PUTIN ON THE PRESSURE
US vs. RUSSSIA
Trump envoy to accuse Moscow of ‘war crime complicity’
US and UK to demand Kremlin pull port from Syria
On his Moscow trip this week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will directly accuse Russia of complicity in Syria’s war crimes, and demand that Vladimir Putin pull his support of Bashar al-Assad’s bloody dictatorship. Tillerson will confront Russia with evidence that it knew about — and tried to conceal — Assad’s deadly sarin strike last week that killed 87 people, the Sunday Times of London reported.
President Trump’s top diplomat will accuse Russia of complicity in Syria’s war crimes during a face-to-face meeting in Moscow this week with Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister, it was reported Sunday.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will demand that Russia yank its support from Bashar al-Assad’s bloody dictatorship over Syria, where hundreds of thousands of innocents have died in a savage 6-year-old civil war, the Sunday Times of London reported.
Tillerson will confront Russia with evidence that it knew about — and tried to conceal — Assad’s sarin strike last week that killed 87 people, the paper said.
Tillerson will also charge Russia with breaking its 2013 agreement to oversee the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, saying Moscow has “clearly failed in its responsibility” to eliminate the deadly arsenal.
In a Saturday phone call with Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied that the Syrian military had used chemical weapons in the attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Idlib province, on Tuesday.
Lavrov said that “an attack on a country whose government fights terrorism only plays into the hands of extremists,” according to a statement from the Russian ministry.
The US and Britain strongly signaled to Putin that Assad’s actions can no longer be tolerated.
The trans-Atlantic allies this weekend were composing a plan to demand that Russia halt military support for Assad and let Syria transition to a new government.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson canceled plans to meet Lavrov in Moscow after conferring with Tillerson and Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday.
Sir Michael Fallon, Britain’s defense secretary, said Russia is “by proxy responsible for every civilian death last week” in an essay published Sunday.
“Someone who uses barrel bombs and chemicals to his own people cannot be the future leader of Syria,” Fallon wrote. “Assad must go.”
President Trump was visibly outraged when he announced the airstrikes Thursday night and condemned Assad for having “choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children,” and adding that “no child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
The president was deeply moved by the plea of Kassem Eid, a Syrian now living in Germany who survived a 2013 saringas attack that killed about 1,400 people.
Eid, who appeared on CNN Wednesday, begged Trump to act.
“Please, Mr. President, in the name of every woman and child and elder who got killed by the Assad regime, please come and help us,” he said. “Don’t make the same mistake that President Obama did . . . Now you should show the world that those days are over.”
Sir Kim Darroch, Britain’s ambassador to the US, agreed with Eid, the Sunday Times reported.
“[Darroch] said that Trump had inadvertently created a political test for himself by calling Obama weak,” a security source told the paper. “By his own logic he would be weak if he did not act.”
King Abdullah of Jordan, who met with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, also pressed Trump to act, sources said.
On Thursday, Trump formally authorized military strikes after arriving in Florida on Air Force One for a summit with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, at Mar-a-Lago.
“I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line on violating commitments they’ve made and cross the line in the most heinous of ways,” Tillerson said after the US airstrike.
Tillerson’s trip to Moscow will follow a meeting Tuesday of G-7 foreign ministers in Italy, where he will work to solidify support for a motion censuring Russia.
“President Trump was able to do in two days what President Obama could not do in six years,” said Riad Hijab, a former Syrian prime minister who broke with Assad and joined the opposition.
Vice President Mike Pence spoke by phone with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Saturday, assuring him of continued US support in the war on ISIS despite Washington’s strike on the Syrian air base.
Pence “affirmed that US policy in the region didn’t change,” an Iraqi statement said.
Trump formally notified Congress of the US missile strikes on Syria’s Shayrat airfield in a letter addressed to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate President Pro Tem Orrin Hatch on Saturday.
Trump said he was writing to keep Congress informed “consistent with the War Powers Resolution,” a 1973 measure requiring the president to notify Congress of military action.
US intelligence indicated “that Syrian military forces operating from this airfield were responsible for the chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians in southern Idlib province, Syria, that occurred on April 4,” Trump wrote.
The letter asserted that Trump “acted in the vital national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.”
He added that the US “will take additional action, as necessary and appropriate, to further its important national interests.”
Iran, an ally of the Assad regime, called for an impartial investigation by neutral countries into the chemical attack, reflecting claims by Assad and Russia that the chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun were held by rebels and hit by the regime’s missiles.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, speaking in a live broadcast on state television, also warned that the US strikes risked escalating extremism in the region.
“This man who claimed that he wanted to fight terrorism gave terrorist organizations a reason to celebrate, the American attack,” he said.
WITH one missile strike on a Syrian airfield, President Trumpcalled two bluffs at once but likely set back his proclaimed goal of defeating ISIS. The predawn strike on Shayrat airfield should deal a crushing blow to the narrative that the Kremlin somehow controls Trump or has compromising material about him. This is not the kind of risk a man on a blackmailer’s hook would take. Nor does Russia’s behavior after the strike give credence to the idea now circulating that the strike was a mere p.r. exercise, fully signed off by the Kremlin, who evacuated Russian personnel (and warned Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad). This conspiracy theory holds that the collusion would take the pressure off investigations into Trump’s Russia connections and clear the way for a grand bargain down the road.
On the surface, Russia appeared to be willing to treat the attack as an isolated incident, especially since the US has made sure no Russians would be hurt. That’s easier today than forgiving Turkey for shooting down a Russian warplane in 2015. The propaganda line on Friday’s strike is that Russia didn’t move in to protect Shayrat because Russian servicemen weren’t at risk there. The Assad regime’s military capability hasn’t been greatly affected, either.
And yet apart from the predictable anti- American rhetoric and denials that Assad had used chemical weapons, Friday’s statement from the Russian foreign ministry contains one serious bit of new information. It says Russia has suspended the 2015 memorandum of understanding with the US on air safety in Syria. The memorandum contained safety protocols for pilots, the use of certain frequencies for communication during close encounters and a line of communication on the ground. This spells the end not just of this particular document, but also of the growing cooperation that has developed between US and Russian forces in Syria in recent months.
US pilots have had nothing to fear from either Syrian and Russian antiaircraft defenses, which assumed that USmissions, if any, would be against Islamic State forces, not the Syrian government. The Assad regime probably wouldn’t dare attack US planes even now, but Russia has S-300 and S400 air-defense systems deployed to protect its military installations in Syria. If Russia really means to cease communications with the US on air safety, the likelihood of a major incident greatly increases.
Whether Putin can afford an open conflict with the US is another matter. Though Russia hardly has the military might for a war with the US, and Putin lacks the fiendish mindset needed to launch nuclear missiles, the Kremlin may feel it has no face-saving alternative but to respond. Putin opponents are already gloating about the failure of Russian air defenses to deflect the US strike on Shayrat. “The whole Putin adventure has been completely discredited,” Andrei Piontkovsky, a hardcore Putin critic, told the Ukrainian website InfoResist. “Where are the famous S-300 and S-400, which the foreign ministry told us had been supplied to defend Syrian airfields from cruise missiles?”
The ruble dropped in Friday trading, showing a market perception of Russian weakness following the missile strike.
In and of themselves, the air-defense systems Russia has deployed are incapable of repelling a full-scale, sustained missile attack from US ships in the area. There are not enough of them to cover Syria’s entire territory, and supplying them with ammunition is more difficult for Russia than delivering more Tomahawk missiles is for the US. But the goals of Putin’s intervention in Syria include showcasing Russian weapons for potential Middle Eastern clients and turning Russia into a credible, go-to partner in a crisis. If the air-defense systems remain silent and Russia doesn’t help Assad retaliate, those goals will be compromised.
Since annexing Crimea in 2014, Putin has been at pains to show he doesn’t have a reverse gear. He has already denounced the Shayrat attack as a “breach of international law.” Putin will now be compelled to double down on helping Assad recover territory from rebels. He needs military success to remove any suspicion that he might be getting cold feet.
The danger here is that Trump may not be able to stop at this. If the US doesn’t get further involved in Syria to push for regime change, those who accused Trump of being a Putin puppet will regroup and go after him again.
Russia and the US now are in greater danger of a direct military clash than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Their leaders are driven by domestic political considerations and macho instincts — a dangerous combination. The only clear winner in this fraught situation is ISIS. In recent months, the Russian-aided Syrian regime and the UShave been successfully chipping away at it from different sides. Now, the regime may need to concentrate on its immediate survival in the face of an increased US threat.
The news aggregator Al-Masdar is already reporting, based on unnamed sources, that ISIS has launched an offensive in the area near Shayrat. In a conflict as complicated as the Syrian one, hitting one of the parties, no matter how evil, necessarily encourages other bad actors. Trump won’t beat ISIS by attacking Assad — he can only embarrass his domestic opposition and, to some extent, Putin. Neither is necessarily in the US interest.