TAKE RUSSIAN IDEA SERIOUSLY
Awar accidentally avoided is still a war avoided. Just over a year ago, an ill-considered “red line” warning by President Barack Obama appeared to box in the commander in chief, who threatened to take action if Syria dared use chemical weapons to murder its own people in a bitter civil war.
It was a choice of words that, as events developed, created a crisis of confidence in Obama’s foreign policy — a crisis that is forcing the president to take his case for military action against Syria to the public tonight.
But then Secretary of State John Kerry said something on Monday — something, again, awkward and seemingly un- planned — that appears to have altered the equation yet again.
Has the administration stumbled its way into, then out of, an international confrontation and a constitutional crisis with a war-wary Congress?
As Obama prepared for the address that will lay out his rationale for a military strike against Bashar Assad’s regime, Kerry said at a London news conference that if Assad were to “turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week,” he could stave off an Americanled attack.
Kerry immediately added that he did not believe the Syrians would agree to such a deal. “It can’t be done,” he said. In rapid succession, though, the Russian foreign minister and then his Syrian counterpart offered to take up Kerry’s “offer.” By Monday afternoon, the White House declared it was “going to take a hard look” at the deal that couldn’t be done.
So is it just a stalling action by Syria and its top ally, Russia? Oh, no doubt foot-dragging is part of the plan.
But the Syria crisis already had lurched into slow motion when Obama opted to seek approval from Congress, which was on vacation. “Stalling” in this context is just another word for considering every reasonable option short of war.
Should the president accept Assad’s offer (which, by the way, constitutes the first official Syrian acknowledgment that it possesses weapons of mass destruction), it could set off a cat-and-mouse game not unlike the one played by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein when frustrated United Nations weapons inspectors attempted to track down stockpile.
Obama has a difficult evening ahead of him as his prime-time address approaches. Strong bipartisan opposition awaits him on Capitol Hill.
His own Democratic caucus has defined itself in recent years as anti-war. Obama’s campaign to win them over with assurances the Syria attack would be “unbelievably small” serves only to alienate foreign-policy-minded conservatives who see little value in such pinpricks.
Obama’s greatest challenge, however, is to do something he repeatedly dodged during the last week: Explain what he intends to do if Congress fails to approve an attack on Syria.
The Russians and Syrians just handed the president an option he can pursue with or without congressional approval of an attack.
And on the admittedly unlikely chance Assad is sincere about giving up his WMD, Obama will have accomplished something far more valuable than an unbelievably small pinprick.