The Russian Gambit
And how to exploit it
Cliches abound in crises — there’s “never let a crisis go to waste,” the old trope about the Chinese symbol for crisis being composed of two separate symbols representing danger and opportunity, and, more recently, Naomi Klein’s notion of the “Shock Doctrine,” where crises are actually manufactured in order to enact changes that would never be implemented were the system being manipulated were left to its own devices. Russia’s slightly comical “okay, let’s do it” posture towards Secretary Kerry’s off-the-cuff remarks regarding Syria’s chemical weapons represents not only a gift toward an Obama administration seemingly lurching from one highly nuanced position to the next, but is also the perfect opportunity for the international community at large to step up and reassume the mantle of legitimacy that the United States diminished with a decade of unilateral war in the Middle East.
Let’s assume that, as it appears, the United Nations is willing to take on the arduous task of removing all chemical weapons from the Assad regime’s custody. That, in and of itself, is something that the UN is fairly good at, as evidenced by the accuracy of its reports out of Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion describing a nuclear and chemical weapons program that was decimated through years of military strikes, sanctions and inspections. Such inspections will take time in the face of a recalcitrant Assad, who, with his Russian allies, will most likely seek to distract and elude inspectors, but again, this is nothing new to the UN teams, having seen much the same in Hussein’s Iraq.
The most difficult element of conducting such inspections is the establishment of basic security throughout Syria, no mean feat considering the small advance team sent to inspect the recent chemical attack site came under unattributed sniper fire prior to reaching the area, and was forced to beat a hasty retreat. This security requirement is the pivot upon which the international community can move against the Russian and Chinese refusal to allow even consideration of the authorization of an international peacemaking force. In this way, Russia’s pride at remaining a power broker on the world stage is pitted against their tactics of denigrating collective efforts on the international level. Having proposed an audacious plan while convincing Syria to rapidly agree to it, Russia has put itself in the much the same place that the Obama Administration was a scant few days ago — having proposed an idea without fully thinking through all the requirements that the desired end state requires. Even the mere possibility of UN involvement extricates them from being the unlikely, given the record and rhetoric of Senator Obama, genesis of purely unilateral military strikes on yet another Middle Eastern state while opening the door for courses of action that are far more in keeping with the Administration’s true nature — the development and usage of international power structures to achieve peace. (Susan Rice’s darling, the Responsiblity to Protect doctrine, can even be worked in there, as any state that either uses chemical weapons against its people or cannot keep rebel forces from stealing them — and make no mistake, it’s most likely the former — cannot be said to be a state that has either the ability or inclination to protect its innocent populations.)
Such a peacekeeping force would, of course, require boots on the ground in the form of both soldiers and civil affairs personnel — think more State Department than Special Ops — and it would require the eventual termination of Assad and his ilk’s days in power. Having used disproportionate measures of force against his own people, Assad will never win back legitimacy in the eyes of the populace, and assuming that reports regarding the regime’s use of chemical weapons are correct, he may be on trial for war crimes regardless, as evidenced by the recent opening of an investigation at the International Criminal Court. With the power vacuum generated by this departure, whatever form it takes, there will be the need for mediation among the remaining power structures, the rebel groups as a whole, and the rebel groups themselves. While the United States certainly took the lead for peacemaking missions of this sort in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the UN’s corporate knowledge may have slipped in the interim, the legitimacy that Security Council approved actions bring to the table cannot be overstated.
President Obama’s speech the other night was a terrific example of the power of both words and timing — had the speech come even a couple days earlier, it would have seemed prescient and laden with initiative, rather than reactive. It’s this forward-leaning stance that is most sorely needed. In other words, the concepts that would build support for an international peacemaking force have a large amount of buy-in from citizenries throughout the world, but it is the actual leadership in the presentation of those ideas that will bring the UN back into the position of sponsoring such forces, rather than ignoring their presence as in the case of Iraq and Kosovo. Furthermore, the use of Security Council resolutions for action expands the UN’s relevance, which was yet another casualty in the US’s adventure in the Middle East. If — and this is a large “if” — this opening provided by Russia for international involvement in Syria can be exploited, it may even result in the reestablishment of respect for the UN as an institution in the United States, no small feat in and of itself.
