OBAMA AND THE EISENHOWER STANDARD
Fouad Ajami
Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2012
On Nov. 6, 1956, Election Day to be precise, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a brief message to British Prime Minister Anthony Eden: “We have given our whole thought to Hungary and the Middle East. I don’t give a damn how the election goes.”
Eisenhower could afford that kind of attitude—he was a genuine American hero in World War II, and there was no chance of his losing his bid for a second term to the inconsequential Adlai Stevenson. But the election came, as the historian David Nichols put it, during a “perfect storm.” Britain and France had invaded Egypt under the guise of bringing to a halt fighting in the Suez Canal between Egypt and Israel, and the Soviet Union had deemed this the right time to crush a Hungarian bid for freedom.
Ours is a different world. Barack Obama isn’t to be held to the Eisenhower standard. Indeed, as a fortunate “off-mic” moment recently revealed, this president bargains with Russian errand boy Dmitry Medvedev over something as trivial as protecting Europe with a missile defense system. I will have more “flexibility,” the leader of the Free World says, with my last election behind me.
Thankfully, we don’t live in the shadow of a nuclear showdown. But from its very beginning, this presidency has been about the man himself and his personal ambition, and less so his duty to democracy.
So what’s to be said of Mr. Obama’s foreign-policy accomplishments? Has he, like Eisenhower, given his whole thought to the troubles of the Middle East? As a candidate, he declared Afghanistan the “war of necessity.” But the war does not detain or torment him, nothing here of the anguish of LBJ over Vietnam. He ordered his own surge in Afghanistan but took away so much of its power by announcing a date for American withdrawal in 2014—two good, safe years after his second presidential bid. This way peace could be had with the Taliban who could wait us out—and with the “progressives” at home who have no use for this war but are willing to grant the president prosecuting it time and indulgence.
In the same vein, the primacy of electoral politics over the necessities of strategy had driven the decision to quit Iraq and give up our gains in that vital country. Mr. Obama gave the Iraqis an offer they were meant to refuse. The small residual force he said he would accept, a contingent of somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers, could hardly defend itself, let alone be of any use to the Iraqis.
No one was fooled. The American president had given every indication that he had no interest in Iraq and its affairs. A decade of sacrifices lay behind us in Iraq, the new order was too fragile to stand alone. We could have had an appreciable presence in Iraq—the Kurds, the Shiites, the Sunnis would have all been glad for the American protection. This presence would have served us well as a hedge against the hegemonic ambitions of Iranian theocracy, and an Iraq in the orbit of U.S. power would have been less likely to cast its fate with the embattled House of Assad in Syria.
For a year now, the people of Syria have been in the midst of a heroic struggle against a tyrannical regime, but no American help has come their way. Moral considerations aside, Syria is now a strategic battleground, a place where Iranian power challenges, by proxy, the moderate order of nations in the region. For three decades, the Iranian radical theocracy has waged campaigns of terror away from its soil.
In Syria, the mullahs are determined to prevail in the face of the moderate Arabs and Western democracies. Much of the order of the region hangs in the balance. Were the Iranian bid for regional hegemony to be broken in Syria, the Middle East would change for the better.
As the noted scholar of strategy Charles Hill put it, Syria is the ideal place to rattle the turbans. Were the Assad regime to bite the dust, the stranglehold of Hezbollah over Lebanon would come to an end. In “the East” there is that age-old instinct for reading the wind and riding with the victor.
It had taken some five months for President Obama to call on Bashar Assad to relinquish power, but once that call was made we were reduced to mere spectators of the Syrian calamity. We exaggerated the might of the Assad killing machine, belittled the opposition, and doubting their purpose and cohesiveness, refrained from arming the defectors.
American intelligence and policy statements could never get it right: Assad was, alternately, a dead man walking or firmly in the saddle. When a measure of ambiguity about American intentions could have aided the Syrian rebellion, the Pentagon and State Department went out of their way to reassure the despot in Damascus that there was nothing to worry about in Washington. No wonder the suspicion has grown that the Obama administration is content to see Assad ride out the storm.
From this great contest, the administration wishes to be spared.… History is perhaps forgiving nowadays, the Syrian rebellion could be crushed without Mr. Obama paying an appreciable political price. It is a sad truth that the president has become the embodiment, and the instrument, of our retreat from distant shores—and concerns. He trades away strategic American assets in the hope that the American people will not care or notice. On the face of it, he exudes a sublime confidence that the world could be held at bay—at least until November, past that last election.
THE ANNAN PLAN WILL BRING MORE VIOLENCE
Michael Young
Daily Star, March 29, 2012
There was something nauseating in Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s recent comments that the plan currently being peddled by Kofi Annan, the Arab League-United Nations envoy on Syria, represents the last chance to avert a Syrian civil war. Medvedev knows that Russia has been greatly responsible for escalating the violence in Syria, sending weapons and advisers to help President Bashar Assad repress his own people. Diplomatically, however, the Russians are paying no price. In fact, they’re making headway.…
Annan’s six-point plan has been picked up by the international community as the way to resolve the Syrian crisis. That the plan is awash with ambiguity, so that each government can interpret it advantageously, has been its strongest point. However, imprecise plans are usually easier to market than to execute. Annan’s scheme is no different.
The former United Nations secretary-general has put together a package that includes kick-starting a Syrian-led process of negotiations “to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people”; a commitment by all sides to end the fighting, under U.N. supervision; the provision of humanitarian assistance to areas affected by combat, including implementation of a [daily] two-hour humanitarian pause to allow this; intensification of the “pace and scale” of release of “arbitrarily detained persons,” as well as identification of their place of detention and authorization to visit such facilities; agreement to grant freedom of movement throughout Syria to journalists; and respect for “freedom of association and the right to demonstrate peacefully as legally guaranteed.”
The Syrian regime has accepted this proposal, and one can immediately see why. It ensures that Assad will remain in office to bargain with the opposition in the “Syrian-led process.” In that way, Annan has effectively undermined an Arab League plan [accepted by Assad last November], demanding that the Syrian president step down and surrender power to his first vice president. Annan’s plan also buys the Syrian security services more time to suffocate the uprising, since it will take weeks to bring all the machinery in place, not least a sizable U.N. observer team.…
The most contentious aspect of the plan is that Assad stays in place.… We should have no illusions. Russia and China consider the Annan plan a formula for saving Bashar Assad, not getting rid of him. The most ridiculous claim in the past two weeks is that Moscow and Beijing have softened on Syria, and proved this by moving closer to the Americans and the Europeans in the Security Council, where they signed on to a presidential statement backing Annan’s mission.
The truth is that it’s the Obama administration and its European partners that have adopted the Russian and Chinese perspective. When President Barack Obama says that Assad will fall, that’s empty oratory destined to keep Syria at arm’s length during an election year, and avoid accusations that the U.S. president is soft on mass murder. But Obama’s focus is elsewhere. He prefers to subcontract Syria to regional states, even to the feckless Russians, so that he can pursue America’s…reorientation away from the Middle East.
The Russian calculation is that if Assad can begin negotiations with the opposition, he will prevail. The different opposition groups will be divided, with some endorsing talks and others rejecting them, permitting the Syrian regime to select its interlocutors. Those who say no to Annan’s offer, Moscow believes, will lose international legitimacy. Once the situation is calmer, the Syrian president will reassert his writ, isolate his foes, introduce cosmetic reforms, and perhaps even integrate opposition figures into a government that otherwise has no margin to challenge the Assad-led security order.
The problem is that most Syrians are wise to the dangers of Annan’s plan. Many prefer civil war to more Assad rule, compounded by barbarous retribution if the Syrian president regains his grip.…
That is why Annan’s endeavors will likely accelerate a military conflict.… As many Syrians observe the international community endorsing the Russian and Chinese position; as they realize that Obama and [French President] Nicolas Sarkozy are patent hypocrites; and as they witness outsiders, including Syrian exiles hostile to the Assad regime, maneuvering without consulting them, they will become more frustrated and angry, and they will purchase weapons. There will be war, all because no one dares show Bashar Assad the exit.
(Michael Young is opinion editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star.)
THE UN: SYRIA’S COVER FOR MURDER
Editorial
Washington Post, March 30, 2012
It’s now been [two weeks] since the U.N. Security Council endorsed a six-point plan for Syria created by former secretary general Kofi Annan, and the Obama administration’s ambassador described it as “the best way to put an end to the violence, facilitate much-needed humanitarian assistance and advance a Syrian-led political transition.” During that time, according to the London-based Strategic Research and Communication Centre, 624 more Syrians have been reported killed, including 58 women and 45 children.
The Annan plan calls for Syrian troops, tanks and artillery to withdraw from cities and towns. But according to multiple independent reports, those troops attacked and shelled the cities of Homs, Hama, Saraqeb, Daraa and Nawa [last] week.… There have been no humanitarian deliveries to these embattled cities; no two-hour daily “humanitarian pause,” as Mr. Annan called for; no release of detainees, who number more than 200,000.… Freedom of movement for journalists, like every other one of [the plan’s] six points, has been ignored by the regime.
These results were completely predictable at the time the Security Council adopted the plan with President Obama’s support. They have more than proved…that the Annan plan would merely provide cover for Mr. Assad to go on killing his own people. Yet the Obama administration continues to bet on the initiative, while rejecting other options—such as the creation of a safe zone in Syria. “We want to see, and support very much, the efforts of Kofi Annan and give him the time and diplomatic space that he needs to make this work,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner [recently] said.
How much time? How many more dead? Mr. Annan’s spokesman in Geneva said [last] Friday that “the deadline is now. We expect [Assad] to implement this plan immediately.…”
The Obama administration’s de facto choice to tolerate the survival of a regime that is Iran’s chief ally in the Middle East and the sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah might have many motivations. But neither the will to prevent mass murder nor the pursuit of U.S. strategic interests could be among them.
‘FRIENDS OF SYRIA’: WORST. FRIENDS. EVER
Matt Gurney
National Post, April 2, 2012
The so-called “Friends of Syria” group, a collection of Western and Arab states apparently alarmed and outraged by the violence in that country, have some strong words on the situation, given the continuing bloodshed. They aren’t going to just sit back and watch as Syrian President Bashar Assad crushes the year-long rebellion against his rule, which has seen perhaps as many as 10,000 innocent civilians killed as collateral damage. No, the Friends of Syria know that it’s time something be done.
And with that in mind, they have pledged a few bucks to help pay the rebels’ salaries. They’re not going to send any weapons, though. That might offend the Assad regime, and we can’t have that. Besides, what would an armed rebellion do with, like, guns and stuff? To offset the lack of weapons they’re sending, however, the Friends of Syria, are also agreeing to insist that Assad adhere to a timeline for a cessation of hostilities. Just as soon as some negotiators set down and hammer out that timeline, of course. Which could take weeks. What a relief to the people of Syria!…
One can’t help but wonder if the Friends of Syria are, in fact, simply running down the clock. Over the weekend, the Assad regime declared that the “battle to topple the state is over.” That’s probably a bit of a stretch, but it is true that the Syrian Army has seemingly won a series of victories over rebel forces in the last several weeks, seizing an uneasy control over several major cities that had largely gone over to the rebellion.
Insurgencies never exactly go out like a light as soon as this or that stronghold falls, but if the Syrian Army is able to drive them out of their homes into the countryside, while the war wouldn’t be over, it would certainly be significantly changed. And for the better, as far as Assad is concerned. Syria has announced that it will maintain a military presence in these captured cities for the time being, in direct violation of the Annan Peace Plan it had so recently accepted (and immediately violated).
But Assad had better watch his step. The Friends of Syria are almost out of patience. “There is no more time for excuses or delays … This is a moment of truth,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters after the meeting of the Friends of Syria. That’s true. The Friends of Syria sure would appreciate it if Assad would hurry up and just finish this thing already. Doesn’t he know how hard it is for the international community to continually bluster about how outraged it is and yet never quite act? It’s only gotten harder after Rwanda, after all. Striking the balance between outraged enough, but not so outraged that people start asking why someone doesn’t just flatten the regime already, is tricky. And terribly awkward, you see.
Ahh, yes. How good it is for Syria to have friends.… Then again, with friends like these, who needs Bashar Assad, his military and Iranian support? It would almost be kinder if the international community simply admitted it didn’t really care and that all the diplomatic bluster is just for domestic consumption, and to kill time until the civil war eventually burns itself out and things return to “normal” in Syria. At least then the rebels might realize that no help is on the way.
OBAMA’S ABOUT-FACE ON SYRIA
Lee Smith
Tablet, March 28, 2012
If Bashar Assad manages to survive the uprising that has tested his regime over the last year, he’ll owe not only his allies, Iran and Russia, but the White House as well. Over the past few months, the Obama Administration has come to the Syrian president’s rescue—not because of any love for Assad, but because Obama wants to stay on Russia’s good side. The latest? The administration endorsed the same peace plan for Syria, put forward by former U.N. head Kofi Annan, that Moscow has been pushing.… This Russia-U.S. condominium marks a dramatic turnaround in the White House’s regime change policy for Syria.
Let’s go back to August. Five months into the uprising, with thousands of civilians already dead, Obama demanded Assad step down. Since then, the administration has done very little to bring this policy to fruition. It’s true that regime figures…are facing economic sanctions…but the United States isn’t sending weapons to opposition forces, and it is discouraging regional partners like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar from doing so as well.
According to one recent report, the rebels are running out of ammunition—and at the worst time possible, just as Assad loyalists seem poised to retake rebel strongholds.… [Yet] last week it came to light that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rejected a number of Turkish proposals to arm and train the Free Syrian Army while establishing no-fly zones. “We’re not there yet,” Clinton is reported to have said.
It is unlikely the Obama Administration will ever get there. First of all, the president is campaigning on having extricated the United States from the region. From his perspective, arming the Syrian opposition or establishing a no-fly zone is the first step on a slippery slope that could at some point lead the United States to making another troop commitment.…
It stands to reason that most observers would think toppling Assad is a key way to weaken Iran in its drive to a nuclear weapons program. Obama sees another foreign power at the center of the issue: Russia. And the last thing he wants is to make Moscow angry.
The Russians don’t want to see Assad toppled, for plenty of reasons. First, Syria buys arms from Russia. Second, Moscow relies on the Syrian port of Tartus for its Mediterranean operations. Third, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin doesn’t want the U.N. Security Council getting in the habit of drafting resolutions against authoritarian regimes, lest Russia is next. The Assad regime could potentially provide the Russians with access to Syria’s off-shore, and as yet untapped, natural gas, as well as to that of Lebanon. And last, but hardly least, instability in the Middle East has always been good for Russia insofar as it throws the region’s status quo power, the United States, off balance while raising the price of energy resources—thereby filling Russian coffers. For Russia, Assad’s tenure is a vital interest.
Of course, Assad’s survival would be bad news for Washington’s regional allies, like Turkey, which shares a border with Syria that Assad has threatened to infiltrate with terrorists from the Kurdish Worker’s Party, PKK. It would also be bad for Israel and for Sunni Arab powers like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who will see the regime’s survival as a lost opportunity to neutralize Iran’s ambitions for regional hegemony.
But from Obama’s perspective, Russia is where the real game is.… As the president recently confided to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, once he gets through this election, then he can focus on a reduction in bilateral missile defense. And then there are the further cuts in nuclear weapons that he wants to pursue with Moscow. In his second term, the president may get closer to the legacy he sketched as an undergraduate—a world where the United States and Russia are no longer on the brink of mutually assured destruction. The only problem is that this is not going to stop Iran from getting the bomb, or prevent nuclear weapons spreading like dandelions across the Middle East.
