President Obama’s volte
face on launching an attack on Syria has little to do with his desire for a
peaceful solution to the country’s civil war and everything to do with the
ongoing crisis of his administration, which is marked by a lack of public
support for military action.
Obama must have thought he had appointed a seasoned veteran
as secretary of state when John Kerry, a former presidential candidate and a
fluent French speaker, succeeded the experienced Hillary Clinton. But Kerry’s
bungling last week saw Obama’s war plans unravel at a rate of knots.
Support in Congress for military action was already in doubt
when Kerry said in London that a strike would be “unbelievably small” by
comparison with Iraq’s “shock and awe” onslaught in 2003. Republicans prepared
to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on Syria, rapidly backed away from
lending him their votes in the Senate on the grounds that such an attack would
make America look weak and stupid.
Before that, the House of Representatives was showing an
overwhelming majority against an attack, driven on by opinion polls showing
over 60% of the public against military action. By all accounts, Kerry bungled
a second time when he suggested that if Syria destroyed its chemical weapons
stocks, a deal could be reached with the Assad regime.
While the State Department and the warlike UN ambassador
Helen Rice – she was for “regime change” in Syria – desperately tried to
dismiss Kerry’s remarks, Obama breathed a sigh of relief. He quickly took up
Russia’s support for the idea and, as we know, a deal of sorts has been struck
and the vote in Congress abandoned.
The fact that the autocrat Putin, who runs a ruthless regime
in a Russia dominated by oligarchs, where opponents often find themselves
jailed, could embarrass Obama politically by writing an opinion
piece in the New York Times about
the need for “consensus” and referring to the Founding Fathers of the US
constitution, only rubbed salt in the wound.
More about that later. Just to say, however, that the latest
poll
shows that just 36% say they approve of Obama’s handling of the Syria
situation, while 53% disapprove. There is overwhelming support for the
US-Russia deal, however.
Meanwhile, the sense of crisis surrounding the
administration deepened when Obama accepted former US Treasury Secretary Larry
Summers' withdrawal from the race to be head of the US central bank. He was
among the front-runners to succeed Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve.
Summers was known as Mr Deregulation under president Clinton,
with some now holding him responsible in part for the financial collapse of
2007-8. He was also in favour of switching off the Fed’s printing of money
sooner rather than later, which sent markets into a spin. Democrats also
opposed his nomination because in 2005 he suggested that women had less innate
ability in maths and science than men. Ironic, then, that the job looks likely
to go to current Federal Reserve vice-chairman Janet Yellen. She would be the
first woman in the role.
Back to Syria. The Putin-Obama deal is intended to reinforce
the status quo while putting any political solution to a destructive civil war
on the back burner. Russia can keep its ally Assad in power, ridiculing any
suggestion that the regime would use chemcial weapons when it is quite capable
of doing so and the UN report suggests it did. Moscow can keep selling arms to
Syria and retain its naval base, while maintaining its historic sphere of
influence in the region which dates back to Tsarist times. Obama is relieved
that he didn’t suffer defeat in Congress for a military adventure that could
have easily sparked a wider Middle East war.
In all this, the right of the Syrian people to
self-determination, free from the malign influence of Russia, the United
States, Saudi Arabia and other states with their own agendas, is never
mentioned. Major power politics has prevailed once again over the interests of
ordinary people. However, as the events in Washington show, the American people have found their anti-war voice which makes you optimistic that the old order can be challenged.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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