Saeed Naqvi | Syria’s collapse to shift focus from Gaza genocide and defeat in Ukraine
Donald Trump was quite clear: “Assad has fled his country. His protector Russia isn’t interested in protecting him any longer.”
How will this echo with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, fighting with his back to the wall in Ukraine. If Russia can drop Assad, will Mr Trump keep an albatross around his neck?
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, fighting with his back to the wall with Hezbollah and Hamas, exulted: “Assad’s fall reverses the most important part of the Shia axis with Iran.” This would ring true if Iran hadn’t sent a polite goodbye to Assad. With usual subtlety, Iran distinguished between Assad and Syria.
The refrain by the key rebel leader, Abu Mohammad al Jolani, that “Syria is for all Sunnis, Alawis, Christians, Druze”, has found wide traction.
Assad’s fall led to the abrupt disappearance from the front page of two wars which kept the world in their thrall. Why should a war heading towards a nuclear exchange be abruptly taken off the airwaves? Because the West was losing?
Not only are the Syrian developments a welcome diversion for the West from wars that weren’t going their way. Assad’s fall also has the potential of being spun as a vindication of the Arab Spring. Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, can claim to be vindicated, even though 2011’s circumstances were different.
The growing consensus among non-mainstream media experts is this: the Western effort in Ukraine is not to accept an obvious defeat. Moreover, everything has to avert a debacle. The new treasure trove in cash and weaponry to Kyiv would, in Mr Trump’s parlance, be tantamount to throwing good money after bad. He is quiet for a simple reason: he would like to negotiate honourably with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He wouldn’t like to throw in the towel but have Volodymyr Zelenskyy walk towards Mr Putin to strike a bargain, however degrading, which the pliant media will sell with favourable headlines.
Of course, there is a pall of mist on the rapidity with which Assad fell. The almost cheerful appearance of Assad and his wife granted asylum in Moscow tells its own tale. The Russian bases in Syria have been promised full protection by the new regime in Damascus.
The stories of vandalism of the Iranian embassy appear to be stray incidents, without any organisational support.
There are so many fingers in the Syrian pie that it is difficult to spot the master choreographer. That Russia has vital interests in Syria, as it does in Ukraine, might make it the key author of the surprising turn.
Two other developments in the region have been marked by their masterly stealth: the Riyadh-Tehran rapprochement and the coming together of all Palestinian groups, from Hamas to the Palestinian Authority. Both these were painstakingly stitched together by China. Never in history have China and Russia been closer.
There have been plenty of agreements on issues stretching from Ukraine to the Eastern Mediterranean. Take the Astana process for Syria, for instance, between Russia, Iran and Turkey.
In this, Turkey was a crucial player. Standing solidly behind Hamas as it faces history’s first live televised genocide, are the following: Iran, Hezbollah, Hazb-al-Shaabi (Iraq) and Yemen’s Houthis of Yemen -- all Shia variants. A prominent role given to Turkey in Syrian affairs brings a major Sunni nation into focus. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s profile gets a boost. Is Azerbaijan part of the deal with Turkey where Iran has considerable interests?
Russia, along with Turkey and Iran, appear to have played an amazing hand. Assad’s fall provides a face-saver for Israel and the US in West Asia and for the West in Ukraine.
Georgia faces a chaotic situation -- where President Salome Zourabichvili refuses to accept the pro-Russia verdict in the October national elections. This isn’t the only flashpoint Mr Trump faces as he enters the White House. America’s key interest in the Pacific Basin has been blown to smithereens by inept politics in South Korea.
Former state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland’s handiwork is tearing Ukraine apart. Likewise, Donald Lu, US undersecretary of state for South Asia, has egg on his face for the explosive situation developing in Bangladesh. Pakistan and Afghanistan are on edge as are Romania and Moldova. After calling snap elections, President Emmanuel Macron finds himself without a government in France as he will not accept a leftist Prime Minister. Fascism stares Germany in the face.
This incomplete list of the world’s chaotic spots is to place in balance the dwindling G-7 and the expanding Brics.
Is isolationism implicit in Donald Trump’s clarion call to “Make America Great Again”?
The United States had faced decline earlier, but it bounced back under Ronald Reagan. The fall of the Soviet Union, for reasons of its own, brought the US into focus as the sole superpower. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 signalled the flaws in the neo-cons’ mismanagement of globalisation.
Mr Trump would do well to remember his conversation with Jimmy Carter. “The Chinese are going ahead of us”, Mr Trump lamented. “What should we do?” Mr Carter’s reply was succinct. “Except for one skirmish with Vietnam in 1979, China has not fought a war. We have never stopped being at war.”
America’s 760 bases worldwide and wars without end were glibly explained: the military-industrial complex has to be kept busy. The defeats in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine should cause military analysts to pause.
The recent relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip by one of the great military powers, without achieving any of its war aims and heaping on itself the odium of being an apartheid state committing genocide for over a year on live television, defies all description. How will Donald Trump cope?
