MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Russia’s Syria Calculus: Behind Moscow’s Plan to Avert U.S. Missile Strikes
By EmmaZahn on Thu, 09/12/2013 - 12:59pm |
From Moscow’s point of view, a U.S. military strike on Syria would not only cripple its long-standing ally, but it would also undermine Russia’s biggest trump card on the international stage — its veto power in the U.N. Security Council.
In the past few days, world leaders have decried the ineffectiveness of the Security Council, which has been unable to pass any meaningful resolutions on Syria because of repeated vetoes from Russia and China. “Two and a half years of conflict in Syria have produced only embarrassing paralysis in the Security Council,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said at a press conference on Monday, Sept. 9. This echoed the frustration of U.S. and European leaders, as well as their allies in the Arab world, who jointly vowed last week to take strong action against Syria even if it means circumventing the U.N.
That would be a dangerous precedent for Russia. Kalashnikov, a lawmaker from the Communist Party, compared it to the incident in 1939 when the League of Nations kicked out the Soviet Union, a permanent member of the organization, in response to the Soviet attack against Finland. This not only hurt the aims of Soviet diplomacy but also precipitated the collapse of the world’s then most powerful intergovernmental organization. “Today you can draw this analogy, because the U.N. and its Security Council can already be called useless,” says Kalashnikov. “That is awful for Russia,” he says, because the Security Council is still Moscow’s main tool in achieving “parity, or at least balance, with the West. And rupturing this balance is not in Russia’s interests.”
With that in mind, Russia set about making itself as useful as possible in the Syrian crisis over the past week, so that it could not be dismissed and sidelined as a spoiler on the international stage. (Indeed, some U.S. experts have begun suggesting the creation of a new club of world leaders that would leave Russia and China out.) The result was this week’s proposal to have Syria put its chemical-weapons stockpiles under international control or even to destroy them. The Russians pushed hard on the Syrian government to accept such a move. “When the Russian side announced it [on the morning of Sept. 9], as far as I understand, our Syrian partners were not yet sure to what extent they were ready to confirm this. But everyone was interested in a quick resolution of this issue,” says Klimov, who has traveled to Syria numerous times during the civil war in his role as chairman of the foreign-affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament.
URL:
http://world.time.com/2013/09/10/russias-syria-calculus-behind-moscows-plan-to-avert-u-s-missile-strikes/#ixzz2ehNQgYAr
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Older TPM Cafe denizens may be reminded of the "concert of democracies" advocated by Anne Marie Slaughter in the America Abroad section there. And with good reason. Slaughter is now head of the New America Foundation where she hosted a speech a couple of days ago by the brand new National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, who, imho, got Obama into the recent fine mess of Syria.
by EmmaZahn on Thu, 09/12/2013 - 1:26pm
Susan Rice did get a bum rap on Benghazi, but hopefully it ensured she will never again be considered for secretary of state. Like Slaughter, a bleeding heart with a taste for blood.
by acanuck on Thu, 09/12/2013 - 1:59pm
All I know is that I miss the promise of these days, before the world had Bush Derangement Syndrome:
by artappraiser on Fri, 09/13/2013 - 1:03am