When we take an in-depth look at the most recent tension among the Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council following chemical weapons usage in Syria, it is quite evident that world politics around emerging challenges and contradictions continues to be driven by the interaction of power, interests and institutions on the international stage. In the case of Syria, divisions were not only evident of usual global power realignment, with Russia and China on one side of pendulum and the United States (US), Britain and France on the other side, but the divisions among the Western aligned nations of the US, Britain and France emerged as another interesting shifting political tides of our times. In the midst of the growing fray, the British Parliament voted against Prime Minister Cameroon’s interventionist approach, while the Obama administration was meet with a growing opposition among Congress and the population amid a Bipartisan Senate support for intervention. France on the other hand has shifted to seek a United Nations mandate with military action in the language of the said resolution.
But how did the world get to such an abysmal state of uncertainty and confusion in the midst of human quandary and slaughter of innocent men, women and children? What lessons have we drawn from Gas Chambers of Nazi death camps, in Treblinka and Auschwitz? What about the Halabja chemical weapons usage against ethnic Kurds of Northern Iraq by Saddam Hussein? These are some of the questions that should provide a road-map for all players in progressively responding or formulating policy geared towards a containment of the Syrian chemical weapons conundrum.
Arguably, our historical experiences has helped rekindle the building of institutions and mechanisms in support of our collective human conscience barring the use of chemical weapons and laying foundations for their tight knit grip. This led to the birth and growth of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. Although Syria, failed to support such global efforts, for reasons best known to its leaders, the international community was very well aware of Syria’s regional standing as the country with largest chemical weapons stockpile. It is often said that history repeats itself – just as the international community watched Hitler embolden his arsenals with a tight lip, so has it happened in the case of Syria’s stockpiling of chemical weapons. Perhaps the limited use of the chemical nerve agent at this time of the conflict provides us with the opportunity for a collective response to the crisis.
Additionally, when the Syrian crisis began reaching the apex of humanitarian concerns in the midst of tumbling dictatorships in the region, the international respond to the crisis was marred by geopolitical and geo-economic interest. All UN efforts towards adopting a resolution end up in tartars with a veto by both China and Russia, largely as a result of vested “interest” with embedded historical roots. Along similar historical roots, it is worth understanding that Russian geopolitical and geo-economic interested has been emboldened with a social factor of integration and inter-marriages of Russians and ethnic Syrian citizens predominantly from the minority Alawitte ethnic group.
On the other hand, US resilient policy was arguably driven by uncertainty of actors operating within the opposition camp, characterized by both radical and moderate religious groups. In the same vein, a change in US policy to support moderate groups of the opposition was largely driven by US designated terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah and other Iranian groups operating alongside Syrian Government Forces in support of the Assad regime. President Obama’s policy of intervention to degrade Syrian government capabilities in using Chemical Weapons must therefore be understood from both a national and regional security threat to US vested interest. Although the there is a formidable opposition to the Obama interventionist approach in Syria, it is worth understanding that concrete historical experiences made his case legitimate on the implications of Syrian chemical weapons usage on American National Security and the World at-large. Similarly, President Putin’s most recent call for a diplomatic roadmap placing Syrian Chemical Weapons arsenal under the control and subsequent destruction by the international community is a legitimate one; largely driven by his understanding of our world with more multilateralism and not yet a multipolar one, since any US led military intervention will have lasting implications on Russian geopolitical and geo-economic interest
Whereas President Barack Obama painted himself as a national and international security guardian, Vladimir Putin may have done so as a viable diplomatic peacemaker. Perhaps the interaction of power and interest may have largely shaped Syrian policy in both camps, but the most viable approach to the crisis is to draw lessons from concrete historical experiences and use our human conscience in unity to avoid another Hitler turning against even his own prominent supporters –And Obama has brilliantly drawn such historical lessons in his Syrian case.
It is high time to make our world free from such deadly arsenals – Chemical, Biological or Nuclear.
The author is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at New Jersey City University. He is a former Gambian Army First Lieutenant.