Within 24 hours of the US airstrike on an air base in Syria last week, the US claimed it was not pursuing regime change. That was a “kiss of death”.
Four days later, as he landed on Russian soil, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad must go. Tillerson’s comment on the future of Assad and his regime came as he arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Tillerson’s comments are an opening gambit in a renewed game of diplomatic chess. Lavrov has, to date, proven to be a master playing that game, having humiliated former President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, when they failed to act following a 2012 Syrian chemical weapons attack crossing a claimed “red line”.
Tillerson’s blunt comment on Assad’s future follows his statement on Monday that if Russia was not complicit in last week’s chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib province then it was at least incompetent in monitoring Syria’s 2014 removal of chemical weapons. Following the US missile strike on a Syrian airbase in response to the Khan Sheikhoun attack, Russia, Iran, Syria and their Hezbollah allies have threatened retaliation in response to further US attacks.
At one level, tensions between the main protagonists are running high. At another level, however, there is much proverbial sabre rattling but less likelihood the rusty old blades will be displayed, much less used.
Donald Trump’s retaliation against Syria for the Khan Sheikhoun attack was at least as much for domestic US consumption as a disinterested assertion of global policing or — heaven forbid — an expression of moral principles. Trump’s first months in office have not been the traditional political honeymoon, and his political standing remains around 42%.
The US strike against a Syrian airbase was, therefore, as much domestic political theatre as it as moral or strategic imperative. Russia understands this.
While Russia remains a nuclear superpower, its nuclear arsenal and associated technology is getting old and less reliable. It has, however, proven its capacity to assert military authority in the Ukraine and in support of Syria’s then-faltering regime.
That, perhaps, is about the limit of Russia’s capacity. It is a truism of warfare that to sustain a conventional military conflict a state must have a sufficiently robust economy. Russia’s economy is slightly larger than that of Australia.
Iran’s economy sits between those of Nigeria and Thailand, and it does not want renewed economic sanctions. Moreover, Israel, would obliterate Iranian capacity should the latter choose to vent its anger on the US regional proxy.
Even Hezbollah, as a non-state actor, talks much but can do little, while Syria itself is struggling just to survive.
Syria’s key battle in Idlib province, of which Khan Sheikhoun occupies a strategic position, explains why the Assad regime wanted to try to shock Syrian rebels into disarray with the chemical weapons it had agreed to remove in 2014. Even with Russian support, the Assad regime is at best surviving, if not yet prevailing.
Tillerson’s visit to Moscow in intended to push for the removal of the Assad regime as a prerequisite for ending the Syrian war. Yet the best chance of doing so was at its outset of the war, when the US could have achieved that goal by accepting Russia’s strategic interests in Syria.
It would then have been possible for Assad and his cronies to leave while keeping in place the key institutions of state. This would have avoided the key mistake of the Iraq campaign, apart from invading the country in the first place, of dismantling the state apparatus.
Perhaps Tillerson’s talks with Lavrov will now reprise this obvious if shop-soiled idea of recognising Russian strategic interest. At such a late stage, this still might broker a way forward.
But it would mean that Trump would have to acknowledge Russian hegemony in Syria, regardless of who heads the regime. Such a move would enhance the international prestige of Russia and Vladimir Putin at the expense of the US and President Trump.
Asymmetric warfare favors the smaller, more mobile and more locally embedded combatants. It may be that asymmetric diplomacy is also doing the same thing.
* Damien Kingsbury is Professor of International Politics at Deakin University
Here we see the post-truth “Assad did it” narrative spiralling into absurdity. Although certain to seriously damage relations with the US, Russia is sticking by a guilty Assad in order to preserve its existing hegemonic hold over Syria because this serves Russia’s strategic interests. What interests? Entanglement in an expensive, dangerous, never-ending regional proxy war that could spiral out of control at any moment, for the sake of a naval base in Latakia? The massive damage to Putin’s domestic and international standing if Assad’s guilt is ever actually proven rather than simply asserted, given Russia’s swearing to his innocence (which proof Russia is demanding)? The opportunity foregone (by not denouncing Assad) to in one fell swoop win Trump’s serious gratitude, instead of ire, with all the strategic implications that entails?
Isn’t just a lot more likely that Russia will tell Tillerson that Assad’s not the danger, Trump’s the danger, and that Russia’s highest strategic priority is to first do nothing to enable such an intemperate, ignorant, budding militarist lunatic?
An interesting piece but by god, it’s getting boring hearing the unsubstantiated allegations against Assad. For crying out aloud Damien, you’re a Professor so you must understand the complete necessity of proof? Surely you mark your students down if they fail to prove an assertion? There is none being displayed here and neither with Guy for that matter nor with the Australian Government nor with the US nor with Britain or NATO or anyone else. Give us the paper trail, show us the reports, supply the Sat Intel, prove beyond doubt that these weapons did indeed originate from Assad and his government. Display proof that would stand up in an unbiased court anywhere on the planet that such actions were initiated by Assad and I will believe you. You can’t. I know that so why on god’s green planet do you try? You are only diminishing your own credibility by not doing so.
As one who has observed for over 6 decades US lies about its opponents which, because of the great Australian trait of arse licking, have potentially placed us in danger time and time again, I am extremely skeptical of any allegations made by the US which are blindly followed by the media pack within the West and which are demonstrably designed to aid the US and basically no one else. Put bluntly, the US elites both in and out of government are selfish and dangerous bastards only concerned about themselves and while it’s good that we can’t or won’t completely follow their example in our own foreign policy, it’s a national disgrace that we follow their policy and thus don’t have an independent policy of our own.
Finally you talk about the Russian economy being far weaker than the States. At least they don’t owe $20Trillion and they don’t have to print money on the scale of the Weimar Republic to keep the ship afloat which really makes me wonder about their so called economic strength (see Paul Craig Roberts, ex Reagan US Treasury appointee for confirmation. Pat Buchanan as well as Larry Wilkinson are good sources as well). More likely the US is a house of cards that could blow over at any time.
I’m sorry buddy for playing the man but you should not be a professor. It makes me wonder if you got your qualifications from the CIA University in Maryland.
Sorry, not Maryland but Virginia. My bad.
“While Russia remains a nuclear superpower, its nuclear arsenal and associated technology is getting old and less reliable”. And the evidential basis for this claim? I agree with Grumpy: your ‘analysis’ would barely scrape an undergraduate pass mark.
Thanks James for reminding me of something that hit our media about 2012 to 2014 for about a week. After that it disappeared from view – I’m not even sure I saw it the Australian media at all.
The gist of the story was that Obama fired the head of the US Atomic weapons agency (a full general) as it was found that, and forgive me, I can’t properly remember nor do I want to trawl Googol but it on the lines that over 60% of the US atomic weapons were so out of date that they were inoperable. There was even doubt that the rockets could deliver the payloads not withstanding that the payloads themselves had so degraded that they wouldn’t go bang anyway. From what I can remember the time to take to get them back to weapons standard was about 6 years or more.
This from a country that has to use Russian rockets to supply the Space Station. In addition there have been stories of Russia seriously upgrading their nuclear potential and that if there was a real, fair dinkum shooting war, then the US would be obliterated along with the rest of us. Happy thought isn’t it? That such fools as Graham and McCain (along with H Clinton et al) would even think that a nuclear war could be winnable is both frightening and absurd but there they are, at the pinnacle of the US decision making tree rattling their sabres like the demented loons they are. Heaven help us all.
“its nuclear arsenal and associated technology is getting old and less reliable”
Well, yes that’s so. Any weaponry must be maintained and updated or replaced. What has been replacing the “big slam” weapons of the 1970s has been more accurate weapons. Witness the relatively pinpoint precision of the cruise missiles used by the US on the airbase. Big club is not very useful.
The path to restoring the regime change agenda is blindingly obvious as are its authors.
First set up a false flag atrocity, Which country has the world preponderance of resources for launching poison gas attacks?
Then set up a howl for regime change. Which country invented the Monroe Doctrine? Which country sent it global the moment the guns fell silent in Nazi Berlin? Which country has been hollering for removal of Assad from the moment he displayed a secular, democratically elected government? Which country has been doing a regime change hopscotch from country to country (many of them secular) across North Africa and the Middle East and all the way to Vietnam for decades?
Donald Trump promised an end to the Cold War and also to the slave trade in el cheapo goods manufactured in Asian countries and Mexico which lack labour law and strong trade unions. But the US deep state has brought him to heel in short order. We in Australia need urgently to review our cringing international alliances.
Arrant nonsense. The US was quite happy to let Syria be until recently. Trump did not pledge to end the slave trade, rather he pledged to bring back jobs which he knew he could not. He is one of the people who exported jobs and has been part of the crony capitalism that has seen US workers reduced to slavery and you need to understand that. Where are there strong unions? Not here, not in the US. Trump is just another shonk who has found out that running a country isn’t the same as running you family company.
So “happy to let Syria be” that it funded a motley herd of “rebels” in a regime change war against Syria for at least the last five years, and expanded it to ISIS only after the Moslem jihadists set ISIS up.
So “happy to let Syria be” that it funded a motley herd of “rebels” in a regime change war against Syria for at least the last five years, and expanded it to ISIS only after the Moslem jihadists set ISIS up.