Defusing the Syrian Chemical Weapons Crisis - Part I: Diplomacy Trumps Warfare

            A dramatic week that began last Monday with the widespread expectation that a punishing United States missile and bomber attack on Syrian military and command targets was imminent had turned by Friday into a US-Russian joint plan to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under United Nations auspices. Furthermore, Syria has agreed to ratify and comply with the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, which requires all parties to declare the size and location of their chemical arsenals, and to destroy them under United Nations supervision.

On Monday morning, September 9, at a press conference in London, Secretary of State John Kerry, in a seemingly offhand remark, asserted that the only way the United States would  consider abandoning its plans to attack would be if Syria immediately agreed to dismantle its chemical arsenal.  Asked if Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad could avoid an attack, Kerry replied, “Sure. He could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay.”

Then, while Kerry’s flight home to Washington was still in midair, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a statement that

 “We are calling on the Syrian authorities to not only agree on putting chemical weapons storages under international control but also for its further destruction and then joining the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”

Then the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Moualem, who just happened to be in Moscow to meet with his counterpart Lavrov, immediately announced that his government “welcomes Russia’s initiative, based on the Syrian government’s care about the lives of our people and security of our country.”

On Tuesday, September 10, President Obama addressed the American people in a speech that ended by welcoming the potential diplomatic resolution of the crisis but emphasized American readiness to attack if diplomacy failed.

On Thursday, September 12, Russian President Putin, in an op-ed column in the New York Times, welcomed the potential diplomatic solution as well.

The same day, Syria submitted to the United Nations a letter announcing its intention to comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention,

On Saturday, September 14, the United States and Russia announced a deal to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by mid-2014.

On Sunday, September 15, Syria deposited its formal instrument of accession to the CWC.

And while the US Defense Department declared that it was still ready to strike at any time, by the weekend it was clear that the fix was in and there would be no attack.

The rapid sequence of events was so seamless that it is hard to believe that it had not been carefully orchestrated in such a way that all parties could claim that they had played an important and productive role in averting a wider war and in finding a diplomatic solution: the United States showing resolve to attack if necessary but able to claim that the credibility of its resolve to attack had led to a welcome diplomatic solution; Russia emphasizing that the benefits of its close relationship with Syria had made the breakthrough possible; Syria asserting its willingness to adhere to international norms.

Orchestrated or not, the week’s events did produce a significant result beyond the diplomatic window-dressing: not only was Syria compelled to acknowledge for the first time that it did possess a chemical arsenal but it agreed to dismantle it and join the OPCW; it is highly unlikely to ever again launch a chemical weapons attack on its own people without risking a global response, no longer simply an American reaction.

Lest we congratulate the parties on averting a potentially horrifying disaster, let us remember that the devastating Syrian civil war goes on unabated, with thousands killed, nearly a third of the country's population jammed in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, severely taxing the resources of the host countries and the United Nations to feed and house them -- and no end to the fighting is in sight.  

It would be a triumph if the momentum of the resolution of the chemical weapons issue can now result in serious efforts, under United Nations auspices, to end the fighting, return the displaced population to what is left of its homes, and find a viable resolution to the sectarian divisions that have caused so much bloodshed. Then the rebuilding of a ruined country can begin.