President
Obama, as with most US Presidents when nearing the end of their term in office,
attempt to manipulate how they want history to remember them. Obama has made many trite comments
about someone “being on the wrong side of history,” and he is taking great pains
to paint his legacy with diplomatic achievements with Iran and with Cuba. The
problem is that Syria has become inexorably tied to Iran, and the end result of
the Iran nuclear deal will eventually pull Obama to the dreaded wrong side of
history.
We
only have to look at the devastation in Syria to see what the Iran agreement
will leave in its wake. At this point, I want to make clear that there may not
be a clear-cut best answer to Syria. If we study the social, religious, and
ethnic make-ups of all of the Middle Eastern countries, I don’t believe the
removal of dictatorships, whether from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt (an elected president
in this one), Libya, or Syria have proved to be any better for their
countrymen. I would even argue that once the dictator’s boot was off the neck
of the people, each country turned violently worse, with the society breaking
down into murderous sects and clans that hack away at their enemies. Our
western civilization’s ideal of free people determining the direction of their
country does not apply in the Arab world.
Against
this backdrop of chaos in Syria, President Obama chose to do nothing. He did
not arm any moderate rebel groups (again, for the record, I doubt that a
moderate group by an American definition actually exists), nor did he take any
particular action to remove or overtly weaken Bashar al Assad. Remember those
pesky and embarrassing red lines? He simply led from behind and watched the war
unfold. The problem is that al Assad is a client of Iran, and Iran is an ally
of Russia. Putin has already demonstrated in Ukraine that he has no reticence
with military intervention when it suits him. The Islamic State is a cancer
that can spread to any Muslim nation, and Russia has a number of them along
their southern border; thus it is
to Putin’s interest to limit any escalation of Islamic State’s influence.
Couple
the Russian moves in Syria with the mouth-watering yearning of Obama to
complete the Iran nuclear agreement, and the price for the completion of the
agreement just became unbearable. Unbearable, however, for anyone except Barack
Obama who has already offered up the entire diplomatic cash-box to Iran. So
here we have the current situation. The Russians move into Syria with combat
forces, and we react by telling the US Air Force to maintain liaison with the
Russians to preclude any battlefield conflicts. Since we supposedly support ground operations with rebels
against Syrian government forces and the Russians will be supporting the Syrian
government backed forces against rebel forces, a decision will have to be made
to ensure no missiles are exchanged between the opposing aircraft. I guess it
will be approved for both air forces to attack IS positions which will in actuality
place the US and the Russians on the same side for the operational moment.
The
likely end result is that the US will not demand that the Russians leave
because the Iranians will not hesitate to dangle the nuclear agreement in the
face of Obama. The US will slowly cede the airspace to Russia, and al Assad
will continue in control of most of Syria as the rebel forces gradually
dissolve under increasing Russian pressure. Russia becomes the biggest player in Mideast policy by
default. Finally, since Obama
appears to detest Israel’s Netanyahu, Israel will work directly with Russia
instead of the US in the Mideast. This will be nothing new for the Israelis and
the Russians who tacitly maintain short-term supportive relationships.
We
have hardly scratched the surface of incompetence with Cuba, yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment