Obama and Putin Move Toward Compromise on Syria

[Purveyor]

Sept 29, 2015 7:26 AM EDT
By Leonid Bershidsky

In conflict resolution, the best path is usually the one that makes more sense, not the most emotionally attractive one. By that standard, Russian President Vladimir Putin got the better of U.S. President Barack Obama at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. It also suggests there will probably be a compromise in Syria.

Obama and Putin made speeches to the Assembly on Monday, setting out their positions before sitting down for their first formal meeting in two years. Obama's 42-minute speech was heavy on emotion and rhetoric. Putin's 23-minute one was bleak and to the point.

Each heaped blame on the other, mostly without mentioning any names. Obama almost certainly meant Putin's obsession with Western non-governmental organizations as agents of regime change when he said that "it is not a conspiracy of U.S.-backed NGOs that expose corruption and raise the expectations of people around the globe; it’s technology, social media, and the irreducible desire of people everywhere to make their own choices about how they are governed." And he was talking to Putin when he stressed that "internal repression and foreign aggression are both symptoms" of failure to provide the kind of governance that frees up people's creative energy.

Putin, for his part, was talking to Obama when he described the violence and dire humanitarian consequences that followed the Arab Spring. "It begs the question for those who created this situation: 'Do you even understand what you have perpetrated?' " he said. And he meant the U.S. and its efforts to negotiate new trade treaties with Europe and Pacific Rim countries outside the framework of the World Trade Organization when he mentioned "closed exclusive economic partnerships" being negotiated in secret.

Both leaders obviously needed to vent before they went face to face. On substance, though, Obama showed the weaker hand. He stressed his reluctance to submit to the logic according to which some unsavory regimes -- "tyrants like Bashar al-Assad, who drops barrel bombs to massacre innocent children" -- should be supported to beat back terrorism. He argued Assad couldn't "simply pacify the broad majority of a population who have been brutalized by chemical weapons and indiscriminate bombing." Yet he held out a compromise: The U.S., he said, was willing to work with Russia and Iran -- Assad's allies -- on condition of "a managed transition away from Assad and to a new leader, and an inclusive government that recognizes there must be an end to this chaos."

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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-29/obama-and-putin-move-toward-a-syria-compromise

[geek tragedy]

1. Obama has principles and values human life, and he's not willing to commit

his own country to fight fulltime in Syria and Iraq.

So, sometimes it's necessary to take the weaker hand