EE.UU.: sin apoyo en el G-20.

 

 

 

At G-20, Obama Finds No Political Cover for U.S. Strikes in Syria.

By Nikolas Gvosdev, on 06 Sep 2013       

President Barack Obama apparently failed to change any minds on Syria when the leaders attending the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, met for a working dinner Thursday night. Instead, according to Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, the divisions over Syria “were confirmed” at the dinner.

One of the problems facing the Obama team is that there remains widespread skepticism about the veracity of U.S. intelligence claims. Even as lab results from Britain's Porton Down laboratory seem to confirm that sarin gas was used in the attack on three Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21, Russia, along with some other countries, continues to insist that chemical weapons might have been used by the Syrian opposition. So far, the president has not been able to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin or other skeptics that there is solid proof to back up U.S. assertions, in part because Obama did not present his fellow world leaders with clear and convincing evidence, such as satellite imagery or transcripts of intercepted communications. While members of Congress have received more classified briefings, Secretary of State John Kerry has argued that what has been released publicly, and what serves as the basis of the American case at the G-20, is “unprecedented” and “sufficient” to support the U.S. claims.

The problem is that the Obama administration is reaping the legacy sown by the speech delivered by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003. Powell told the council that while he could not reveal everything the U.S. knew, he would share "an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior" that would prove that "Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction." Powell presented a mix of audio intercepts and other intelligence snippets to present a prima facie case, one that later turned out to be highly inaccurate. Other U.S. promises—about a swift campaign followed by rapid and cost-effective reconstruction of a post-Saddam Iraq into a secular, prosperous democracy, with little or no destabilization of the Middle East—also proved to be unfounded.

Ten years later, Obama does not appear to be able to convince other world leaders to trust U.S. intelligence, nor do they seem willing to believe that the United States can carry out an effective, limited and targeted military campaign. East Asian leaders attending the G-20 summit have already expressed concerns that a conflict in Syria could push up world energy prices and place fragile economic recoveries in jeopardy. Others wonder how the United States would be able to demolish the military capabilities of Bashar al-Assad's government yet at the same time prevent al-Qaida-linked extremists from coming to power in a post-Assad Syria. U.S. and European intelligence reporting also contradicts Kerry's public testimony before the U.S. Congress, where in an effort to downplay the strength of extremist elements among the Syrian opposition he claimed that moderate groups are becoming predominant within the anti-Assad coalition.

Back in June, Putin was very much the odd man out for his stance on Syria at the G-8 summit, which only includes the leading industrial democracies of North America and Western Europe along with Japan. For Putin, it must now be quite satisfying to see Obama, whose comments about Putin "slouching" during the G-8 meetings were poorly received in the Kremlin, be in the clear minority for a change. Most leaders have indicated that they would support military action against Syria only if it is authorized by the U.N. Security Council, and while Putin earlier this week indicated Russia would be open to such a possibility, he has also signaled that the bar of proof he would require from the United States would probably be unattainable. Given that Russia has already released its own detailed report assigning blame for chemical incidents earlier this year to the Syrian rebels, it is hard to see how deadlock at the U.N. could be avoided.

Of the governments represented in St. Petersburg, only three—France, Turkey and Saudi Arabia—have voiced any support for the U.S. proposal to begin a series of strikes to punish Assad even in the absence of any U.N. resolution. Most others, even if they accept Assad's guilt, have echoed some variant of the position articulated by the Chinese, the European Union and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that there is no military solution to the problem and that the world must find a nonmilitary way to respond to Assad's actions.

The Obama administration’s narrative has assumed that it speaks on behalf of the international community both in assigning complete responsibility for the recent use of chemical weapons to the Assad regime and in recommending military strikes as a response. That narrative has now been contradicted by the events of the first day of the summit. Obama's statements in Stockholm prior to traveling to Russia for the G-20 meeting that the "red line" against chemical weapons use he articulated last fall was in fact one already laid out by the world is not being endorsed by most of the other leaders gathered in St. Petersburg, who collectively represent a majority of the world's population and most of the globe's economic and military power.

Obama was never likely to leave the G-20 with a ringing endorsement of U.S. plans for a strike, and it still remains to be seen whether even the U.S. Congress will provide him with a resolution of support. If the Obama administration truly believes that a limited set of military strikes is the most appropriate response to what has happened in Syria, it may need to be prepared to act without political cover.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest and a frequent foreign policy commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of the Navy or the U.S. government. His weekly WPR column, The Realist Prism, appears every Friday.