Anybody who believes that
the Russians dish out favors free-of-charge needs
a crash course in "Contemporary Russian Politics
101". Pro-regime Syrians celebrated the double
veto at the United Nations Security Council last
week - the second in less than five months -
failing to realize that more than anything else,
such a veto complicates things even further, for
Syrian authorities.
Let's start with the
basics …
Russia does not do things for
free - it never has, and never will. And it
supports its own interests in Syria, rather than
the interests of any particular regime in
Damascus. Syria and Russia after all, have been
close allies ever since 1957. Its number one man in
Damascus was Salah Jadid, the
military strongman of Syria during the years
1966-1970. When Moscow got assurances that his
main contender Hafez al-Assad was going to
preserve Russian interests in Syria, it simply
looked the other way when a coup d'etat toppled
Jadid in 1970 - and kept him in jail for over
20-years - not lifting a finger to help him.
As of mid-Friday, February 3, it was
highly probable that the Russians would not veto a
United Nations Resolution against Syria, put forth
by the Arab League, the United States, and the
European Union. They had little reason to do so,
after the anti-Syria bloc agreed to all of their
amendments to the original draft, omitting any
reference to a military strike, and to arms
sanctions on Damascus. The Russians probably
reasoned that a veto would guarantee their
short-term interests in Syria, but it would
certainly keep them out of any future long-term
deal for the country.
The Russians were
seemingly willing to "share" influence with the US
on Syria, and be part of an international
consensus - the first step of which would be a
strong-worded UN resolution. Russia, in principle,
was not opposed to the crux of the resolution,
based on the Arab League Initiative that was
issued last January. The initiative calls on Assad
to delegate powers to his vice president, for the
specific purpose of creating a cabinet of national
unity, but it does not call on him to step down.
The Americans and the EU were pushing
Russia to accept a clause that said: "The United
Nations Resolution supports the Arab League
Initiative." The clause would not go into details,
and this, it was believed, would leave the door
open for expanded interpretation of the Arab
League Initiative. "Constructive ambiguity" is the
word used at the UN, hoping that "delegating
powers to his vice" could be interpreted in the
future as a call to step down. The UN resolution
on Libya, for example, did not authorize a
military strike, but only to "protect civilians".
The "ambiguity" of the Libyan resolution
allowed the international community to use it to
justify a war last March that eventually toppled
Gaddafi, and similar ambiguity might lead to
gradual regime-change in Syria, with Russia's
fingerprints all over it. Russia, it must be
noted, is very impressed by the Yemeni solution,
which provided a win-win scenario for Ali Abdullah
Saleh and the Yemeni opposition, and was planning
to hammer out a similar deal for Syria.
Due to Russian support for the Initiative,
as of mid-Friday, the Security Council meeting was
changed from Monday and made two days earlier, on
a Friday. The presence of the US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, British Foreign Minister
William Hague and French Foreign Minister Alain
Juppe were all indicators that the international
community was very serious about Syria, and wanted
maximal Russian cooperation, which the Russians
were originally, willing to offer. Then came three
important developments that changed the course of
events. They were related more so to Russian-US
relations, than to Syria.
The first was a
"bargaining" meeting in Munich between US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday morning.
That ended in failure because the Russians asked
for more than what the Americans were willing to
offer, in exchange for lenience on Syria. The two
sides disagreed on Russian-American issues, more
so than on Syria.
Lavrov asked the US to
stop lobbying against presidential candidate
Vladimir Putin ahead of the March 4 elections in
Moscow. They asked the US for guarantees and
concessions on the US missile defense plan in
Europe, which dates back to the 1980s, that calls
for a system of interceptors based on land and sea
around Europe. The Barack Obama administration,
which revamped the project two years ago, says it
is intended against Iranian missiles, but the
Russians believe that it targets them rather than
Iran.
On Thursday, Putin had said to
Russian TV (Channel 1) that he considered the
missile defense system to be a threat to Russia.
He estimated that the missile defense radars
deployed near Russia's borders will cover its
territory, making it technically possible to
intercept Russian missiles. The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) had to date refused to
give Russia any guarantees on the matter. At the
Munich Conference, Clinton reportedly failed to
give Lavrov those guarantees, which prompted the
Russians to change course on the Syria Resolution.
After that meeting collapsed, Obama aired
a message that was very tough on the Syrians,
distancing himself from Moscow, and the Russians
said that Lavrov would be visiting Damascus on
Tuesday. Obama's speech was only delivered, it
must be noted, when it was crystal clear to the
Americans that the resolution would not pass at
the UN. Very important was the fact that joining
Lavrov on the Syria visit was the director of
Russian intelligence Mikhail Fradkov, who knows
the Syrian scene inside-out, and who is very close
to Putin himself.
The third development
was Lavrov threatening a "scandal" in the UN if
the Americans went through with the Syria
resolution, which they did, annoyed by the fact
that he had been snubbing and avoiding Clinton's
phone calls to discuss Syria. That resulted in a
double veto, which took all players by surprise,
completely demoralizing the Syrian street, which
was now calling for arms as the only solution to
the current uprising. Most ground activists were
now saying: "Enough with diplomacy. It did not
work. Now it is arms vs. arms, and we will see who
wins." The veto, no doubt, greatly plays out in
favor of the Free Syrian Army.
The crisis
in Syria now is snowballing into a stand-off
between Russia and the US. Foreign policy, Iran,
and America's support for democracy are becoming a
central part of Obama's election campaign, ahead
of the November elections. Restoring Russia's
influence, and its counter-balance to the US, is
becoming a crux of Putin's presidential campaign
for elections in March. According to heavyweight
Lebanese chief Walid Jumblatt, who recently
visited Moscow, Lavrov told him that "Assad will
stay so long as Putin stays."
Both the
Russians and Americans will be using Syria in
their presidential campaign, which means that the
crisis might drag on longer than most people
predicted. Today in Damascus, the question is:
"What next after the Russian veto?" The Russians
are still preparing their Initiative, which builds
upon the Arab League one, but will be marketed and
packaged as a Russian plan for Syria, from A to Z.
It will be a new model for the Arab
Spring, signed by Moscow, different from NATO's
Libya, and the Gulf Cooperation Council's Yemen.
That initiative was carried by Lavrov to Damascus
on Tuesday. If he manages to convince the Syrians,
Putin would be making a point: standing up to the
Security Council on Saturday, and then, during the
same week, coming up with a solution to the same
crisis he is accused of obstructing.
There
is of course a completely different option on the
table, and Clinton went to the UN knowing
perfectly well that the Russians would veto the
Resolution. The West needed the veto to tell the
world: "We tried to do it through diplomatic
channels, under the UN umbrella, but that did not
work." If that happens, it would give the US and
the EU the pretext to take unilateral action on
Syria, just like Kosovo and Iraq in 2003.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy
announced, shortly after the latest double veto,
that a "friends of Syria" alliance was being
created in the international community, which
would include France, the US, the UK, Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, either and the GCC, perhaps
specifically for this purpose, to eventually
mandate a "surgical strike" against Damascus,
funded by the Gulf, and a no-fly zone, imposed by
Turkey.
If Western countries are still
interested in obtaining a UN consensus, they can
always take the matter to the General Assembly,
invoking resolution 377 A of 1950: "the Uniting
for Peace" Resolution. That was created during the
Korean War to avoid a Soviet veto at the Security
Council, empowering the General Assembly to
"consider the matter immediately and issue
recommendations it deems necessary in order to
restore international peace and security." Such a
resolution, of course, cannot be vetoed by the
Russians and Chinese, and all it would need is a
majority vote in the General Assembly.
Sami Moubayed is a university
professor, historian and editor-in-chief of
Forward Magazine in Syria.
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