Diplomacy, War, and Syria

The situation in Syria has seemingly taken a turn for the better. Following Kerry's non-literal remarks on how Syria could avoid military strikes by turning over its chemical weapons, the Russian and Syrian foreign ministers came out and endorsed the plan. Which is an exciting, but almost sad, development. The diplomatic route was viewed by the Obama Administration incredulously, given that the State Department quickly clarified Kerry's proposal as being one that illustrated the absurdity of Assad's regime, and wasn't to be taken seriously.

No doubt, this the development seems to be the result of our willingness to use force. The behavior of Assad's regime has seemingly been altered due to our threats, something that I thought was unlikely to occur. So I will congratulate the Obama administration for being willing to use force. Without that, Assad probably wouldn't have gone to the negotiating tables, and a plan to deal with the national security threat emanating from the instability of the war would have never begun to be drafted by major international players.

Now, this isn't to imply that the Obama administration deserves a round of applause for its Syrian policies in general. When it comes down to it, this diplomatic stratagem was not the endgame of our threatened use of force; rather, it was an accidental byproduct of an interview coupled with Syrian fears over our planned strikes. The Obama administration never intended for this to happen, and thus, we shouldn't consider this as an incident of competent and out-of-the-box foreign policy thinking from Obama. Instead, we should question why our leaders never seriously pursued this route in the first place following our initial threats.

Of course, negotiations are still in the early phases. And there are myriad of logistical, security, and political complexities surrounding getting those chemical weapons. For all we know, Assad might leave negotiations. Or, he might not hand over all his weapons. For now, though, I'm glad that Kerry accidentally came up with a good idea.

--Tom