As Hollande flies to Washington to organize an international cartel for the war on terror, Obama's first statements already anticipate it.
"War on ISIS, Russia can play a role ..."
Ça va sans dire. The paradox is there for all to see: Russia already has the role and has carved it out on its own. The nonsense of the American president is the synthesis of a ten-year bankruptcy in foreign policy whose consequences will weigh down on the future role of the United States and on the strategic policies of the next administration.
Let's go by degrees.
In August of the 2013 it was played to "hide and seek" in the eastern Mediterranean. The American attack on Syria by Assad, accused of using chemical weapons against the rebels, was imminent. It would have been the final act of support for the Arab springs, a strategic lightness with which questionable but stable regimes between Maghreb and the Middle East have been removed.
Between April and May of the 2013, while the Syrian regular army was in full offensive against the rebels, indirect aid to the insurgents came from Israel, worried that Hezbollah, allied on the field of Syrian forces, would not acquire equipment beyond the tolerable limit. Officially the actions of the F-16 of Tel Aviv aimed in particular at the elimination of Iranian missiles Fateh-110.
As already written on this column, Israel's goal was not the defenestration of Assad, a tolerable enemy, but the avoidance of anarchy on its northern borders.
Following (or concurrently with) Israeli direct intervention there was the official resumption of Russian military supplies in Damascus, actually never stopped, but quality ascents by order of Putin with the delivery of the dreaded air defense systems series.
The effects of this move, embarrassment for the same Heyl Ha'Avir, have they had a global geopolitical impact?
The answer is complex, but the undeniable fact is that the biased attack on Syria by the US has been dropped. It was the first time in recent times that an American ultimatum was achieved with nothing: the war did not take place and the "threat" (in this case Assad) remained in power.
Even if the back of the American fleet had depended only on military risk, the political data that emerged is remarkable. Although the delivery of the series had made the sky of Syria feasible only with high risks (the system is deadly against F-18, F-15, F-16 and against cruise missiles launched by ships), Obama's hesitancy in acting, however, had already been fatal.
Not only. The acclaimed supremacy of the American Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean would soon come to terms with the return of the Russian Navy off the Syrian coast, helped by two strategic factors: the strengthening of the base in Crimea removed from the Ukrainian Navy in 2014 and renewed hospitality Iranian in the port of Bandar Abbas in the Persian Gulf.
The Russian offensive against ISIS in Syria and the French initiative following the events in Paris (with direct contacts between the Russian and French commands) precipitated the situation, showing the actual state of the art: what might have seemed like one US decision-making stalemate has turned into powerlessness. Assad can no longer be a military target and the effectiveness of American operations against ISIS must take into account other witnesses on the ground.
In a vital area for American interests, the setback is enormous, especially in light of Israel's dissociation, which is quick to agree with the Russians to keep Hezbollah and Iran at bay, implicated in operations alongside Damascus.
Is the US cut off from games in the Middle East because of Obama?
We can say that the sufficiency with which the US outlines the profile of others is often politically transversal. If this does not absolve the president of his faults, he can certainly explain some of his choices.
Edward Luttwack, an American political scientist close to conservative circles, in March 2015 passed off as Putin, fearing scenarios of insurrections inside the Russian Federation.
Even authoritative reviews of geopolitical analysis of Atlantic orientation (Limes, nda) in December 2014 declared Putin a defeated leader, forced to shake water out to hide internal flaws.
That the Kremlin was capable of squeezing in time into the geopolitical void left by American hesitations, only a few had foreseen. The 2014 Ukrainian crisis and the 2008 war in Georgia were part of the so-called "Russian home garden" and every American action had to be weighed as a yardstick gained in the NATO race to the east. Instead, the implications of the Syrian crisis open up very different scenarios.
The current US embarrassment forced to make a military compromise with Moscow is comparable only to the interregnum of the Carter administration at the end of the '70', which was affected by the Vietnam syndrome.
What will happen from January 2017 to Washington is in some ways easy to imagine. Anyone who is the new tenant of the White House in terms of foreign policy (especially in the Middle East) will certainly go in a very different direction from that of Barak Obama. If this corresponds to a global interventionism or "splendid isolation", then the political affiliation of the future president will not be able to tell us. We must have patience and wait.
The debt accumulated by the US also in terms of credibility with world public opinion has become high. The next American leader could have the most difficult task among his counterparts of the last half century.
(photo: القوات المسلحه السورية/ Tass)
