Theater at the UN Security Council

It was quite a show at the UN Security Council this weekend. Susan Rice of the US could not believe that the veto was used in that august body. How could the veto be used to abort the will of the international community? Her country has sixty vetoes in support of Israeli war crimes.

The US never misses an opportunity to feign outrage even at events in which the US has very little credibility. Rice’s indignation reminded one of another Ms. Rice in US foreign policy: it was Condoleezza Rice who clearly and categorically (and she admits that proudly in her “No Higher Honor” book) rejected and postponed any agreement on a cease-fire during the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006. She even talked about her indignation at the French foreign minister who dared to propose an immediate end to killing in Lebanon. The US now has an opportunity at the UN to pose as a champion of the Syrian people: an uprising in Syria or in Iran is all that the US can afford, because the rest of Middle East tyrannies are nothing but US puppets.

The Russian and Chinese governments are being hailed as the new rivals to the US on the world stage. Syrian regime propaganda TV stations are hailing the rise of Russia as the new super power. They even celebrate the return of the Cold War. The Syrian regime perhaps expects the Neo-Soviet power to threaten the US with nuclear annihilation on behalf of the Syrian friend. Of course, the Russian and Chinese vetoes had nothing to do with the Syrian people or their welfare. Russia and China simply learned from the case of the UN Security Council resolution on Libya: those two countries may need in the future to repress and kill their own people, and they don’t want to set a precedent for an outside intervention.

Russian statements on Syria lack any sentimentality or even friendliness towards the Assad regime. Russia has its own calculations and the Syrian regime has much less to offer to the Russian government than Western governments do. Just as Russia defied the American will at the UN, it can easily sell the Syrian regime in a negotiated deal with the West. But the Syrian regime lives in another era.

The Security Council watched a presentation by Hamad bin Jasim of Qatar. This highly unpopular figure (who is associated in Arab public minds with Qatari normalization with Israel and with a statement to the effect that Arab governments can’t help the Palestinians and that Arabs can only offer to “beg” the US to restrain Israel a bit) became the accepted leader of all the Arabs. When US government officials speak about what “Arabs want”, they are referring to this oil (and gas) sheikh. And just as Amr Mousa was a puppet for the Mubarak regime and the GCC in the Arab League, Nabil Arabi became an obedient servant of Qatar (House of Saud is distracted with succession matters and illnesses of senior princes).

The Syrian ambassador was also allowed to make a presentation (Syria is allowed to speak at the UN, but not at the Arab League, from which it has been suspended). He likes to appear as a man of literature (but he seriously fumbled the name of the German poet, Goethe, and dared to cite the poems of Nizar Qabbani, who was banned from Syria for years).

The Syrian ambassador delivered his talk without any passion: he—sticking to the policies of his government—criticized GCC countries vaguely and without naming names.

The Syrian people are left out of the discussion. They have been used by the propaganda of both sides. The Syrian regime is now increasingly a pawn in a regional and international game and is increasingly subservient to the agenda of its regional and international allies, just as the Syrian National Council is hostage to its regional and international alliances. A spontaneous and popular uprising has been (forcibly) transferred into a regional and international confrontation.