Beware the tradeoffs

Important decisions are pending the next few days on Syria.  The two key immediate questions are these:  will the Arab League extend its human rights monitoring mission?  Will the UN Security Council finally condemn the crackdown?

The Arab League mission has not been able to protect civilians or notably reduce the intensity of the crackdown.  But the observers are bringing out large crowds of peaceful demonstrators and documenting abuses, which are two good results.  The Arab League should decide the issue of whether their mission should be extended not on the basis of whether they have “succeeded,” but rather on the basis of what will be most helpful to peaceful protests and civilian protection.  Syria needs more observers for these purposes, not fewer.  UN training for them is just beginning.  At least another month is required before the Arab League gives serious consideration to abandoning the mission, and even then it will be important to consider the consequences for peaceful protest and civilian protection.  No one should be fooled by the Qatari advocacy of armed Arab League intervention:  it isn’t going to happen.

A UN Security Council resolution on Syria would vastly improve the odds for real success of the Arab League mission.  The day Bashar al Assad feels the cold hand of Prime Minister Putin pushing him aside is the day the game changes fundamentally in Syria.  But Russia has little interest in handing the West a victory in Syria, especially if it would mean losing an important naval base on the Mediterranean.  Putin will move against Bashar only if doing so will help to save this asset, not lose it.  That is a high price for the Syrians to pay, but it may not be avoidable.  That’s one tradeoff.

Then Bashar would have only Iran as a key pillar of international support.  Americans think of Syria and Iran as two separate issues, but to Tehran they are just related theaters of struggle with the U.S.  Loss of Syria as an ally and link to Hizbollah in Lebanon would be a serious blow to Iran, which is in a spiral of heightening tensions with the U.S. over the strait of Hormuz, planned sanctions that will reduce Iranian oil exports and most fundamentally the Iranian nuclear program.  July 1 is emerging as the consensus date for Europe and the U.S. to implement new sanctions.  That will be in the midst of a U.S. electoral campaign in which the Republican candidate–most likely Mitt Romney, but it really doesn’t matter who it is–will be pushing for military action.

Iran is supposed to meet with the Americans and Europeans in Turkey still this month to discuss the nuclear impasse.  Even the Israelis seem to think the Iranians have not yet decided to build nuclear weapons.  Syrians should want to watch that closely:  it is not impossible that they will be sold out in exchange for a nuclear deal.  It is hard to picture the U.S. winning on both the Syrian and nuclear fronts, but if the Administration succeeds at that I’ll be the first to offer heartiest congratulations!

Let there be no doubt:  if Washington has to choose between stopping Iran short of a nuclear weapon and toppling Bashar al Assad, it will choose the former, not the latter.  That’s a second possible tradeoff.

Beware the tradeoffs.  They are a lot of what diplomacy is about.