Yielding to Russia in the Middle East

President Obama has fallen right into President Vladimir Putin’s trap, said Michael Bohm in The Moscow Times (Russia). Desperate to avoid making good on his “red line” threat, Obama seized on the Russian proposal to have Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turn over his chemical weapons. We’ve seen this movie before, set in Iraq. Assad will play the same “shell game with the U.S.” that Saddam Hussein did for years, sending inspectors “on wild-goose chases” while Russia again plays the role of dictator’s advocate at the U.N. Meanwhile, Assad isn’t being punished for gassing his people. It’s like telling a mass murderer, “Okay, you don’t have to serve any time in prison as long as you give up your automatic assault rifles.”

It’s not only a diplomatic triumph for Putin, but also a public relations coup, said Dmitry Polikanov in Russia-Direct.org. With his op-ed in The New York Times last week, he managed to “win over international public opinion and weaken the positions of the U.S. hawks in their own backyard.” Whatever happens in Syria now, Russia wins. If the civil war drags on and spreads, oil-producing Russia can enjoy a rise in oil prices; if the U.S. bombs Syria anyway, Russia can complain about the flouting of international law. Either way, Russia has re-established itself as a major player in the Middle East.

The signs of renewed Russian influence in the region were already there in the Egyptian crisis, said David Goldman in the Asia Times (Hong Kong). “In direct opposition to the Obama administration,” which opposed the Egyptian coup, Russia struck an agreement this summer with Saudi Arabia—long its nemesis in the region—to stabilize Egypt’s new military government. Russia agreed to supply weapons to Egypt, while the Saudis agreed to pay for them. “Russia now has much greater capacity to influence events in the Middle East, including the security of energy resources, than it has at any time since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.”

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Russia’s “rising dominance in the region” isn’t all bad, said The Jerusalem Post (Israel) in an editorial. If Moscow gets Syria to destroy its chemical weapons, Israelis can breathe easier—and give up having to practice gas-mask drills. Even better, “perhaps similar pressure could be brought to bear against Tehran to desist from its nuclear weapons program.” After all, the Russians don’t want a nuclear-armed Islamic state on their southern flank, threatening their control over the former Soviet states that make up their “near abroad.”

The real loser here is the Syrian people, said Sabria S. Jawhar in the Arab News (Saudi Arabia). Obama has essentially given Assad “an additional eight months to get his act together,” so that “the Syrian army can effectively crush the rebels while the international community stands by and twiddles its thumbs.” When the deadline is up and Assad hasn’t given up his chemical arsenal, Russia will simply veto U.N. action. Obama’s agreement with Putin “will become a watershed moment in our history when free nations abdicated their responsibility to the greater good of humanity by tacitly endorsing the use of chemical weapons.”