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.
Asia Times Online :: US keeps eye on Syria, ties in Gulf
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.
Asia Times Online :: US keeps eye on Syria, ties in Gulf
