Last Friday the world was treated to another example of Secretary of State John Kerry declaring a diplomatic victory. But unlike the Iran nuclear deal, even the Obama administration’s reliable media cheering section isn’t shouting hosanna about the conclusion of an agreement to end the civil war in Syria. The unanimous vote in the United Nations Security Council might be interpreted as a sign that the international community is finally getting serious about ending the conflict. Yet this deal, which serves as the linchpin for President Obama’s formula for defeating ISIS, is widely considered to have very little if any chance of success isn’t likely to do much good. To the contrary, far from being just another one of Kerry’s naïve exercises, the consequences of the diplomatic charade at the UN are serious.
The Syrian peace deal was four and a half years in the making. But the discussion as to how this was achieved after years of stalemate tells us all we need to know about why it won’t work.
The United States has been working on trying to arrange a deal to end the fighting in Syria since civil war broke out in the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests. The Syrian people were sick of living under the brutal tyranny of the Bashar Assad regime. But with the West unwilling to do anything more than voice encouragement for those who put forward a non-extremist alternative to Assad that meant that the Damascus government — aided by its Iranian and Russian allies — was free to repress protesters and rebels with bloody methods. Russia vetoed every previous attempt at peacemaking.
As they did in the Iran nuclear talks, “success” was only achieved once Obama and Kerry finally gave in on two key points. They conceded Iran a seat at the table over Syria granting legitimacy to Tehran’s military intervention in the war via its Revolutionary Guard volunteers and Hezbollah terrorist mercenaries. Even more importantly, the U.S., which had been talking about the need for Assad to go, also waved the white flag on forcing the dictator out.
The quarter million people killed in Syria over the past year wasn’t enough to motivate Obama to act to try to stop the killing. But the arrival of some of the four million refugees in Syria at the doorsteps of the West convinced him to give Russia and Iran the terms they demanded. The deal calls for a ceasefire, the end of foreign interventions in the fighting and negotiations about a new government. But Assad will stay, and that’s the fatal flaw in the deal Kerry negotiated.
So long as there is no guarantee that the butcher Assad is going, there is no way that the various Syrian rebel factions will accept this. So long as Assad is ruling in Damascus, many Sunnis will look to ISIS for protection. There is no force in place to monitor or enforce the ceasefire, nor any real agreement on what force will defeat ISIS — which occupies much of Syria — or how that will be accomplished.
In other words, the deal is an empty gesture whose only tangible impact will be to make it even harder to envision a future where what’s left of Syria does not remain a client state of both Russia and Iran or an Islamist stronghold.
We could put this diplomatic effort down as just a nice try that was worth the effort even if the odds were against Kerry. But there is more wrong here than just a belated effort on the part of the administration to do something to stop the Syrian slaughter that will almost certainly fail.
At this point, lamenting Obama’s years of dithering and humiliation on Syria including the disastrous “red line” threat about Assad’s use of chemical weapons that the president retracted, is a matter for the historians to unravel. Now the issue in Syria is the creation of an Islamist caliphate that presents a threat to the entire region and the world. The only answer to that threat is for the West and Arab nations to put together a force that will defeat these terrorists on the ground. That’s something that is not in the interests of either Russia or Iran at the moment since Assad benefits from having them slaughter other Syrians opposed to his continued rule. But the administration persists in pretending that it will defeat ISIS via a peace plan that is ready to unravel even before the ink is dry and a limited use of force that will do nothing to alter the facts on the ground.
The peace deal proves that Obama continues to be a hostage to his illusions about the goodwill of the Iranians and unable to stand up to Vladimir Putin. The deal isn’t so much a proposal to actually solve the Syrian dilemma as a fig leaf for a policy of acquiescing to the permanence of the current unholy balance of forces in that country between Assad and his backers on the one hand and ISIS on the other.
As always, Obama and Kerry will claim there are no reasonable alternatives to their policy. They’re right that there are no good choices available to the U.S. in a Middle East that the president has allowed to get out of control because of his precipitate withdrawal from Iraq. The only choice the West has ever had with regard to ISIS remains the use of a massive allied force — composed of both Western troops and Arab armies — to defeat ISIS and then to force Assad out in order to provide some stability. Americans may have no appetite for that answer, but if they are worried about the rise of ISIS then sooner or later they will have to acknowledge reality. Until then, we are left with a Middle East that will increasingly be dominated by Iran, Russia, and a terrorist caliphate. A diplomatic charade that leaves that in place and postpones the creation of a genuine force against ISIS is worse than no peace deal at all.