It took one Scotsman, in defense of the promiscuous virtues of another, to remark of his countrymen that there was "no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality." American morality has taken a rather harsh beating of late, but there's still nothing so ridiculous as watching an entire media class in one of its periodical fits of blind optimism. No matter that mass murder continues unabated in the Middle East at the behest or prompting of dictatorial regimes whose histories for stalling, deceiving, and otherwise embarrassing the West are notorious. The new narrative this autumn is that America's old enemies are just new friends waiting to be made.
President Obama's brief phone call with Iran's clerical president and his inking of a disarmament deal with Vladimir Putin, both of which happened at the margins of the UN General Assembly meeting last week, elicited hearty self-congratulations for unprecedented "diplomatic breakthroughs." Yet unnoticed by those now competing to decide when exactly the gates of Imam Khomeini International Airport will open to American tourists is the unmistakable fact if any meaningful behind-the-scenes deal-making is currently underway, then it is between and among Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus. All three have only exploited the August 21 sarin attack on Ghouta by solidifying their pre-existing alliances with one another and coordinating a clever new propaganda campaign aimed directly at an antiwar American electorate, the importance of which they only accidentally discovered after the White House insisted on asking Congress to authorize airstrikes on Syria.
This strategic realignment, borne of a mass atrocity either carried out or excused by these same state actors, would be bad enough to witness if the Obama administration hadn't mistaken it as a genuine opportunity for good-faith engagement and in the process alienated two of its most important allies, France and Saudi Arabia.
So let's evaluate what's actually happened in that timeframe apart from the warm smiles, bilateral Twitter flirtations, and cable news charm offensives by tyrants by which pundits seem more fascinated.
Assad's banker
On September 2, Reuters reported that the number of Russian ships traveling to Syria from a Ukrainian port used by Rosoboronexport, Moscow's state arms dealer, had "increased sharply since April." Fourteen vessels in total journeyed from Oktyabrsk to Syria's Tartous in the past year and a half, a time period which has also seen an uptick in Bashar al-Assad's willingness to pay off his defense debts to Russia, including for S-300 anti-aircraft batteries, which so exercise the Israelis, and 36 Yak-130 trainer fighter jets, which so exercise Syrian civilians who'll be bombed by them. Reuters further helpfully determined that major state-owned Russian banks - principally VTB, VEB, and Gazprombank - have been taking the regime's deposits, while Assad's uncle Mohammed Makhlouf, who lives in a Soviet-era hotel in Moscow, personally oversees the family's finances in Russia. One Russian arms industry source said to the news agency: "About a year ago they put [some small arms deliveries] on hold. But after Putin got angry in the lead up to talks about Geneva II, the green light was given for limited small arms deliveries."
High off their diplomatic "victory" in averting US war and yet still leery of long-term American designs, Moscow will proceed apace with this arming even if all the sarin and VX warheads in Syria are banjaxed - itself a far from certain prospect. But what is the likelihood that Assad's non-compliance with the chemical disarmament agreement (about which more later) will ever even include international sanctions so long as Putin is acting as his personal banker and weapons vendor and has veto power at the Security Council? I think I know the answer.
9/11 as bully pulpit
September 11 was a day once known for commemorating an unprecedented terrorist attack on American soil. Now it's seen as a fit occasion for our KGB partners in peace to humiliate the United States and not-so-obliquely threaten it with further terrorist attacks. First Putin published his notorious New York Times op-ed, in which, sniffing the isolationist sentiment on the shores, he reminded Americans of their recent messy entanglements in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and closed by asking if they had the right to really feel all that "exceptional." The same day, Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Duma's foreign affairs committee, told his rubber-stamp parliament that if the US attacked the Assad regime, then Russia would not only increase arms sales to Iran but rethink its cooperation with the Pentagon's grinding war effort in Afghanistan. To show that Pushkov meant business, Russia also leaked the news - again on September 11 - that its once high-profile plan to sell Iran S-300 missile batteries was back on. Originally brokered in 2007, then scuppered in 2010 in deference to strenuous US objections and the now obituarized "reset," the cancelled deal caused the mullahs to file a $4 billion lawsuit against Russia for breach of contract. Well, apparently that's all been settled out of court now to both parties' mutual satisfaction and then some. Moscow will also help Iran construct another "civilian" nuclear reactor for an estimated $800 million.
