WarSclerotic

There is a remote possibility that the Russian strategy will succeed in averting U.S. military action by persuading Syrian President Bashar Assad to hand over his chemical weapons of mass destruction for demolition by international inspectors. But even if that happens, President Barack Obama’s vacillating response to the horrors in Syria will still be considered another manifestation of America’s ongoing erosion of its superpower role as guardian of the free world against the burgeoning forces of Islamic terrorism.

In the absence of effective presidential leadership, the American people have grown weary of shouldering the burden of policing the world and sending their youngsters to battle extremists in faraway places. Obama’s policies have dramatically revived America’s dormant isolationist inclinations.

This is fortified by the Europeans, who, absorbed by post-modern moral relativism, refuse to share the burden and are now barely willing to even symbolically endorse the engagement of the U.S. in global military initiatives, as well as to contain Islamic terror. Burying their heads in the sand, Western nations seem to deny that jihadism, much like Nazism and communism, represents a fundamental threat to Western civilization, and if not confronted, will ultimately wreak havoc in their own neighborhoods.

Obama’s procrastination and unpredictability have already convinced U.S. allies, including the so-called moderate Arab states, that America has become a paper tiger. Understandably, they no longer believe that they can rely on a vacillating, indecisive commander-in-chief. In their eyes even the ineffective former President Jimmy Carter appears to be a valiant warrior compared to the dithering Obama.

This attitude is unlikely to change, irrespective of whether Congress endorses Obama’s request to punish Assad for gassing his own people. Even if Congress approves an American strike, it will be a limited maneuver, neither intended nor likely to produce regime change. It will probably have negligible deterrent effect and may even enable Assad to portray himself as the heroic victor who triumphed against the mighty U.S.

Israel stands in a difficult position in the midst of the tension. Understandably, it is unwilling to side either with the murderous Assad or the monstrous al-Qaida terrorists now dominant amongst the Syrian rebels. There is little doubt that we would wish a plague on both their houses.

But Israel recognizes that if, after Obama’s repeated promise to act if Assad crossed the “red lines” and employed chemical weapons, Congress rejects his request for a military response, the weakened president would suffer further humiliation, highlighting U.S. impotence and strengthening the isolationist trends that have already dramatically impacted on American public opinion. This would have severe negative ramifications for Israel and the entire region and, above all, embolden the Iranians to continue working toward their nuclear objective.

Conscious of the overriding Iranian issue, Israel does not wish to see Congress humiliating the president in this context. But it neither wants to become embroiled in the Syrian civil war nor lay itself open to accusations of dragging America into a new conflict.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to be credited for acting with diplomatic astuteness. He has muzzled his traditionally outspoken and irresponsible ministers. He has succeeded in walking a diplomatic tightrope in avoiding humiliating Obama while simultaneously sending a clear message to the Syrians that if they implement their threats to attack Israel, it would not remain passive as it did during the Iraqi war.

American Jewish organizations find themselves in a bind. In a bizarre turn of events, the Obama administration has turned to Israel and AIPAC to lobby Congress on its behalf. The major American Jewish organizations reluctantly responded positively and urged Congress to endorse the president’s request, but are attempting to distinguish this from their traditional pro-Israel lobbying. However, this is a no-win situation. Should Congress approve a military strike, it will face accusations of dragging their country into a new conflict. Conversely, should Congress reject Obama, the intervention will result in severe damage to the standing of the Jewish lobby in the American political arena.

For Israel, it is crucial that in conjunction with increasing Islamic fundamentalist threats in the region, it factors the new U.S. isolationism and European indifference into its strategic planning. We must absorb the reality that we are a people who stand alone and can depend on no one but ourselves to deter our adversaries.

Our greatest concern remains Iran. If the U.S. and the West are incapable of deterring Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, we will be obliged to make difficult decisions, weighing the diplomatic consequences and considering the practicality and chances of success in initiating independent action.

This must also serve to strengthen our resolve to bury any remaining delusions that we can rely on third parties to guarantee borders or intervene in a crisis in relation to the Palestinians. In this Alice in Wonderland environment, the U.S. and the Western European countries are unlikely to ease pressures on us to make further unilateral concessions. Even our “friends” are more inclined to focus on the construction of homes in the Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem than on Syrians massacring of thousands of their own people.

In the foreseeable future, in the absence of Palestinian leaders genuinely committed to peaceful coexistence, it would be insane for us to succumb to global pressures to make further unilateral concessions, ease security or cede additional territories without genuine reciprocity.

At the same time, we should take solace in the fact that there are also positive developments that benefit us.

Despite the Obama administration’s retreat towards isolationism, the American people and Congress continue to support Israel enthusiastically. This is of critical importance because, whereas we have never asked the U.S. or any other country to engage in wars on our behalf, the U.S. backing ensures that we retain the edge with access to the latest technological military equipment and enables us to defend ourselves and effectively deter the barbarians at our gates.

This also makes it unlikely that U.S. would totally abandon us in the diplomatic and political arena, and would continue acting as a barrier against those seeking to impose sanctions against us.

Despite the active presence of jihadists among our neighbors, at a time when the military power of some of our most committed adversaries has dramatically eroded, our military strength is at an all-time high. This significantly diminishes the threat of a conventional war of aggression against us. In fact, the IDF today is capable of deterring all our adversaries combined. We must of course continue to strengthen and develop our military superiority.

Another important positive development for Israel has been the Egyptian revolt against the Muslim Brotherhood regime, preventing the rise of an Islamic totalitarian dictatorship. This represents a major body blow to Hamas, effectively an extension of the Brotherhood and considered as such by the new Egyptian regime. It has already resulted in military action against the jihadists in Sinai, lessening a major threat to security on Israel’s southern border.

Overall, when one balances the positive developments within the regional turmoil, it is clear that despite frequent gloomy and pessimistic chatter, we can regard Israel’s position as one of strength.

The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com.

Here is a little reminder for U.S. President Barack Obama: 52 years ago, Presidents John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev met in Vienna. The Russian was under the impression that the American was a “lightweight” and humiliated him. This erroneous assumption brought the world to the brink of nuclear war over the Soviets’ intentions to deploy ballistic missiles in Cuba.

Russia is always on the lookout for its adversaries’ weaknesses, and never misses an opportunity to pounce. Russian President Vladimir Putin is that kind of leader.

This is not a whim on Russia’s part. When U.S. President Ronald Reagan embraced the Star Wars strategic defense initiative, this pushed Moscow out of its joint world leader position and left its economy and technology behind in the dust. Star Wars propelled the collapse of the communist regime in Moscow, and Russia never forgot, and never forgave.

Putin is an aggressive, ambitious, determined and cynical leader, who pays little attention to public opinion in his country. Obama or Jimmy Carter would have never crushed the Chechen rebels with the same brutality as Putin did. While Obama stressed that he was appalled by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Putin did not as much as mumble that it was “horrible” or a “crime against humanity,” calmly blaming the rebels for the attack instead.

Putin does not feel obligated by the international community’s criteria. Several days ago, Russia officially protested the ballistic missile test Israel conducted in the Mediterranean Sea last week, citing “the sensitive security situation” in the region, and then turned around and announced that it was planning to help Iran build a new nuclear reactor and make good on its promise to deliver S-300 anti-aircraft batteries to Tehran.

The events surrounding Syria’s chemical weapons’ stockpile are surprisingly similar to the U.S.-Russian face-off in the days of Kennedy and Khrushchev, when they locked horns over missiles stationed in Cuba and Turkey, as well as to the struggle between East and West over the Berlin Wall and the support Russia gave Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in building the Aswan Dam, pushing the U.S. aside.

The same countries are facing off again now. Putin is bolstering his position with the nations making up the axis of evil and the U.S. is perceived as weak. It is highly likely that the American intelligence services have already detected the traces of conservative Arab regimes which are secretly pursuing negotiations with Russia. This is a dangerous development.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry knows that. He has said that the U.S. and Russia say one thing but mean another, and that the focus is on Syria but the ramifications will affect the Iranian nuclear program. President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon have said so as well, but while Peres has faith in American deterrence, Netanyahu and Ya’alon remain mum.

We can only hope that Obama is able to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons, which is a lengthy process under the best of circumstances, without firing a single Tomahawk missile. But the American president, who has lost precious time in favor of testing the credibility of his deterrence against Iran and may have even crossed the point of no return, may soon find himself fooled by the Russians. After all, they are experts on the subject.

Customarily, the power of presidential speeches is in their ability to recognize the public’s desires (even if those are still hidden) and translate them efficiently and with conviction into specific policies that will then garner the president widespread support.

A clear illustration of this can be found in a speech by former President Lyndon B. Johnson on March 15, 1965. With his honed political instincts (which abandoned him in the Vietnamese jungles), Johnson understood that the time was right to open a new door for racial equality in America, and his unforgettable speech provided the moral and ethical framework for supporting far-reaching legislative initiatives.

In contrast, in his speech to the nation on Tuesday, President Barack Obama was unable to bridge the gap between the public’s preferred course of action and his own over the situation in Syria. His speech was rife with contradictions and lacked any message of substance. On the one hand, his words expressed an uncompromising militancy and saber rattling over the war crimes committed by the regime in Damascus. However, by the time the speech was given it was even clearer to everyone that the chances of Obama following through with his threat of a military operation were slim to none.

Indeed, not only did the White House’s public relations barrage on the Congress do little to soften it or the public’s opposition to a military strike (essentially rendering it a mere pipe dream), with his speech he granted support — even if only partial and temporary — to the diplomatic guidelines set out by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin to resolve the Syrian crisis.

With this in mind, Obama’s aggressive words rang especially hollow, and once again exposed America’s complete and utter foreign policy bankruptcy under his stewardship, because the option of a military strike has been shelved for now.

One gets the impression that the White House was unable to bridge the gap between America’s hegemony (and the responsibility that comes with this status to ensure the safety and welfare of the international community, particularly in light of the horrific use of chemical weapons in Damascus, which the president recounted in chilling detail), and Obama’s fundamental ambition, which he expressed in his speech, not to be the “world’s policeman.”

The president’s allegedly firm commitment to punish the Syrian regime stood, therefore, in contradiction with the vast majority of the American public’s desire to disengage from the battlefields and crisis centers in the international arena, which do not pose a clear and present danger to American security. Because the desire to focus on domestic matters was Obama’s own original calling card, we can better understand why his message was full of dialectical contradictions that provide no logical recourse.

In the end, Obama’s speech to the nation, which was more of a passionless didactic recitation, will not go down in the history books as a defining moment. At the most it will be a footnote in the chapter about the incomprehensible chasm between rhetoric and reality.

Even the speaker’s considerable oratory talents were unable to extricate him from the Catch 22 into which he has, with his own hands, put himself. In this regard, the president’s speech was more a fledgling’s chirp than the proud battle cry of the American eagle.

It is doubtful that a young Soviet intelligence officer (ambitious but quite dull, according to accounts) serving in East Germany thought that one day, as president of Russia, he would be able to recruit and operate the president of the world’s largest power.

With each passing hour, news is developing at a dizzying pace. Two presidents, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and America’s Barack Obama, are sitting and thinking how to pre-empt the other with creative — or, more correctly, destructive — ideas.

While Obama turned to Congress and stuck to the liberal tradition of zigzagging and exuding a lack of leadership, Putin shuffled the deck and has emerged as more of a Democrat than the Democratic president of the U.S. With Putin defending the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of foreign countries, how can anyone imagine a cruise missile attack on a sovereign nation? Putin is presenting himself as the guardian of regional and world peace against U.S. war plans.

In international relations, there cannot be a vacuum. The Russians are agile and sophisticated, moving into areas left vacant by American vacillation and lack of leadership. All of Russia’s moves indicate that, even if there is some behind-the-scenes coordination with the U.S. on Russia’s Syria proposal, Putin is dictating the pace, forcing Obama’s advisers to rewrite the American president’s speeches on his way to the microphone.

Syria, although not necessarily Bashar Assad personally, is an important strategic Russian outpost in the eastern Mediterranean region. Russia is also strengthening its alliance with Iran by supplying it with anti-aircraft missiles and a nuclear reactor. And, of course, Russian has included Iran, which “maintains international law and morals,” in talks that will give Assad more time to continue massacring his people (without gas) and Iran more time to build up its nuclear power.

While Obama is shuffling between news outlets and sweating between each interview, Putin’s communications effort has been much more coordinated. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, an experienced diplomat and tough negotiator, does not say things that were not approved by Putin.

Several years ago, Obama announced the turning of a new page in U.S.-Russia relations. But Obama did not imagine that the contents of the new page would be dictated by Putin on the Russian president’s terms.

Russia is now operating cylinders that it had shut down in the past. For the past two years, Russia has blocked all international moves to look into what is taking place in Syria.

The U.S. is trying to determine whether Russia’s diplomatic proposal on Syria is serious. It is not known what American experts will conclude, but one thing is clear: Russian experts all agree that the Americans are not serious, until proved otherwise.

We may have to shift from the image of a Russian bear, heavy and clumsy, to one of a Russian fox, fast and cunning.

Dr. Rafi Vago teaches Eastern European history at Tel Aviv University.