Bill Carmichael: Timid Obama lets Putin pull strings over Syria and Assad

IT must have been a tense conversation.

Less than 60 minutes before Russian jets attacked rebel positions in Syria this week, a three star general contacted Washington to warn of the operation and bluntly told the Americans to “leave now”.

Was there ever a more graphic illustration of the shifting sands of geo-political power, with the Russians growing increasingly belligerent and the Americans ever more feeble in their response?

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Can you imagine that conversation taking place when Ronald Reagan, or indeed any US president with evidence of a backbone, was in the White House?

But Barack Obama is the very embodiment of weakness and his vacillations have emboldened brutal tyrants around the world. The blunt truth, as shown by the Russian attack this week, is that no one much cares what Obama or America thinks any more.

Back in 2012 Obama was brim full of braggadocio, loudly thumping the table and warning Syria’s tyrant Bashar Assad that if he dared use chemical weapons it would be a “red line” as far as the US was concerned and would lead to dire consequences.

Assad shrugged his shoulders and called his bluff, letting loose rockets containing sarin nerve gas on his own people. If you set out a red line, you have to stick to it if you are to have any credibility in international affairs.

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But Obama bottled this key test. He immediately capitulated and then, humiliatingly, tried to pretend he’d never set out a “red line” in the first place.

Now, more than seven years into his presidency, Obama has failed to formulate anything approaching a cogent foreign policy.

He has snubbed his natural allies, such as Israel, while appeasing the enemies of democracy, such as the ‘death to America’ bigots of Iran.

The contrast with Putin couldn’t be starker. Whatever you think of the Russian president – and I am certainly no fan – he has been consistent, strategically clear-sighted and tough.

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He has clearly decided that Assad, vile monster though he is, is a better bet than the Islamist nutters of the various Syrian rebel groups. Russia has been pouring troops and military equipment into Syria for weeks in order to prop up Assad.

The result is that Russian influence in the Middle East is at its strongest for a quarter of a century with serious consequences for Western interests and the prospects for peace.

And an emboldened, more powerful Putin is also bad news for Europe. Putin has already got away with continued meddling in Ukraine’s affairs, without any effective action by the US or the EU.

Now the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia – all, like Ukraine, with substantial Russian-speaking minorities – are nervously looking over their shoulders at the rampaging Russian bear.

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What if Putin engineers an intervention in say Lithuania, to protect ethnic Russians from “persecution”? Do you think Obama or the EU could suddenly find the determination and courage to defend democracy?

When he was first elected in 2008, Obama said he wanted to “re-set” America’s relationship with the rest of the world. Well, he has certainly achieved that but the result is a disaster for liberty around the globe.

The 16th century Italian writer Niccolo Machiavelli once wrote that it is better to be feared than loved. Obama has managed to achieve neither.

Democracy snub

LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn has announced that if he is elected prime minister he will not under any circumstances use nuclear weapons.

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Hold on! I thought under the “new politics” Corbyn had promised to give party members more of a say in formulating policy.

But delegates at the Labour party conference this week, as well as some of his shadow cabinet and most of his MPs, all back nuclear weapons.

Corbyn’s latest formulation is that he will ‘live with’ Trident if the party backs its replacement. So Labour could go into the next election backing spending £100bn on Trident but only on the understanding that it will never be used in any circumstances. Totally incoherent!

Someone should explain to Corbyn that the whole point of a deterrent is that you are prepared to use it. If you tell all your enemies in advance that you’ll never use it, it is no longer a deterrent.