Assad and Israel the major winners
In a stunning development that promises that Syria would not be a repeat of Libya, the Russian diplomatic onslaught has been able to bring the United States around and secured an agreement in which the framework agreement for elimination of Syrian chemical weapons has been arrived at by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The plan is to eliminate Syria and Bashar al Assad’s main defence against the nuclear-armed Israel, its chemical arsenal, but the positive side for the multi-religious country and its regime is avoiding the decapitating US military strikes. In other words, Assad’s regime lives to fight another day while the obscurantist Arab regimes lined up against him and relying on the US to launch attacks. These reactionary regimes have been backing the insurgency with weapons and treasure, and the accord is a setback for them. The deal is a good omen too in the sense that more than 100,000 people have died in the Syrian uprising since Barack Obama in 2011 called for Assad to step down, arguing that he had lost the moral legitimacy to lead the country. The diplomatic breakthrough in Geneva the other day is simply dazzling, on a wider scale signalling Russia’s reappearance as a premier power capable of protecting its allies and thwarting the United States’ best laid plans. In a unipolar world that had seen the US aggression gone unchecked with its allies browbeaten by “you’re either with us or against us” doctrine and its adversaries unable to rise up and challenge it, this is the first post-Cold War event where the global hegemon has been brought around to acknowledge and accept a competitive world view.
US Secretary of State Kerry held forth: “Providing this effort is fully implemented, it can end the threat that these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but to their neighbours, [and] to the region.” That sure is a giveaway for one of the big winners is Israel. Syria had built its chemical arsenal largely as a counterbalance to the Israel’s nuclear arsenal – both of these undeclared. Now that Syria is being and Assad not only is being made to declare publicly what he’s got, but also to see it decapitated, it is virtually defanged and defenceless in a conventional manner against Israel that occupies the Golan Heights. No real match for Israel’s military prowess in any case, now embroiled in what is a prolonged civil war, and giving up its weapons of choice against Israel it stands vulnerable. That is where Syria’s loss is Israel’s major gain – a point of satisfaction for its US backers, as well as the fact that the military action would have strengthened hitherto non-existent Al-Qaeda fighters there.
But for good measure, Assad too is a winner, for he gets the reprieve from the US pounding that would have had the same force multiplier effect in helping the rebels in overrunning the government forces that the NATO strikes – chiefly those of the United Kingdom and France – had on Libya and Muammar Gaddafi. So while it may not be a win-win situation, while there are cons for Syria and Assad, there are quite a few pros coming out of the successful Russian initiative.