US
keeps eye on Syria, ties in Gulf By M K Bhadrakumar
Expectations were
low that the "Friends of Syria" meeting in Turkey
on April Fool's Day would produce anything
significant by way of advancing the agenda of
regime change in Syria.
The host country
tried very hard to produce a rabbit out of the
hat. But the spectacle on the Bosphorus produced
only one winner - the United States. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton walked away laughing.
Things got bogged down on several counts.
The Syrian opposition remains a motley crowd. The
regime of President Bashar al-Assad shows no signs
of fatigue and enjoys solid backing of the
security and military establishment and
bureaucracy. It is lurching toward the political
and diplomatic high ground by announcing
cooperation with the former United Nations
secretary general Kofi
Annan's six-point plan
while forcefully changing the ground situation in
its favor.
There is disagreement among the
external powers. The Arab League summit in Baghdad
last week summarily dropped its previous demand
that Assad should step down. Like a bunch of
spinsters, the "Friends" are reluctant to take the
plunge. Russia, China and Iran remain firmly
opposed to the regime change agenda.
The
Istanbul meet made up with rhetoric. But the joint
communique exposes the impotence. It recognized
the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) as
representative of all Syrians and "noted" it as
the principal interlocutor, but wouldn't accord
full recognition.
It called on Annan (who
declined to attend the Istanbul meet) to give
Damascus a timeline to comply with his plan, but
wouldn't suggest one itself. It stopped short of
mentioning any support or military help for the
rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Funnily,
Saudi Arabia and "one or two" Gulf monarchies
(read Qatar) might create a fund to bribe and
engineer defection form the Syrian armed forces -
a "pot of gold" to undermine the Syrian state. The
bizarre idea is that the two Gulf sheikhs will pay
salaries of any Syrian willing to fight the
regime.
Clinton wisely kept her counsel to
herself. Aside some fine rhetoric, the US limited
itself to announcing a contribution of US$25
million as humanitarian assistance for Syrian
people. But no one knows how the aid would reach
the recipients.
For all purposes, "Friends
of Syria" appears to be running down the clock.
How come the US administration led by a cerebral
statesman finds itself in such a circus?
The answer would lie in a candid interview
to the CNN on Sunday by the chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee in Washington,
Representative Mike Rogers. Rogers said bluntly:
"We [US] don't really see Assad's inner circle
crumbling." He added, "They [Syrian regime]
believe that they're winning, and we certainly
believe that, through intelligence collection,
they believe they're winning this."
Indeed, Damascus declared just ahead of
the "Friends" in Istanbul that the "battle to
topple the state is over". Syrian forces captured
on Saturday the deputy head of the FSA, Abdu
al-Walid who led the operations in the Damascus
area. The FSA's top leader Mustafa al-Sheikh lives
in comfort in Turkey and heads a depleted chain of
command following the string of military successes
by the Syrian forces.
The dismissive
reaction by Moscow to the antics of the "Friends",
therefore, comes as no surprise. "Ultimatums and
artificial deadlines rarely help matters," Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov said. He added caustically
that it is the UN Security Council, which will
decide "who is complying with this [Annan] plan
and how."
Lavrov agreed with Damascus that
the peace plan wouldn't work unless the rebel
forces also halted fire - "We [Russia] intend to
be friends with both sides in Syria." As for the
SNC, it reflects only a "fraction" of the Syrian
people. "When decisions are made to call one group
as legitimate representatives, one might jump to
the conclusion that the other Syrians - both
organizations and the authorities - are not
legitimate. I think this approach is dangerous and
works against the efforts being put forward by
Kofi Annan."
Lavrov met rhetoric with
rhetoric, but failed to match Clinton's flowery
rhetoric. The great beauty of the US rhetoric is
that Washington keeps all options open. This is an
election year and President Barack Obama is not
interested in a new military entanglement in Syria
- or anywhere. But it won't also stop the
"Friends" from grandstanding.
Washington's
contribution is restricted to supplying
communication equipment and humanitarian aid. But
if the Saudi and Qatari sheikhs want to unburden
many millions more to pay Syrian opposition
fighters, Washington won't object.
The
"red line" is about overtly arming the rebels,
which may trigger a civil war. Clinton visited
Riyadh on Saturday and tried to reconcile the
Saudi hardline.
The point is, as Rogers
underlined, it is a "bad idea" to arm the Syrian
opposition, "mainly because we just don't know who
they are ... And remember, giving a whole series
of weapons to people who we don't know who they
are - there are some bad characters as well -
probably doesn't bode well for us in the long
run."
In an opinion-piece in the weekend,
former secretary of state Henry Kissinger gave the
intellectual construct to these concerns. The Arab
Spring didn't quite turn out to be the "regional,
youth-led revolution on behalf of liberal
democratic principles". Nor do democrats exactly
"predominate in the Syrian opposition." The Arab
League "consensus" over Syria is meaningless,
shaped by authoritarian regimes that have no
record as democracies. Kissinger warned:
The more sweeping the destruction of
the existing order, the more difficult
establishment of domestic authority is likely to
prove ... The more fragmented a society grows,
the greater the temptation to foster unity by
appeals to a vision of a merged nationalism and
Islamism targeting Western values ... At this
writing, traditional fundamentalist political
forces, reinforced by alliance with radical
revolutionaries, threaten to dominate the
process.
These are outcomes
detrimental to the US's strategic concerns
"regardless of the electoral mechanism by which
these governments come to power." Kissinger's
perspective comes startlingly close to what Moscow
and Beijing have been voicing.
The Obama
administration senses the dangers. It would like
to adopt the safe course - at least until things
clarified, especially in Egypt, where the sheikhs
of the Muslim Brotherhood are about to challenge
the sheikhs of al-Azhar as the principal point of
reference in legislation, political governance and
religious affairs. So, Washington found it
expedient to put Russia on the driver's seat.
If Moscow succeeds and the crisis eases,
Washington has nothing to lose and can always pick
up the threads of political transition, and the
US-Russia reset may even acquire some gravitas.
But if Moscow fails, its capacity to stall in the
UN Security Council takes a knock and the
initiative is all Washington's.
The bottom
line is that Washington today is seen as on the
"right side of history". As Kissinger put it, "US
conduct during the Arab upheavals has so far
avoided making America an obstacle to the
revolutionary transformations. This is not a minor
achievement."
Again, Moscow's ties with
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have come under strain. In
his speech at Istanbul, Saudi foreign minister
Saud al-Faisal condemned Russia as the evil
influence on Damascus. China, which has been
storming the West's citadels in the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) states, also needs to do
some serious fence-mending.
This works to
Washington's geopolitical advantage. Taking
advantage of the profound sense of insecurity and
alienation sweeping the Saudi regime, the US is
about to realize the dream project of shepherding
the GCC states into its global missile defense
architecture.
A senior US state department
official said regarding Clinton's visit to Riyadh
over the weekend, "We are working with each of
them [GCC states] to develop the architecture" for
a regional system; Washington's goal is to gather
all the existing US tactical defense cooperation
with individual GCC states into a "strategic
context."
The newly-created US-GCC
strategic cooperation forum, which met in Riyadh
on Saturday, rewrites the Persian Gulf security
scenario. The context is the Iranian "threat". But
geopolitically, the arc of the US's global missile
defense system extending from Central Europe
through Turkey is now poised to take a leap across
the Middle East to graze the waters of the Indian
Ocean.
In sum, Washington ties in the
oil-rich Persian Gulf region, and can always
revisit the crisis in Syria in due course.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His
assignments included the Soviet Union, South
Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
