Macron mustn’t let Putin take lead in Syria
The question now for European countries is whether they will willingly follow France and become pawns in Al Assad’s game
Last month a Russian military Antonov cargo plane landed on an airstrip in Chateauroux, central France. It was loaded with 50 tonnes of humanitarian aid — medical supplies, tents — and flew to Russia’s Khmeimim military base in Syria. This is a stronghold from which Vladimir Putin’s forces have launched relentless attacks on cities and neighbourhoods since 2015, as they threw their military might behind Bashar Al Assad’s brutal regime.
In many ways, this was the moment Emmanuel Macron sold his soul to Putin in Syria. But this awkward mission wasn’t just about France’s image. The entire episode said something about a wider western malaise; about how democracies can too readily sacrifice principles.
Macron and Putin had agreed to this joint operation during their meeting in May in St Petersburg. According to a FrancoRussian statement, the aid was destined for the people of eastern Ghouta — a suburb of Damascus that has been besieged by Syrian government troops and severely bombed by Russian aircraft. Eastern Ghouta is also where chemical weapons were used by Al Assad’s forces as recently as April, a crime Russian diplomacy has been busy denying in various international forums. The aid was officially meant to be distributed under UN auspices, but that turned out to be untrue: the UN itself later denied it had been involved. Only the Russian army and Syrian authorities controlled where the medical supplies went.
In a nutshell: France allowed itself to be part of a Russia-Syria propaganda stunt that was aimed at showcasing cooperation with a European country whose diplomats had for seven years consistently denounced Al Assad and Putin’s policies in Syria. Why and how Macron agreed to aid this “humanitarian” gloss to Russia’s involvement in Syria remains unclear.
But the episode’s significance goes well beyond France’s borders. Macron’s duet with Putin in Syria could be a potential harbinger of more western capitulations over Syria, a human rights catastrophe in which an estimated half a million people have been killed and millions made refugees.
Sense of powerlessness
“Syria fatigue” set in long ago in western societies. It draws on a sense of powerlessness in the face of seemingly unstoppable horror and intractable complexity. Confusion and complacency have also been deepened by the spread of far-right ideas (bear in mind that Italy’s Matteo Salvini, France’s Marine Le Pen, Austria’s Freedom party, and others, all approve of Putin’s actions in Syria) as well as the what-aboutery of the far left.
France had in recent years maintained a firm position on Syria’s bloodbath. Now that the Elysee has in effect whitewashed the Russian military, it has taken the risk of abrogating whatever humanitarian principles upheld its choices — and that makes it look morally unsure.
Putin has certainly played his cards well in Syria, catching the west off-guard, and taking the upper hand militarily alongside Iran, Al Assad’s other key ally. Now that the last remnants of the 2011 anti-Al Assad popular uprising are being methodically crushed, he is intent on recruiting western support for so-called reconciliation plans, as well as western contributions to Syria’s “reconstruction”, all of which would take place under Russia’s control.
It’s one thing for Europeans to be realistic about a dire imbalance of forces and to try to build a strategy aimed at preventing the worse-case scenario of yet more repression and radicalisation in Syria, still a potential breeding ground for terrorism. But it is very different to pretend Russia can be an ally in humanitarian matters, after its multiple vetoes and other diplomatic obstructions at the UN.
The question now for European countries is whether they will willingly follow in Macron’s footsteps and become pawns in Al Assad’s game to secure validation as a first step towards securing western funds for reconstruction.
Macron is a young French president who wants to lead Europe, and who has often displayed his taste for philosophy. As he courts Putin in the hope that it will help prevent France getting sidelined in Syria, he might want to consider what one philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr, had to say about “the irony of history”.
The irony, wrote Niebuhr, comes when “our dreams of pure virtue are dissolved” as a result of “taking morally hazardous action” and “courting prospective guilt”.