Vladimir Putin can preen himself over Syria but the pressure on him is intense

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/18/putin-preen-syria-upstaged-obama

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The dark curtain draws back and over the bloodstained stage flutters a small white dove. Some twist of war has sent it aloft. Some missile roar may soon bring it crashing to Earth. But while its wings still flap we gaze at it, mesmerised by hope.

Syria is now the war game of choice among the armchair strategists of Washington and London. Cynics battle with optimists, belligerents with pacifists. Has Barack Obama been painted into a corner? What if Bashar al-Assad pulls back and Russia vetoes a military response? Has America's bluff been called? Will Vladimir Putin call it again?

What if America bombs and Assad resumes chemical attacks? What if Assad burns some weapons but renews his savagery on the rebels? If the US seeks to topple the regime, what if Russia supports it? What of Congress? What of Iran, Israel, Lebanon, the Gulf? What of … What if …

These are the questions that periodically crowd the interventionist agenda. Those asking them rarely have a dog in the fight and rarely bear the cost of their prescriptions. Their allegiance is to their chosen tribe, be it meek or macho, dove or hawk, left or right. Few know or really care about Syria, rather about what others will think of them on the op-ed page or round the thinktank table.

Military intervention has a tidy arsenal of cases where "it worked". The job lot includes Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya and Mali, which are assumed to outpunch such failures as Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the west had few interests in any of them, the interventions tended only to tilt the geometry of internal strife, toppling a regime here, hastening a partition there. Seldom is there any audit of intervention, let alone much by way of aftercare. Failure is always declared "not an option".

As Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus remark in their book Can Intervention Work?, the greatest fallacy of all is the belief that "the power, the knowledge and the legitimacy of the international community" are unlimited and enshrined in some Anglo-American suzerainty.

Most of the cases, certainly Iraq and Afghanistan, made a mockery of the fall-back justification for these interventions; the 2005 UN doctrine of a "responsibility to protect" oppressed peoples everywhere. A concept so noble in the drawing rooms of Manhattan has degenerated into a sickening prelude to more bloodshed. It has become a diplomatic Babel of grandstanding, war-mongering, neo-imperialism and general half-heartedness, its signatures the missile strike and the punitive sanction.

Syria's civil war is as horrible as any. It is rooted in a religious feud that baffles most outsiders and seems as vicious as anything inflicted on Europe by the Thirty Years war. "You may find some of these images distressing," the BBC announcer intones each night, before another orgy of gory propaganda to "do something" and not "stand idly by".

It stands to the credit of legislators on both sides of the Atlantic that they have resisted this propaganda. They have challenged their leaders to say what purpose is served by merely bombing dictators. To them, war with Syria should be explained not just asserted. It has nothing to with America "reverting to isolation" or Britain as suddenly "an offshore island". It has to do with common sense, with not doing more harm than good.

The uncertain outcome of Syria's civil conflict is not Britain's concern. What remains of "responsibility to protect" should be properly humanitarian. The ideology set out by the great interventionist, Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross in the 19th century, still applies. The job of humanity is to relieve the agony of the victims of war, on and off the battlefield. It lies not in helping one side to win but in coming to the aid of all. There is ample scope for this in and around Syria.

If it is not my business who wins, then strictly speaking nor is brokering peace between the sides. What should I care for this particular dove? But that would be a counsel of true despair. Decades of western ineptitude towards the Muslim world have driven Syria into the arms of Russia and Iran. Both have vexed relations with the west, yet both seem, for the moment, to be ready to lean on their client state.

Obama may have fallen victim to his "red-line" bravado, but he has drawn Russia into closer involvement. In May, Moscow sponsored an abortive peace conference on Syria and has now sponsored a chemical weapons deal. Iran has elected a pragmatic new president, Hassan Rouhani, with a clear interest in trading nuclear disarmament for rapprochement with the west. Obama may meet him in New York next week.

A deal with Russia on chemical weapons in Syria could yet morph into what must be the most plausible short-term route to peace, a ceasefire and some de facto partition. This could be a prelude to some return of refugees and relief to the region generally. Were it to lead on to a deal on nuclear weapons with Iran, it would be an added bonus.

The odds on this succeeding must be slight. Putin may be preening himself on his cunning opportunism in upstaging Obama, and on his eulogistic coverage in the west. But the pressure on him is intense. He and Iran have become the power brokers of this war. He let himself be drawn into the game as dominant player. His prestige is now on the line.

We have been here before, in 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11. America had won the express sympathy of almost every country on Earth (including Russia and Syria). Yasser Arafat gave blood for the people of New York. Tony Blair, in one of his more creditable escapades, travelled the region pleading for help in suppressing al-Qaida.

The pressure on the Afghans to hand over Osama bin Laden was then intense and was, in the view of many observers, on target to succeed given time (see Lucy Morgan Edwards's The Afghan Solution). But America's wounds were so raw it could not wait. It shot down that dove of peace and has spent an agonising decade paying the price.

Most civil wars are best left to fight to a standstill. They find resolution in exhaustion, whether they lead to regime change or to partition. The original UN charter implicitly acknowledged this, in stipulating global respect for nonintervention in states' internal sovereignty.

But Russia has made Syria its business. Putin owns this particular dove. If it falls from the sky, his will have been the shot that brought it down.

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