Putin, Syria and the new diplomacy
So Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been reendorsed for another six years at the Kremlin. It is not news in Britain where his and his government face accusations of masterminding a nerve agent attack that has sent three people into the ICU. An innocent police officer; an ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are critically ill after being attacked in a public park in Salisbury. Of course, Russia denies the plot, lately insinuating that its success rate in annihilating perceived enemies is usually 100 per cent.
If you believe antiTrump elements, this electoral endorsement is bad news in America. While Trump warms up to global dictators, his democratic enemies see Russia as the smoking gun in his home victory. Trump dismisses the case off-hand and sees the continued investigation as a waste of time, a distraction and waste of taxpayer’s money. Not that the last one worries him that much since he is not known to love the IRS, he’ll love to make America great again, and that includes introducing Russia and North-Koreanstyle military parades. It is good to have a friend around for the rest of the Trump presidency and for the substantial chunk of his second if he seeks reelection.
For its globally acclaimed efficiency as portrayed in James Bond movies, Britain has been caught napping too many times. It took more than 20 suspicious deaths for Her Majesty’s government to realise that too many Russian dissidents have died on British soil. Now that they know, they are hitting and thrashing at everything Russian beginning with the expulsion of 23 Russian ‘spies’ who have been living legit on British soil under the cover of diplomacy.
If you were covertly challenged as I am, you start wondering how a country let’s in spies whose professional brief undermines the sovereignty and security of its enemies. Understanding diplomacy is like tracking the footprints of robbers on a stony hill. The subject here is not Naija that prohibits its own citizens from photographing buildings that Google Earth maps with pinpoint accuracy. No, this is Britain the most powerful empire in the universe since the fall of the Romans.
So Russia responds by sending home 23 British diplomats added gyara to the list by shutting down the British Council. Beware Russian Chevening scholars, the nerve gas!
For the powerful nation that it is, and its decision to thaw the cold war, Russia’s allies think it has not been behaving well. Its agenda does not align with those of its fellow superpower bullies. It has used its veto power to block the bullying of less powerful nations and opposes the regime change war on Syria.
Russia knows that Assad was trained in England and that he is married to a British-Syrian woman. You would expect Britain to be on his side but when the firefight became unbearable it was to Putin that Assad appealed. Before unleashing the hounds of hell on Syria, global superbullies sent in the IAEA to doublecheck that Assad has no access to stockpiles of nerve agents. They gave Syria an all clear. But since the bombardments began with Assad digging in, he has been accused of using nerve agents on his own people.
This is where it gets a little complicated. If Assad is stupid or desperate enough to use nerve agents against his own people, where did he obtain it? If the world could be convinced that Russia stockpiles nerve gas, then the answer is not blowing in the winds. The enemy of my friend is not my best friend. If a nexus could be found to authenticate alleged Syrian nerve attacks to the Russians, then Putin should work on the ice rinks of the cold war. The loyalty of Trump his friend cannot be relied on. At the end of the day, if the American establishment thinks Trump is working against its strategic interest, his impeachment would come faster than the count of 1,2,3.
Trump has just fired a secretary of state who doesn’t share his cosiness with Russia. He is insinuating that the man investigating his alleged collusion with Russian hackers to influence election results be fired. He has faced resignations here and there. What’s going on here? Well, depends on who is asking? While this plays out, the beleaguered people of Syria have watched their once-beautiful nation turn to ruins. Ethnoreligious cracks have widened while unsavoury coalitions have been formed that would turn that country into something worse than Libya when the so-called liberation war is over. Global conscience is on holidays for now. All eyes are on post-Assad Syria.
There are construction contracts to be made in the era of 3D printing, although thousands of years of architectural and artistic legacy would be gone, some in personal archives. Of course the Syrian army would be disbanded and a new one formed - meaning there’ll be money to be made from armed contracts. It is in some people’s strategic interest to totally destroy Syria and not even the cries of innocent children, sights of old women and men appeals to the humane ego of the destroyers on all sides.