The extreme shock demonstrated by the French government and people at the attacks on individuals in Paris has been obvious. And in comes after the relatively unexpected mass movement of migrants from the Middle East, and Syria in particular, in the last few months, as well as from persons experiencing extreme physical pressure in Libya and neighbouring countries in Africa facing the Middle East.
It comes too, after persistent indications, over the last year at least, from the government of Turkey, that the migration of Syrians to that country was creating a situation of intense pressure with which it was proving difficult to cope; and which therefore required an international effort to inhibit the intolerable conditions facing that government.
In fact, however, the problem of migration from those countries seemed not to attract the determined attention of the Western or Nato powers, part of the reason for this being a preoccupation on their part with Russia and President Putin’s policies over the last few years, leading to a diplomatic difficulty in perceiving the difficulties in the Middle East as requiring the determined attention of the major powers of the United Nations as a whole.
It has, in that context, been interesting to observe the Western powers relatively restrained response to the recent bombing of the aircraft carrying Russian tourists returning from Egypt; a restraint that has obviously been influenced by the Russian intervention in the Ukraine which has resulted in limited cooperation with Russia on issues of major international concern.
This situation was also demonstrated in a certain scepticism about Russia initiating a bombing campaign in Syria in support of the regime of President Assad, in the context of the civil war persisting there. Indeed part of this American scepticism was the result of a degree of Congressional scepticism in the United States concerning President Obama’s search for a strategy requiring the cooperation of Russia, to limit Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The President’s initiative, it will be recalled, also resulted in extensive hostility from the Government of Israel, leading to an unprecedented intervention in the functioning of the American Congress by Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, including his determined attempt to influence the Republican members of the American Senate against the conclusions of the negotiation with Iran.
Netanyahu’s effort, in conjunction with Nato’s continuing hostility to Putin, seemed to induce the President to act with restraint in respect of further cooperation with the Russian president in dealing with the worsening situation in the Syrian civil war. But in effect, the US has now felt compelled to take cognizance of the significance of Putin’s bombing intervention in Syria, in spite of significant differences between the policy lines of the Russian and the Nato powers. And most visible has been the immediate recourse to bombing of the IS forces in Syria by France, in quick response to the rampage last weekend by IS forces.
It may, at this time, seem cynical to observe that the Russian intervention, followed by this week’s events in France has now forced the Nato powers to undertake a more collectively systematic perspective on the varying significances of the Syrian civil war, including the issue of the extent to which a certain degree of cooperation is required between Nato and the Russian government, in spite of prevailing issues dividing the two parties.
What also seems likely to happen is a lessening of a controversy that seemed to be beginning to emerge in the United States partly in the context of the presidential race, of the extent of the legitimacy of then President George W Bush’s virtual unilateral intervention in Iraq (though supported by then Prime Minister Blair of Britain), and the removal of Saddam Hussein whom the United States had supported in Iraq’s war with Iran. For in that context, a central part of then presidential candidate Obama’s electoral strategy for the presidency, was to delegitimize that intervention as mistaken.
It seems that the increasingly severe consequences of the Syrian civil war, and indeed a continuing uncertainty about the stability of the political system of Iraq into which IS has intervened, when related now to the IS intervention in France, seem likely to push the United States and its Nato allies to seek to pursue a diplomatic strategy with Russia. For following the bombing of the aircraft transporting its citizens, that country would now seem to claim a legitimate participation in a joint strategy to deal with IS.
In that context, what would appear to follow is a process of diplomatic negotiations among the various major countries, dealing with how to arrange a collective conclusion about the nature of a future political regime in Syria, including the future of President Assad.
Influencing a conclusion, however, will be the perspective of President Obama on the extent of any military posture on the part of the United States, given his original perspective, and circumstances that include coming presidential and congressional elections in which the validity of the President’s original and forthcoming strategies will inevitably be part of the popular electoral judgement.
And this in turn, in the context of IS’s increasing boldness, is likely to induce not simply an agreed Nato posture, but two other things: first, a normalization of relations with Russia, now, no doubt, deeming itself to have a vested interest in the outcome of events in the Middle East; and secondly, an American effort to seek to stabilize the continued uncertainty of the Iraqi political situation, President George W Bush’s unfinished business, now influencing the posture of President Obama’s diplomacy towards the end of his term.
