Mick Hartley

The Obama administration's supposed neutrality on Syria – a neutrality spelled out as the new moral approach to the Middle East, as contrasted with the evils of the Bush administration's intervention in Iraq – masks the reality that the US has, according to Tony Badran in the Tablet, been siding with Russia and Iran to back the murderous Assad regime and destroy any legitimate opposition:

Whether they support or oppose it, most observers converge on viewing President Barack Obama’s Syria policy as generally marked by passive detachment. After all, the president ignored the recommendations of many of his cabinet members and close advisers to arm Syrian rebels in 2012, or to enforce his “red line” against the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons to massacre civilians. Worried about being sucked into another Middle Eastern War—one that would pit the United States against one of Iran’s key allies in the region—Obama said no. Whatever happens in Syria can hardly be America’s fault, when we tried our hardest to stay out of the entire mess, right?…

In fact, President Obama has directly and powerfully shaped the reality in Syria. Over the last six months, as the tempo of the killing has increased, and the Russians have intervened militarily for Assad by bombing rebel-held areas to rubble, the White House has been very actively engaged in the Syrian conflict, both on the diplomatic as well as on the military front, affecting the course of the conflict in both theaters, and setting the terms of a fragile truce that seeks to cement the Assad regime’s gains on a more permanent basis. While American reporters may have largely missed the boat on the story of America’s engagement in favor of Assad, the people getting killed in Syria—the vast majority of whom are Sunni Muslims—and their allies are entirely aware of America’s role. As a result, the consequences of what the rebels—and Washington’s Sunni allies—see as a profound betrayal of their interests by the White House are likely to haunt America for many years to come.

So, what has the White House actually been up to in Syria for the past six months? Diplomatically, the administration set the ceiling for what the opposition can demand or expect, removing from discussion any reference to the departure of the dictator Assad. In so doing, it deliberately aligned the United States with the Russian and Iranian position on Syria and then applied pressure on regional states to fall in line. It then codified this realignment in a U.N. Security Council resolution that gave cover to Russia’s military campaign in Syria under the guise of fighting terrorism.

The administration’s moves have also molded reality on battlefields across Syria. Whether by standing with Russia against NATO member state Turkey, or by supporting militias that work with Russia against mainstream rebels, the administration’s decisions have consistently empowered the Russian-Iranian camp and undercut the opposing camp.

The White House’s moves cannot be understood apart from Russia’s, with which they formed a coherent military-diplomatic strategy aimed at bringing about a very specific result in Syria. And so, while it may appear that the administration’s policy is one of passivity, accompanied by some more or less sincere hand-wringing, in fact it is actively working hand in glove with Russia in creating a new reality in Syria that ensures the continuity of the Assad regime—one of the region’s worst dictatorships, which at this time last year was in serious trouble….

By pressuring the rebels’ regional backers like Turkey and the Gulf states to de-escalate while Russia simultaneously shapes the military environment in Syria unopposed, the administration is actively cooperating with the Russians to back the regional states into a corner and present them with a fait accompli. The more defiant states, like Turkey, are being pressured through active U.S. cooperation with their enemies—which is front page news in Turkey, even if few in Beltway pundit circles appear to notice or care.

Aside from perpetuating the horrific slaughter of the Syrian people and overseeing a population displacement on a massive scale, one likely result of this policy will be the complete collapse not only of traditional U.S. alliances in the Middle East, but of post-World War II security structures elsewhere. The United States is now partnering with Russia to line NATO’s southern border with a consortium of terrorist militias protected by Russian air power and armed with advanced weapons. The message is hard to miss: The old American security treaties, like NATO, that were once the cornerstone of global security arrangements, are barely worth the paper they are printed on. If you are Ukrainian, or Polish, or Estonian, it is impossible not to notice—or to be tempted to start making other arrangements. It is hard to imagine that South Koreans or Japanese—indeed, anyone who has assumed the American security umbrella to be a fact of nature—feel any safer.