An Anchorless World
By ROGER COHEN, NYT
BERLIN — At dinner the other night, perusing the debacle that is Syria, a German friend observed: “It’s the post-American world — and that means chaos.” We were joined by John Kornblum, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, whose verdict was similar: “What you’re seeing is the steady break-up of the postwar system.”
The United States, through its secretary of state and president respectively, promises an “unbelievably small” military response to the gassing of hundreds of Syrian children by President Bashar al-Assad, then vows that “the United States military doesn’t do pinpricks,” and then backs away. Britain abandons its closest ally at crunch time. The European Union is divided, Germany silent, France left dangling, and NATO an absentee. If there are other pillars of the trans-Atlantic alliance, do let me know.
Vladimir Putin steps into the Western void, spurred by an off-the-cuff remark in London from John Kerry (that he himself seemed to dismiss), and suddenly Assad’s Syria promises to give up to international supervision the chemical weapons whose existence it has previously denied.
A war-weary America clutches at this Syrian straw and defers to Russian mediation; a congressional vote on military action that President Obama seemed set to lose is indefinitely postponed; Obama uses an awkward prime-time address to say dictators “depend upon the world to look the other way” when they commit atrocities — and so he will, well, pursue a “diplomatic path” for now.
(More here.)
BERLIN — At dinner the other night, perusing the debacle that is Syria, a German friend observed: “It’s the post-American world — and that means chaos.” We were joined by John Kornblum, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, whose verdict was similar: “What you’re seeing is the steady break-up of the postwar system.”
The United States, through its secretary of state and president respectively, promises an “unbelievably small” military response to the gassing of hundreds of Syrian children by President Bashar al-Assad, then vows that “the United States military doesn’t do pinpricks,” and then backs away. Britain abandons its closest ally at crunch time. The European Union is divided, Germany silent, France left dangling, and NATO an absentee. If there are other pillars of the trans-Atlantic alliance, do let me know.
Vladimir Putin steps into the Western void, spurred by an off-the-cuff remark in London from John Kerry (that he himself seemed to dismiss), and suddenly Assad’s Syria promises to give up to international supervision the chemical weapons whose existence it has previously denied.
A war-weary America clutches at this Syrian straw and defers to Russian mediation; a congressional vote on military action that President Obama seemed set to lose is indefinitely postponed; Obama uses an awkward prime-time address to say dictators “depend upon the world to look the other way” when they commit atrocities — and so he will, well, pursue a “diplomatic path” for now.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
I hope this is not what is meant by "Smart Diplomacy." I wonder if this is the change folks were looking for?
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