Tag Archives: foreign policy

Wishful Thinking

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking for an exit strategy from Syria already? That’s what the AP thinks….

Putin certainly realizes that some 30 Russian combat jets won’t be able to change the course of the war, and allow Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces to win.

As an aside, AP is commenting, whether it understands it or not, on President Barack Obama’s “commitment” to changing the course of the war in Syria with the tepidly applied occasional potshots he’s authorized our own Air Force to take.

More to the point, though, the AP has misunderstood Putin and forgotten Russia’s long-term relationship with Syria and why that relationship exists. Russia needs Syria for a couple of reasons: seaports on the Med and to limit our influence in the Middle East. To those ends, Putin needs Bashar al Assad to stay in power in Syria; a western oriented replacement, or no replacement at all and the attendant chaos do neither of those reasons any good.

There is, too, the use to which those 30 combat jets are being put. Their combat tempo is much higher than ours, the targets much more carefully and coordinatedly selected to take out forces that are explicitly anti-Assad (and so more or less allies of us for the moment), and they’re being used in coordination with Assad’s ground forces against those anti-Assad forces.

Yeah, they can change the course of the war, especially given the fractured nature of those opposition forces.  And Putin is in Syria to stay; he has no exit strategy because he wants no exit.

The AP does have the right of it on a couple of other Putin goals:

to show all players that they will not be able to unseat Assad by force;…to foster political talks that could allow Moscow to protect its interests in the region.

Another key task for Putin is bring Moscow and Washington together in a security dialogue, which he hopes would make Russia appear as an equal….

In these, Putin also has a willing partner in Obama. Obama’s behavior in Syria can’t possibly be intended to unseat Assad, no matter Obama’s chit chat to the contrary. Obama, too, already has engaged in the beginnings of a security dialogue, initially to keep our aircraft out of Putin’s way, and after that to accede to a Putin security arrangement.

Thinking that 30 combat aircraft are insufficient to accomplish anything meaningful on the ground, though, is wishful thinking, a hope that Russia will fail and leave. The proper and determined application of airpower in coordination with ground forces will demonstrate otherwise.

A Misunderstanding

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The People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, misunderstands. Or maybe not.

Wang last month began urging the rest of the Six-Party Talks members (the PRC, Japan, the RoK, Russia, and the US) to resume negotiations with northern Korea (the sixth member) regarding its nuclear weapons program. That’s Wang’s misunderstanding.

There’s nothing to negotiate. Northern Korea stands in gross violation of a number of UN mandates requiring it not to have a nuclear weapons program and not to have nuclear weapons. In addition, northern Korea stands in gross violation of prior agreements reached in earlier iterations of the Six-Party Talks.

What’s required now is enforcement of those mandates and agreements. What’s required now is the dismantlement of northern Korea’s nuclear weapons programs and nuclear weapons. By all means necessary.

Of course, the PRC well knows this about its client. A militarily capable—even a little bit—client is a useful tool in the PRC’s power struggle with us. This client, in this condition, is a useful tool in the PRC’s implied threats and open aggression against the nations ringing the East and South China Seas, many of whom are our friends and allies.

Maybe there’s no misunderstanding at all here. The PRC also well knows that talks will produce nothing substantive concerning northern Korea’s nuclear weapons or its belligerence.

Our President

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President Barack Obama says his nuclear weapons deal with Iran will make Khamenei more willing to cooperate with us on other of our problems in the Middle East.

President Obama says Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasions of Georgia and Ukraine are clear signs of Russian weakness.

President Obama says Putin’s extension of those forays into Syria are further signs of Russia’s coming impotence.

President Obama says Putin really isn’t challenging Obama’s leadership in the Middle East; he denies that Putin is a leader.

President Obama says the tide of history is on our side, and all we need to do is wait “them” out.

President Barack “Baghdad Bob” Obama is on the case.

Standing Up

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared Saturday that his country was ready to stand up to any threat posed by the United States as he spoke at a lavish military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the North’s ruling party and trumpet his third-generation leadership.

Baby Kim is full of braggadocio, and he spouts off on a number of things in a number of venues. Sadly, he’s not facing down anything of substance at his parade. My long-deceased grandmother could easily stand up to the Obama administration’s threats.

Obama’s threats are long well-known to be nothing more than a playground taunt: “Boy, oh boy, when I get you.”

Retreat, Ignorance

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A week into Russia’s military intervention in Syria, some top White House advisers and National Security Council staffers are trying to persuade President Barack Obama to scale back US engagement there, to focus on lessening the violence and, for now, to give up on toppling the Syrian regime.

A whole week. But sure, why not? He retreated from Iraq as soon and as fast as he could. He announced his retreat from Afghanistan, and is carrying it out apace (never minding that his Defense advisors and the Afghanis disagree) today. Why not slink away from Syria, too? It’s part of his retreat of the US from all of our positions around the globe.

Then there’s this:

Throughout the summer and into the fall, top Russian officials—including Putin himself…—said they were not committed to keeping Assad in power for the long term, and would only target Islamic State fighters in their military offensive, according to US officials.

These officials no longer believe Russia was telling the truth.

This is the strategic failure of Obama and his White House coterie. They’re so closed in on themselves that they’re far too ignorant of the facts to be able to see this coming. They’re the only ones in the entire country who ever believed, at any point in these last seven years (and far more), that “Russia was telling the truth.”

They’re far too ignorant to see that, of course, Russia would expand to fill the void left by the Obama Retreat.

Unfortunately for the safety of the republic, they’re also the only ones in the entire country who could, and still can, do something about their failure.