QOTD

From John Bolton in the February 20th Weekly Standard:

[T]he unfolding Syria debacle has also revealed just how feckless the Obama administration’s distress with the Assad family dictatorship really was. From once eagerly seeking ever-closer relations with the Baath party thugs in Damascus, Obama has moved excruciatingly slowly to understanding that Syria is part of the Middle Eastern problem, not part of the solution. 

Even when he acted on that long-delayed epiphany, Obama still believed the United Nations could somehow play a key role in bringing sweetness and light to Syria. But what started as a strong draft resolution--imposing significant economic sanctions on Syria, creating a partial weapons embargo, and unambiguously calling for Assad’s ouster--was steadily whittled away by Russian and Chinese contumacy. By the final Security Council vote on February 4, the text was a parody of its former self, and even that remaining hulk was holed and sunk by the disdainful vetoes. 

The Obama administration was shocked, shocked that such things could happen. “What more do we need to know to act decisively in the Security Council?” complained Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, later declaring the council to have been “neutered” and a “travesty.” U.N. ambassador Susan Rice pronounced herself “disgusted.” So much for the U.N. And so much for the highly touted, but now apparently misplaced “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations.

What will emerge from the wreckage of Obama’s Syria policy remains unclear, but Russia and China have demonstrated the U.N. will play no role contrary to their interests. Obama has failed to appreciate the geopolitical linkage between Assad’s regime and Tehran, and the protective ring thrown around both by Russia and China. Most significantly, whatever conclusions one draws about the Arab Spring--good or bad, optimistic or pessimistic--Syria is radically different from its other manifestations because of one central fact: the malign presence of Iran.

As the Syrian civilian death toll mounted while the council dithered, even full Arab League involvement did not sway Russia and China. On Iran, where Arab fears of a nuclear weapon essentially mirror Israel’s, Moscow and Beijing will prove to be equally unimpressed. Unilateral U.S. sanctions aimed at Iran’s central bank, and the EU’s new oil sanctions, have no chance of council endorsement, thus allowing nations like India and Turkey to go their merry, and unhelpful, ways.

Accordingly, there will be no dramatic Security Council action to administer the coup de grâce against Iran: no further U.N. sanctions; nothing that could be used to enforce existing sanctions militarily; and, most emphatically, nothing that even the cleverest wordsmith could argue authorized force to cripple the nuclear program, or to effect regime change in Iran.

Agreed.