Foreign policy isn’t domestic politics, and it also shouldn’t be treated being a horse race.
The issue for Syria isn’t that one day Russian President Vladmir Putin expires and President Obama is down, or vice versa.
Ending the prospect that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad again uses chemical weapons is goal. Increasing prospects the Sryian civil war may be halted is an additional.
One’s destiny of the Syrian people influences balance. Who gets credit or blame to the outcome — both at home and abroad — should be secondary to attempting to reach an agreement.
Until now, Obama and Putin have played equal roles. Obama’s threat to work with force responding to Assad’s use of chemical weapons on Aug. 21 was supported with the movement of U.S. destroyers and aircraft carriers into position for such an attack. It clearly led Putin, who is constantly on the deny Assad’s forces used chemical weapons, to decide to do something by using an proven fact that he and Obama had discussed for nearly per year: placing Assad’s chemical stockpile under international control while using eventual goal of destroying it.
Putin’s action came as Obama faced a domestic political challenge — convincing Congress plus the American people which a Syria strike are the right action. When Putin’s offer came, Obama said he’d defer seeking congressional support and hold up ordering any attack to discover if diplomacy perform.
In your own home, Obama has become accused of zigzagging, electric power charge that also could have been leveled at Putin in Russia, if he faced identical standard as Obama.
Two front-page stories in Thursday’s The big apple Times illustrate the problematic horse-race approach on Syria.
“Yet suddenly Mr. Putin has eclipsed Mr. Obama because world leader driving the agenda within the Syria crisis,” the Times story said. It added, “Mr. Putin seems to have achieved several objectives, largely at Washington’s expense.”
“[Putin] has stopped Mr. Obama from on offer the Un Security Council, where Russia holds a veto, to say American priorities unilaterally.”
In a companion story, the periods described Obama as changing course and showing “the rare instance of the commander in chief seemingly thinking out loud and changing his mind on the fly.”
This is too serious a situation to get swept up within the same superficial coverage that marks U.S. elections, where that is ahead and that’s behind eclipses the candidates’ stands on issues.
Thursday’s news conferences showed how difficult it will likely be to realize an answer.
■Timing: In an interview, Assad said that Syria would sign mit Weapons Convention but that it would be thirty days before it might deliver specifics of its stockpile.
On the other hand, Foreign minister John Kerry told reporters in Geneva an agreement he ran with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov needed to be “implemented in a timely fashion,” implying he did not consider thirty days fast enough.
■U.S. aid to Syrian opposition: Assad said, “When the U.S. stops supplying weapons to terrorists and now we see there’re focused on stability in the area, then we’ll be willing to see this method through to the tip.”
For the White House, press secretary Jay Carney told reporters north america have been “stepping up our assistance to the Syrian military opposition, no question,” and indicated it is going to continue no matter what happens in current talks.
■Maintaining the threat of a military attack: Assad said his promise to turn over his chemical stocks “counts first and foremost on the U.S. renouncing threats of force and sticking to the Russian plan.”
Which is not possible.
Kerry known as Obama’s speech the location where the president noted the U.S. “military remains capable to perform plan around holding Assad responsible for his appalling use of chemical weapons against civilians.”
Yet, there was positive signs.
Lavrov said the decision to deal with chemical weapons “gives us a different chance for Geneva II,” the joint U.S.-Russian plan for a conference that might see Syrian groups meeting to generate a post-Assad transitional government.
Kerry asserted although the U . s . and Russia have their share of disagreements, “We agree so it would assistance to save lives if we could achieve this,” meaning the isolation and destruction with the chemical weapons.
The various issues are worth working through, but assessing credit or blame at this stage would be the very last thing on what what is this great media or even the public should be focused.