At last, leaders of the world’s major powers have found some common ground about how to deal with Syria’s bloody civil war. After two years of fruitless and often acrimonious exchanges at the United Nations, the five permanent Security Council members now appear to be in agreement that the best course of action is to place Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons under international supervision.
It says something about the dramatic shift taking place in the global balance of power that this groundbreaking proposal should have emanated from Moscow, rather than Washington, London or Paris. Since the end of the Cold War, the UN agenda has been dominated by the major Western powers, with Russia and China obliged to play a secondary role.
But that was before President Obama formulated the novel approach of responding to international crises by leading from behind, whereby America’s role became that of an interested onlooker. So it should come as no surprise that, with Mr Obama floundering over his threat to launch military action against Syria, it should fall to Moscow to devise a neat diplomatic solution that suits the pro- and anti-Assad lobbies alike.
For when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, no one will defend their use on the battlefields of the 21st century. Even Iran, which has issues of its own regarding illegal arms programmes, is backing the disarmament of its most important ally.
There will be many who argue that, given Russia’s obstructive approach to the many previous attempts to find common ground at the UN, it was high time the Russians came up with a positive proposition, even if it was a piece of diplomatic opportunism inspired by an off-the-cuff remark made by John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, at a press briefing in London.
When Mr Kerry mockingly suggested that the easiest way for the Assad regime to avoid American air strikes would be to surrender Syria’s extensive stockpiles of chemical weapons to international control, he had little inkling that a few hours later his remark would have been turned into a major policy initiative by his Russian rivals.
No doubt the main intention of Sergei Lavrov, Mr Kerry’s opposite number in Moscow, when he announced the plan, was to embarrass the White House just at the moment that Mr Obama was preparing to use all his political capital in Washington to persuade Congress to back his plan to attack the Assad regime.
But if the Russian proposal should be seen as nothing more than an exercise designed to unsettle Mr Obama, that does not mean it is entirely without merit. On the contrary, if any argument is likely to convince sceptical public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic of the need for military intervention, it is the threat posed to our own security by chemical arsenals held by a rogue state such as Syria.
One of the reasons the West has struggled during the past two years to come to grips with the Syrian conflict is that it has failed to identify, let alone articulate, its primary strategic objectives, whether it is setting out its vision for post-Assad Syria or assessing the impact regime change in Damascus would have on staunch allies of the dictator’s clan, such as Iran.
Ridding an unstable country such as Syria of its stockpile of chemicals is another argument that could and should have been used by politicians in London and Washington to persuade citizens to support intervention. For all the controversies that have raged over the past decade on issues like Iraq and Iran’s nuclear programme, a broad consensus remains that extremist terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda must be prevented from acquiring WMD at all costs.
Islamist fanatics make no secret of their desire to acquire weapons that are capable of inflicting carnage in the West, and it is known that radical groups fighting in Syria such as the al-Nusra Front have made attempts to acquire the estimated 500-1,000 tons of chemical weapons the Assad regime has stored at secret facilities around the country.
The prospect that lethal agents, such as those used in the devastating attack on Damascus last month, killing hundreds of civilians, might fall into the hands of
al-Qaeda and its affiliates is a compelling argument in favour of supporting the Russian initiative, irrespective of Moscow’s motives for putting it forward.
The only drawback with this otherwise responsible approach to limiting the effects of the Syrian crisis on the rest of the region is that, as with so many UN schemes, it is completely out of touch with reality. For a start, not even the Russians, with their favoured-nation status in Damascus, will be able to guarantee the safety of any teams of UN inspectors sent to dismantle the weapons stockpiles.
Nor do we have any assurances that Assad will not indulge in the same delaying tactics that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used in the Nineties to prevent inspection teams from making a full assessment of his WMD capabilities. Saddam’s intransigence led to the controversial military invasion that secured his overthrow, but little else. Given Assad’s confrontational approach to the West during the past two years, there is no reason to believe this Ba’athist dictatorship will act any differently. In which case, Mr Obama will not find it any easier to avoid the clamour for the White House to take decisive action.
Con Coughlin is an expert on international terrorism and the Middle East.