Barack Obama’s 2013 deal to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons was touted at the time as proof that arms-control diplomacy can avert peril without resorting to force. The deal proved many things, but not that. It allowed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to escape from the consequences of his own malfeasance. It also showed rogue states and terrorists how to survive, and Iran and Russia how to play America. The losers: Syria’s people, America’s credibility, and Middle Eastern peace and security.
President Biden yearns to rejoin his former boss’s Iran nuclear-weapons deal, which was under intense negotiation as the Syria drama unfolded. Before he does that, he may wish to read Joby Warrick’s “Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America’s Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World.” This study, by a longtime national security reporter at the Washington Post, has important implications for countering proliferation generally.
Syria’s military precipitated the 2013 crisis by bombing Moadamiyeh, outside Damascus, with sarin, a deadly nerve agent, killing over 1,400 people. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the attack “the worst use of weapons of mass destruction in the twenty-first century.” Fortunately a U.N. inspection team was in Damascus to investigate reports of prior chemical-weapons strikes and so brought international attention to it.
How would Mr. Obama respond? In 2011 he had said, “Assad must go.” But despite substantial assistance to anti-government rebels, Mr. Assad remained in power. Then, in August 2012, Mr. Obama casually observed that “a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus.”
Not by much. Although Mr. Obama considered responding militarily, he hesitated. He was “uneasy” after German chancellor Angela Merkel urged caution and British prime minister David Cameron lost a House of Commons vote that eliminated Britain as a partner. Trying to shift responsibility, Mr. Obama sought congressional approval, which he didn’t need and didn’t get anyway. At hand were the makings of a humiliating debacle.
Red Line
By Joby Warrick
Doubleday, 346 pages, $29.95
Secretary of State John Kerry saw no diplomatic path for Mr. Assad to surrender or destroy his chemical weapons, saying on Sept. 9 that “he’s not about to do it.” But Mr. Assad did it—albeit not as a result of U.S. negotiations. Although the facts are unclear, the Syrian dictator had delegated authority to use chemicals to his generals, meaning the Moadamiyeh attack might have been ordered without considering the proximity of U.N. inspectors or even knowledge of Mr. Obama’s “red line.” Mr. Assad rapidly concluded he had made a terrible mistake and agreed to a deal.
Moscow applied pressure but clearly never intended to jettison Mr. Assad. Two years later, Russia significantly increased its air presence at Syria’s Khmeimim air base, complementing its nearby Tartus naval facility. Mr. Obama was again surprised. “Oh God, they’re getting ready to go in. They’re not going to let Assad lose,” said one adviser. Mr. Kerry, having been told that Russian planes were deploying to Syria, remarked cluelessly that “the level and type [of aircraft] represents basically force protection.” He was wrong. If the Russians only wanted to protect their assets, they could have kept them at home.
Mr. Assad didn’t surrender everything. In 2015, following the destruction of Syria’s declared chemical-weapons materials, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigators found indications in Syria’s records that Mr. Assad may have concealed assets. This is critical. The OPCW and the U.N. depended on what Syria declared; they had little capability to gather additional evidence, and foreign intelligence in Syria was obviously inadequate. Mr. Warrick enumerates not only sarin, but considerable amounts of other nerve agents and toxic chemicals that went unaccounted for.
Mr. Assad simply switched chemicals. Instead of using sarin, the regime carried out scores, perhaps hundreds, of strikes using chlorine, not explicitly banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention but nonetheless used as an asphyxiant, which the Convention generically prohibited. This was, as Mr. Warrick puts it, “a perfect loophole.” Said one expert, “It’s brilliant . . . Low-casualty, but psychologically effective.”
Mr. Assad, Mr. Warrick demonstrates, was not “chastened or deterred.” At Khan Sheikhoun, in April 2017, Syria’s military again used sarin, proving either that it still had the nerve agent or had resumed production of it. President Trump’s military retaliation was inadequate. Mr. Assad subsequently used chlorine, striking several times, including a significant attack in Douma, one year later. After a confused internal debate, Mr. Trump retaliated again. He had learned nothing about Syria, Iran or Russia, concluding instead that the U.S. ought to withdraw its forces from the region completely, which he tried unsuccessfully to do for two years.
It is therefore wrong to conclude, as Mr. Obama’s admirers still do, that successful diplomacy ended Mr. Assad’s chemical-weapons threat. Mr. Warrick acknowledges that “ultimately neither president succeeded in changing Assad’s behavior or shortening Syria’s war.” The Syria case proves that mere physical destruction of mass-destruction weapons and materials is insufficient. While Syria (or Iran) possesses the knowledge and ability to produce them, it can always rebuild what it “destroys.”
Iran emerged victorious from two presidents’ failures against Mr. Assad’s chemical bellicosity. For America, Mr. Assad is not the central threat; the real menace is Tehran, which has emerged even more dominant inside Syria, buttressing its arc of control from Iran through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. The mullahs almost certainly saw Mr. Obama’s hesitancy to use force in Syria as fear of undercutting the ongoing Iran nuclear negotiations. They correctly surmised that the American president wanted a nuclear deal more than he wanted to guarantee eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons.
The ayatollahs now watching Mr. Biden can discern this desire anew. Messrs. Obama and Biden both proceed, despite their denials, as if deals themselves are the objectives, not whether they are effective or ineffective. Their blinkered focus on the “deal” is very Trumpian, and correspondingly damaging to American national security. That is the real lesson.
Mr. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.
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The Link LonkMarch 16, 2021 at 06:35AM
https://www.wsj.com/articles/red-line-review-the-calculus-didnt-change-11615847707
‘Red Line’ Review: The Calculus Didn’t Change - The Wall Street Journal
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