Syria is on the agenda of the UN Security Council this week, which above all means one thing: The bear is back. Russia is determined to prove itself a power that can determine the course of world events — at the West’s (and Syria’s) expense.
The council met yesterday with all the drama it reserves for major global events, complete with high-level representation from top powers, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and foreign ministers from Britain, France and Germany.
The dog that didn’t bark was the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov — who declined to interrupt his January vacation in warm New Zealand. Smart diplomats know a major diss when they see it, even if they use more delicate language to describe it.
Moscow signaled as clearly as it can that, as its UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin put it yesterday, the Security Council “should be guided by the principle of non-interference” in Syria’s internal affairs — even if the Arab League has initiated that interference.
The league’s secretary general, Nabil al-Araby, briefed the council yesterday, with Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Al-Thani at his side, about the group’s road map for transferring power in Syria to new, democratically elected rulers.
The West and the Persian Gulf potentates want the council to endorse the plan, which begins with President Bashar al-Assad’s “delegation” of his “full authority” to a Syrian deputy. Tough luck, Russia and China say — such an endorsement interferes too much in the affairs of a sovereign nation.
Russia’s real gripes start with the fact that the plan would push its decades-old ally, the Assad clan, out of power, but there’s more:
* Strategic access: Ever since the czars made Russia a major power, Moscow has sought a warm-water port so its fleet can sail the world’s seas even during its frozen winter. The only such access Russia still enjoys is in Tartus, Syria; it recently invested a lot of money and sweat equity to upgrade that Mediterranean port, which it now worries would be lost if Assad falls. (It also has several high-tech listening posts in Syria, gathering regional intelligence.)
* Prestige: Russia wants to signal to the region that it stands by its allies — unlike America, which dropped Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in the face of public unrest.
* Politics: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is running to recapture Russia’s presidency in March, promising that his toughness will restore the country’s greatness. Opposing the Europeans and Americans on Syria boosts his strongman image.
Then again, one day soon Russia may conclude — like pretty much everybody else — that Assad is a goner. At that point, it might try to influence the Arab-Western road map in order to secure its Syrian assets.
Either way, one factor that’s conspicuously absent from Moscow’s calculations is the Obama “reset.”
Early on, President Obama believed that if he showed good will by (most notably) canceling missile-defense projects in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia would then cooperate on issues important to us, such as Security Council showdowns on Iran and now Syria.
No dice. Moscow pocketed Obama’s concessions, but for months UN diplomats have been feeling what one diplomat calls the “re-Putinization” of Russia’s foreign policy: resistance to any Western initiative that comes down the pike.
Yes, a Security Council resolution could be useful if it helps smooth the rough transition out of tyranny — not only in post-Assad Syria, but across the Arab world. But Washington has now spent months getting us here — handing the lead to the Europeans, who promptly put the Gulf Arabs in front (albeit, some say, while still pulling the strings). And “here,” now that the Arab League has unsurprisingly proved no match for Assad’s butchery, is back at the Security Council.
Which is the last global arena where Russia is as powerful as it was during the Cold War, and so takes its clout as far as it can. Though Churkin sounded a conciliatory note yesterday, Moscow’s expected nyet will kill the European-Arab proposal when it comes to a vote (likely on Friday) — unless the Europeans agree to gut it.
The UN game is stacked against the United States; if we want to influence global events, we should lead in a different arena — namely, the real world.
Twitter: @bennyavni