Israel Matzav

Sometimes, symbolism matters

As many of you know, I've done a fair amount of business in my other career (Mrs. Carl would be happy if I would do more), and I've been around some pretty large and successful corporations. Anyone who has ever been around a corporation knows that there's a big difference between an office to which you send a mid-level manager who calls every time a decision needs to be made, and a subsidiary that has its own Chief Executive Officer, who makes his own decisions and comes back only to consult on broad policy issues. Whether you set up a branch office or a subsidiary often gives some indication of how important the company considers the market in which the branch or subsidiary operates to be. If it's a subsidiary, it means that this is a market that's important to me. If it's a branch, then it's really just an appendage, and for now at least, I expect it to contribute less to my bottom line.

So too in the world of diplomacy. If I have an embassy in a country, that's far different than having an 'interests section' in another country's embassy. The 'interests section' means I want as little to do with this country as possible, but I have to watch out for my citizens' interest there. If I have an embassy but no ambassador, it's like the branch office. It means that I have to maintain relations with the country, but I don't want to give them a sense of importance, so I run my affairs there from my home base. And if there's an ambassador there - that means this country is important to me.

When the Bush administration withdrew the US ambassador to Syria in 2005, it was trying to send the Assad government a message: We don't consider you an enemy, but you'd better get your act together and stop interfering with your neighbors or we may consider further steps. Now, with nothing changed (and if anything, with things having gotten worse), the Obama administration wants to restore the ambassador and tell the Syrians that everything is fine. It's not.

This is Obama lackey Gary Ackerman (D-NY):

In the end, what matters is not whether or not a U.S. diplomat lives in Damascus. What matters is what the ambassador will have to say and whether that message is part of a well-considered and effective foreign policy. What matters is whether or not Syria stops recklessly arming Hezbollah, meddling in Lebanese politics, hosting Hamas in its capital, allowing foreign fighters to enter Iraq, seeking weapons of mass destruction, and working to destabilize the Middle East. [Agreed. And none of those things is going to happen as a result of sending an ambassador there because the Obama administration has not made that the tradeoff. So why reward the Syrians - and being considered an important subsidiary is a reward - for bad conduct by sending an ambassador there? CiJ].

For four years George Bush's administration tried to achieve these aims without a U.S. ambassador in Syria. And what happened during that period? U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which prohibited arms sales or transfers to Hezbollah, was violated on a massive scale. [The problems with 1701 were completely predictable and had less to do with the Syrians than with UNIFIL's composition and mandate. Israel should never have agreed to 1701 in the form it was adopted. CiJ] A campaign of assassinations targeted anti-Syrian Lebanese journalists and parliamentarians from Lebanon's anti-Syrian March 14 alliance, whittling down their majority. Hezbollah waged a short but successful street war against the Lebanese government to maintain its independent telecommunications network and, implicitly, its status as a state within the state. [None of which would have been prevented by having an American ambassador in Damascus. CiJ].

Saudi Arabia and France, sensing the failure of U.S. policy, ceased supporting isolation and began to court Damascus. [Saudi Arabia - especially - and France didn't start courting Damascus until the Obama administration took power and made clear that it was not going to stand up to Syria or Iran. To blame the Bush administration for that is totally disingenuous. When did the Saudis first start courting Syria? After the Lebanese elections in June 2009 when the US President was Barack Hussein Obama. CiJ] Syria's al-Kibar reactor was allegedly bombed by Israel, but Syria then promptly denied the International Atomic Energy Agency sufficient access to the site, preventing an effective investigation of Syrian nuclear activities, a step that appears to be clearly contrary to its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Not so promptly.

In April 2008, U.S. intelligence authorities released a video showing that the building had hid construction of a graphite-cooled nuclear reactor similar to North Korea's reactor at Yongbyon, which produces plutonium for the country's nuclear weapons. The video contained satellite photographs of the site, still shots of the reactor under construction, and a photograph of the directors of North Korea's and Syria's nuclear programs standing arm in arm.

In June 2008, Syria allowed the IAEA to access the Al Kibar site, but inspectors were unable to examine the reactor ruins because Syria had cleared the site of wreckage, buried what remained, and constructed a new building on top. Nevertheless, they found particles of chemically processed uranium of a type Syria had not declared to the IAEA. Satellite photos of the site and the list of parts Syria had procured for its construction posed additional questions. Syria soon cut off cooperation with the IAEA investigation, denying further visits to Al Kibar and three associated sites.

Separately, IAEA inspectors found other unexplained uranium particles during a routine inspection of Syria's miniature neutron source reactor, a research reactor outside Damascus that had been declared to the IAEA. Syrian authorities twice tried to explain the presence of these particles, but IAEA inspectors found their explanations inadequate, believing instead that they raised concerns about possible links to the particles found at Al Kibar. Although Syria allowed IAEA inspectors to return to the research reactor this month, it continues to spurn IAEA requests to visit Al Kibar, citing national "sovereignty." (A report written by Gregory L. Schulte, who was U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA from 2005 to 2009, lays out the IAEA's investigation, Syria's defiance, and the resulting policy recommendations. Schulte also contributed to this article.)

The IAEA's latest report on the Syria investigation was the first released by the new IAEA director-general, Yukiya Amano, who took office in July 2009. It was blunt and forthright, clearly restating that the destroyed facility had all the characteristics of a nuclear reactor and openly questioning whether Syria's declarations were correct and complete.

So by the time Syria denied the IAEA access to the site, the US was deeply involved in an election campaign that would eventually be won by Barack Hussein Obama. Is that Bush's fault? The IAEA report on Syria came out nearly a year ago, during the Obama administration - whose fault is it that nothing has been done in the past year about Syria? Would a US ambassador in Syria have made a difference? Back to Ackerman.

The list of policy failures goes on. But were any of them due to the lack of a U.S. ambassador in Syria? Of course not. The Bush administration's failure to respond effectively in each of these cases was the result of its inability to acquire sufficient incentives or disincentives to induce or compel Damascus to change its behavior.

So now the Obama administration is going to shoot its wad by making a major concession to Damascus and getting nothing in return? What will that accomplish? Well, even Ackerman admits it will accomplish nothing.

Had there been a U.S. ambassador in Damascus, the outcome in each of these cases likely would have been the same. The real problem was that the Bush administration was overstretched -- politically, economically and militarily. Its rhetoric far outstripped its actual reach. Sadly, the reverses Damascus and its allies suffered from the Cedar Revolution, the popular 2005 uprising that forced Syrian troops from Lebanon, have now mostly been undone.

So now you want to reward Syria for its success in undoing the reverses it suffered in 2005 by mitigating its pariah status by restoring an ambassador? Why? What do you hope to accomplish?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:06 PM