Save this post. Bookmark it. Remember the actual sequence of events (Hot Air has been bird-dogging it relentlessly), because Obama’s supporters in the media (and no doubt in Hollywood, politics, and the academy) see a light at the end of this tunnel, and they are busy writing reality out of the new narrative at this very moment. By tomorrow morning, there is every likelihood that Obama will no longer be the incompetent boob who is backing us into war in Syria, but the wily statesman who is backing Assad and the Russians into accepting a UN inspection regime in Syria, in spite of the recalcitrant Republicans in Congress whose every reaction to anything Obama wants is partisan and racist.
A good moment for Russia and Assad, however
We need not fear that Russia and Assad won’t go through with a UN-inspectors proposal. Of course they will: doing so gives the UN a stake in the status quo in Syria. It’s brilliant, for them: it leaves Assad in control of how much the UN gets to look at and take custody of, while creating the perfect pretext for freezing lines of confrontation and bleeding off momentum from the rebels.
With the rebels known to have chemical weapons of their own, it officially puts them on the same moral footing as Assad, and makes the potential of their chemical weapons arsenal an unresolved issue: one that might just remain unresolved, and keep redounding to Assad’s strategic benefit for as long as he needs it to.
It guarantees, moreover, that, if the UN steps further into the Syria quagmire – and that may well be next, if it seems like a good idea to, say, France, the EU, Saudi Arabia, etc. – Assad will have a seat at the table and be taken seriously in any negotiated resolutions.
A UN inspection proposal is leverage to legitimacy for Assad, changing the whole character of his dynamic with the rebels overnight. Yet it would be very hard for diehard rebel supporters like John McCain to complain effectively about it. The prospect of negotiating something seemingly concrete, rather than bombing weapon storehouses and air-defense sites for no good reason, will look very attractive to a lot of constituencies out there.
Sure, it will be whatever version of Czechoslovakia, 1938, you want to fit it into. A false “Peace in our time” moment; and there are other malign precedents we could invoke. The main thing it is, is Russia and Assad finding a way to trump the nations’ reflexive turn to the United States for leadership.
Make no mistake: the two of them will be in the driver’s seat of any “UN” activities in Syria. And there are plenty of other players whose greatest fear is of an Islamist takeover of Syria; Russia and Assad will have de facto support from them, because their continued ascendancy in Syria will prevent a Muslim Brotherhood coup there. It will also strengthen Russia’s hand in Syria at the expense of Iran’s. Iran is never more than an ally of convenience for Moscow, after all. Saudi Arabia and Jordan will naturally be amenable to more Russia and less Iran in Syria – just as other parties, especially in Southeastern Europe, will be pleased if undue Turkish influence is excluded from the outcome in Syria. Any Obama-led effort was always likely to give Turkey an outsize role.
The chemicals of August
On balance, it’s a narrow win for more than one interested party in the region. It’s a win for Obama, because he gets to put the looming prospect of a major foreign-policy failure in the “success” column instead – and that will give him a big boost in the agenda he really cares about: his domestic agenda. Only 24 hours ago, it seemed to be imperiled by the bad juju from the Syria mess. Now that’s changed. Now just let the House Republicans try to kick and squirm on Obamacare.
It won’t be enough for Obama’s most passionate supporters to see the brand snatched from the burning, however. Steel yourself for the new narrative of his preternatural strategic brilliance. It’s coming. (They’ve been preparing the way for it over at Slate.)