There is much to learn from the Khan Shaykun episode in which the Syrian government bombed its own citizens with chemical weapons. Not only did it provide proof positive of the ease with which signatories to an international weapons-use agreement can cheat, it also debunked the notion that international guarantors can be relied upon to effect compliance. And we cannot escape the sinking feeling that there is an important lesson to be learned as well concerning future consequences of the ill-thought-out Iranian arms deal.
After a grisly chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government on the city of Ghouta in 2013 that killed more than 1,400 Syrians, President Assad was pressured by both the Obama administration and Russian President Vladimir Putin to sign the international Chemical Weapons Convention which prohibits the “development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer or use of chemical weapons.”
The U.S. and Russia also agreed to force Mr. Assad to destroy roughly 1,300 tons of his chemical weapons stores and Syria’s chemical weapons production infrastructure. It seemed at the time that the issue was resolved. Indeed, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced: “Today, the international maritime task force completed the critical mission of removing the last 8 percent of declared chemical weapons precursors from Syria. With this step, 100 percent of the declared chemicals are out of war-torn Syria.”
Yet within a few years Syria was able to employ chemical weapons to horrible result.
To be sure, no one seems to have focused on the word “declared,” which of course does not necessarily mean “all” chemical weapons. But it will be recalled that President Obama was in a particular rush to conclude an agreement with Russia because Syria’s use of chemical weapons was a clear violation of a “red line” he had declared and, inasmuch as he was not prepared to follow through with any serious action against Mr. Assad, Mr. Obama had essentially punted and acquiesced in a built in-loophole.
Plainly, given his acute embarrassment over Mr. Assad’s having called his bluff without repercussions, Mr. Obama was unwilling to insist on a time-consuming inspection to determine what Syria really had by way of chemical weapons.
So Russia’s President Putin played President Obama for a patsy. What’s more, the Russians have concocted a story that responsibility for the chemical attack lies with the insurgents fighting the Assad regime – a ragtag bunch with no apparent capacity to mount an attack anywhere near the magnitude of Khan Shaykhun.
And the Russian story flies in the face of intercepts that record Syrian officers discussing a chemical weapons strike with Syrian scientists weeks before the attack as well as objective evidence of the presence of Russian air force personnel at the air base from which the attacks were launched.
Equally significant is that the Russians vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian attack.
We hope President Trump’s decision to launch a bombing strike on the point of origin of the chemical weapons attack is an indication that he is in no mood to push challenges down the road. We refer specifically to the question of whether the danger of Iranian nuclear capacity — fraught with possibly catastrophic risks of far greater international import than Syrian chemical weapons — will be seriously countered or instead met with cosmetic word games designed to simply delay the day of reckoning, perhaps to a time of far greater cost.
Finally, we believe that Mr. Assad was encouraged to mount this latest atrocity by the lack of any real response to his 2013 chemical attack, and that the rogue governments of Iran and North Korea were similarly buoyed by the weak appeoach of the previous administration.
Inaction is no longer an option, if it ever really was. We cannot afford the continuation of the Obama doctrine.