Obama agrees to try diplomacy on Syria

What happened

President Obama postponed a congressional vote on punitive military strikes on the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad this week, after an offhand remark by Secretary of State John Kerry paved the way for a possible diplomatic solution to the crisis. In a televised speech, Obama tried to convince a skeptical nation that Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria justified “targeted military strikes,” but cautiously welcomed a diplomatic proposal put forward by Russia to avert a military conflict. That proposal stemmed from Kerry’s exasperated comment during a press conference that Assad could avoid U.S. military strikes if he agreed to immediately give up all of his chemical weapons. “He isn’t about to do it,” Kerry added, “and it can’t be done.” But Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly announced that he would open talks with the Assad regime—a Russian ally—to hand over its hidden and scattered arsenal of chemical weapons. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem agreed to comply, “to avert American aggression against our people.”

The president had been facing the prospect of an embarrassing defeat in Congress after asking for authorization of military action. In his speech, Obama said the U.S. had a moral and strategic interest in delivering a “limited” but painful military strike to degrade Assad’s ability to deliver chemical weapons and still should do so “if diplomacy fails.” Letting Assad get away with violating international prohibitions on the use of chemical weapons, Obama said, would be a green light for other rogue nations to make and use them. A “targeted military strike,” he said, would “make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.”

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What the editorials said

“What a fiasco,” said The Wall Street Journal. Obama is spinning this as a diplomatic breakthrough, but it’s nothing more than a “political escape route” from a war he couldn’t sell to Americans and never believed in himself. The end result will be that Assad will remain in power, and get away with gassing more than 1,400 civilians to death. Obama surely “won’t risk another ramp-up to war, given the opposition at home and abroad.”

Obama had “little choice” but to pursue Russia’s offer to negotiate, said The Washington Post. Neither Congress nor the American people supported strikes on Syria, and this offers the president a diplomatic get-out-of-jail-free card—at least in the short term. Right now the offer seems like the type of “head-fake” that Iran has used to protect its nuclear program, said the Chicago Tribune. How can we trust Russia, “Syria’s main arms merchant,” to get rid of Assad’s chemical stockpiles, and how do we know Assad won’t send some of his sarin to his allies in Syria or Hezbollah before U.N. inspectors arrive?

What the columnists said

This proposal is just a “stalling tactic” by Russia and Syria, said Max Boot in CommentaryMagazine.com. Syria has hidden its chemical arsenal in more than 50 sites, and finding and disposing of all of them in the midst of a brutal civil war would be “nearly impossible.” The U.S. began destroying its own chemical munitions stocks 15 years ago, and it isn’t finished yet, said Jeffrey Goldberg in Bloomberg.com. Russia and Syria are “playing games,” and when that becomes clear, Obama will have to go back to Congress—or “make decisions by himself.”

Obama was still wise to take the deal, said Daniel Drezner in ForeignPolicy.com. It’s “a foreign policy gift from the gods,” enabling the president to “enforce the chemical weapons taboo” without using military force and to evade a humiliating rejection by Congress. Even if Syria does renege on its commitment to disarm, the worst-case scenario would bring us “back to where we are now,” but with a better argument for military action. “Diplomatically, that’s still a win.”

We now know Assad is afraid the West will intervene in his civil war, said Ross Douthat in NYTimes.com. That probably means he won’t use chemical weapons again. But the world now knows the U.S. has no appetite for military intervention, no clear strategy for dealing with the Middle East, and no serious plan to end the slaughter in Syria. “Saving face is our only option now.”