language of diplomacy” to send a message to his Russian counterparts.
The President was more candid, tacitly acknowledging that his Syria policy had followed an accidental course. The result is what mattered, he said. “I’m less concerned about style points.”
But style does matter in foreign policy. There are no “open mic” nights on the world stage. When the spotlight falls on a world leader, friends and foes watch closely, seeking encouragement or opportunity. Assad was superb. He has gone from embattled leader to global figure in a matter of weeks. The agreement reached between the US and Russia made him less vulnerable militarily and sapped the morale of Syria’s rebels. It also has lent him a certain legitimacy. Who would dare depose a ruler who is in the process of relinquishing his chemical arsenal?
Then there is Putin. No less a thug than Assad, Putin is now a force in world diplomacy, the equal of the Americans. Once viewed as the obstructionist who vetoed Security Council resolutions, Putin could emerge as a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize.
More importantly from his perspective, he has, as President Obama might put it, “reset” Middle East affairs. Since the end of the last war against Israel in 1973, the US has been the region’s major outside player. President Carter’s subsequent Camp David agreement helped seal that role, transforming Egypt from Israel’s most implacable foe to US ally in keeping the peace.
In recent months, that whole arrangement has begun to look worn and frayed. Egyptian military bosses have flatly ignored our pleas for restraint, first by deposing the only elected president in its history, then suppressing his political colleagues, and now extending repression to liberal and left-leaning activists and journalists. Their actions receded from view as we focused on Syria but their message is clear: the US no longer influences Egyptian behavior.
And now Russia rescues its client – and Iranian ally – Assad, outflanking a US President who could muster no real support either from Western nations or the American Congress for his militant designs. The US influence in the Middle East has subsided as Russia’s has grown, potentially concluding what had been a 40-year period of American influence.
No arrangement is permanent and in the quicksilver that is the Middle East, 40 years is an eternity. Our influence would wane at some point in any event. And the decline is not irreversible. We still have the means to assert ourselves. But is that what we want?
We appear unsure of who we want to be. Many Democrats have become almost European in their aversion to war; many Republicans talk like isolationists. Millions who are less ideological and less overtly political are simply weary of war. Is this a passing weariness or a lasting departure from the mindset that has shaped US foreign policy since the Second World War? Are we a nation that defines its interests and advances them throughout the world or one that takes care of itself and leaves it to others to attend to the world’s miseries and injustices? Though never purely one or the other, we have for three generations been activists, interventionists, perpetually involved. Perhaps this is our moment to retreat from the limelight and take our place amid the background scenery.
To this point, we haven’t really made up our minds, never really given it sufficient reflection. Instead, we react to passing events with no point of reference. This lack of self-awareness contributed greatly to the President’s struggle to understand Syria and his inability to settle on a course of action until the Russians settled it for him.
To be clear, this is a presidential failing in which we all share. There is no dominant view, much less consensus, among the electorate as to what our nation’s role should be. President Bush argued that we should punish governments that harbored terrorists and promote democracy in the Islamic world. The notion was that popularly elected governments would occupy themselves with improving living standards and pursuing peace. They would give terrorists no quarter. The idea showed promise, but the public soured on it when wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved too long, too gruesome and productive of only ambiguous results. Democracy takes time; our attention span is short.
Since our abandonment of that policy, neither political party has clearly articulated what our international goals should be. Like the President, we express our preferences in terms of what we don’t want — war, entanglement in messy situations, overthrowing a bad leader to the benefit of someone worse — than what we do. The truth is, we don’t know what we want.
Which puts us at a terrible disadvantage against the likes of Putin and Assad. Assad knows what he wants — to hold onto power and crush his opponents. So does Putin — to restore the stature and influence Russia lost with communism’s collapse. We have no comparable sense of purpose, no tangible aims, nothing we want as badly as they. With Syria now settled, we will likely continue our drift until the next crisis sends us careening from option to option.
The President is fond of calling for “national conversations” on subjects ranging from gun violence to government surveillance of its citizens. Perhaps we could do with a national conversation on recovering our sense of purpose in a complex and dangerous world.