Do Russia and the U.S. Share a Goal in Syria?

Another day, another event in the fast-moving saga of Syria's poison gas arsenal.

Now the sadistic Assad regime that rules that benighted land has announced that it's on board with the Russian-U.S. “framework” (it's not an “agreement” until the UN Security Council votes for it) to neutralize Assad's chemical weapons arsenal- in conformity with what the UN Security Council is going to cook up. We don't know several things: 1) to what extent is the Assad regime really going to live up to whatever requirements the UN sets and relinquish control of the toxic arsenal; 2) what, if any, enforcement mechanism is Russia going to allow the UN Security Council to impose, since it rules out force, and 3) how much of the Assad regime's apparent cooperation (so far only verbal, plus beginning the process of joining the Chemical Weapons Ban treaty) is due to Russian pressure on it, and how much due to the regime's calculations of its own self-interest. [1]

Russia has a motive in taking away Assad's gases. Like the U.S., it fears Islamic jihadists, the Chechen versions of which commit terrorist attacks in Russia and Russian-controlled territory. Like the U.S., it may well fear chemical weapons eventually falling into the hands of jihadists in Syria. [2]

So it has cunningly found a way to kill two birds with one stone. Get the chemical weapons out of Syrian hands, and block a U.S. military attack on the Assad regime, which it supports. (Assuming their scheme ultimately works.)

And Obama is practically indebted to the Russians for getting him off the hook. He didn't want to launch that military attack he kept threatening, especially with Congress set to vote against it. Incredibly, this intelligent man, this clever politician, systematically painted himself into a corner, first by drawing a “red line” barring Assad from using chemical weapons, then by letting Assad get away with the first testing-the-waters chemical attack, which revealed Obama's lack of resolve, then after the large attack in August by promising retaliation, then by ineptly trying to wiggle out of his own threat by kicking the ball over to Congress in order to shift responsibility, which backfired. And he made only pro forma attempts to rally the country to respond to the Assad atrocity. (He's never been interested in trying to do anything politically hard. He generally takes the paths of least resistance. He's a political surfer, riding the waves, not a mountain climber willing to tackle uphill challenges.)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has just weighed in (after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry scurried to Israel to brief him BEFORE going to Paris to huddle with the British and French) demanding that Syria be “stripped of all chemical weapons.” He said the whole region would be safer. (Given the Assad regime's attacks on Turkey, and Jordan's fearfulness, and the Assad habit of setting off car and truck bombs in Lebanon and much other evil mischief there, Netanyahu has some evidence in support of his statement.)

1] We are already seeing how this might play out, with Kerry threatening vague “consequences” for Syrian non-compliance, and invoking Article 7 of the UN charter, implying authorization of military force. The U.S. position is that no further UN Security Council action would be required. The Russian position is that it would be. Thus while the words written down are agreed by the U.S. and Russia, each puts its own, mutually-conflicting, interpretations on the words. This is a common phenomenon in international affairs. So while this vital difference on the use of military force is papered over in the agreement, and elided in public statements, it lurks ominously just below the surface, like a landmine.

2] In fact Vice President Joseph Biden spelled out the shared U.S.-Russian interest in preventing the chemical weapons from falling into other hands, in Iowa on Sunday, September 15^th. He also claimed that Obama earlier had made this pitch to Russian President (and neo-Tsar) Putin, which supposedly laid the groundwork for the Russian-U.S. demarche. We don't know if this is a face-saving falsehood or something based in fact. It doesn't jibe with the apparently off-handed comments Kerry made in response to a reporter's question (Q: What could Assad do to avoid a U.S. strike? A: He could give up all his chemical weapons in week. Turn them all in. But that's not possible.) which the Russians then seized on. I think there would have been a more formal public proposal by either the Russians, the U.S., or both, if there had been a prior agreement. And why wouldn't U.S. officials have been publicly making the point earlier that “Russia has the same interest as we and the international community have in ridding Syria of chemical weapons”?