Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

Putin scuttled the French proposal. The Russian government had earlier used its veto in the Security Council to protect the Syrian regime from condemnation in the UN. It certainly was not going to go along with Hollande’s much tougher resolution. Instead, a modified resolution was drafted and then passed unanimously in the Security Council. As Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov observed of the resolution that was actually passed, it “does not allow for any automatic use of force or measures of enforcement.”11 Although in theory the resolution allowed the Security Council to invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which is the basis for UN peacekeeping efforts, as the Russians made clear there were no real circumstances in which that would happen. They would veto any such subsequent effort. There were, as Lavrov said, no “measures of enforcement.”12

The failure to pass a resolution with the real teeth that Hollande had asked for was, in its own way, of great strategic and informational value. That, in fact, is what made the initial proposal so brilliant. Hollande’s proposed resolution, and the resolution that actually passed, for sure had implications for Syria, but the bigger implications had to do with finding out just how far Putin and Obama were each willing to go. On the Syrian front, if Putin were committed to making sure that Assad complied with the chemical weapons agreement—an agreement that Assad himself endorsed—then he had no good reason to object to the French idea. After all, if Putin planned to take a strong stance to enforce the timetable Assad had accepted then the contingent condition for using force would never arise: Assad would have no choice and no reason not to comply. If, however, Putin was just interested in shoving the issue out of the headlines so business could continue pretty much as usual then he would, as he did, object to Hollande’s proposal.

The moment Putin objected to the French proposal to commit the UN in advance to the use of force under carefully specified conditions, anyone listening should have understood that he was not sincere and, more important, that he was shopping around to find out how tough Obama was. As we now know, while Assad complied, albeit late, by turning over his proscribed chemical weapons, he retained other chemical weapons capabilities that by oversight were left out of the agreement. The evidence indicates that he has since allowed those weapons—especially chlorine gas—to be used against civilians with devastating consequences for Syrians and with no significant repercussions for him or his regime. There is as well, albeit unconfirmed, evidence that he retained mustard gas—a proscribed chemical weapon—which appeared subsequently to have been captured and used by ISIS.

What did the exchange over Hollande’s proposal reveal about Obama? The United States government initially backed the French idea of a Security Council resolution with real teeth but then, seeing that it would be vetoed by Russia, went for the much weaker revised resolution drafted by Russia, which carried no real consequences if Assad reneged. Obama, of course, would have had no illusions about Putin’s preparedness to veto a tough resolution. After all, as we have noted, he had already done so on three prior occasions. But had the United States backed the tougher resolution, knowing that it would have been vetoed, what everyone would have learned was that its president was willing to suffer a defeat in the UN for what he believed was right. He could then, of course, have voted subsequently for the weaker resolution that ultimately passed.

By failing to bring a tough resolution to a vote, Obama revealed he could be pushed around. By his earlier withdrawal he had indicated that he was not as strongly vested in Iraq as the previous Bush administration, but there was still considerable ambiguity about what his administration would tolerate and when it would intervene. Not forcing a vote allowed Obama to avoid intervention in Syria, an act that would have been unpopular with his supporters; but it also told Putin that he had a free hand there and elsewhere around the world. The Obama administration was unwilling to intervene.

As we can see in Figure 6.1, by not pressing for the French proposal, Obama surely revealed to Putin—and his core constituents, a group of oligarchs interested in expanding their control over actual and potential wealth (especially the oil and natural gas reserves believed to be in the Crimean territorial waters annexed by Russia)—that the US president was not prepared to pay the relatively modest political price of showing resolve regarding his “game changer” declaration. By accepting the weak UN resolution, Obama was signaling a willingness to back down in other situations that were substantially similar. Clearly, he indicated that any action with a greater political cost than taking on Assad wouldn’t get a strong reaction.

Why would Obama reveal his weakness and unwillingness to intervene? He presumably understood how it would be heard by Putin and his domestic audience, as well as by US allies. We believe the answer resides in that other set of ears to which every national leader speaks: his or her core backers at home. Table 6.1 shows us what Obama would have known in greater detail about opinion among Democrats, his supporters.

Obama’s constituents in the Democratic Party seemed to have become weary of unwanted wars, such as those with Iraq and Afghanistan. They preferred feel-good declarations, such as the “game changer” declaration without teeth, to actual action to enforce policies that their incumbent leader had suggested were important. Only 29 percent of Democrats, and the same percentage of independents, supported airstrikes in retaliation for Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Republicans were somewhat more supportive, though still reluctant. With these numbers in mind and with midterm elections coming up—congressional elections are always coming up in the United States—President Obama focused on what action in Syria might mean for his party’s short-term electoral fortunes. In that he was no different, as earlier chapters have highlighted, from any other political leader of any political persuasion.

Figure 6.1. Sending the Wrong Message Has Serious Consequences

Table 6.1. Partisanship and Support for US Airstrikes Against Syria

Source: http://www.people-press.org/2013/09/03/public-opinion-runs-against-syrian-airstrikes/

Meanwhile the Russian president focused on what action he could take, having been given a free hand to do anything for which Obama’s cost-benefit analysis looked worse than in Syria. And, voilà, a few months later Putin found the opportunity to please his backers at home and further secure his political future: the occupation of Crimea and the launch of a separatist movement in East Ukraine, ostensibly to protect Russians from the imagined threat to their security by developments elsewhere in Ukraine.

If we listen to the messages leaders send and to the audiences to which they are directed, we will understand how personal interests—not national interests, whatever those may be—decide the future course of war and peace.13 In doing so, we can also understand what might have been done differently to produce a better outcome. In the case of Syria and Ukraine, for instance, President Obama has objected to the idea that the two are linked. He has complained about those who seem to push American policy toward the use of force as the preferred method to resolve these crises; he seeks an alternative to the use of force. In that spirit, we suggested peaceful means to address the Ukraine dispute in May 2014. In the “What If?” section at the end of this chapter, we will reprise our arguments, proposing a path through the Ukraine’s problems that could have averted the use of force—satisfying the president’s core constituents—and advanced productive, beneficial solutions. For now, however, we turn from the Crimean experience to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.