Humiliated by the April 14 GPS-guided missile attack on Syria by the U.S., U.K. and France, 65-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of global chaos if any more attacks take place. Putin issued warnings before and now after the attacks in response to Syria’s April 7 chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Douma. While denied by Syria and Russia, the U.S., U.K. and France offered categorical proof of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapon’s attack. Putin sees the allied response as a violation of “international law,” forgetting that al-Assad was warned with a U.S. Cruise missile attack April 7, 2017 to stop using chemical weapons. Trump reminded Putin that he promised to dispose of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal after al-Assad’s Aug. 21, 2013 chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta, killing at least 281, injuring 3,600.others.
Unlike Putin’s 2008 actions in Georgia, annexing Russian enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia or his March 1, 2014 invasion of Crimea, the Western alliance took a stand against al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Banned in 1925 after the horrors of WW I and again in 1997, the international community prohibited the use of chemical weapons. To rogue regimes like Syria, Iran, Russia and others, chemical weapons are fair game, where anything goes to achieve political ends. Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani both agreed today that the attacks made impossible any political settlement in the seven-year-old Syrian proxy war. Since Putin began defending al-Assad with air power Sept. 30, 2015, Syria gained the upper-hand against a well-funded, determined Saudi proxy war against Damascus. Putin and Rouhani completely ignore al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
Warning of global chaos, Putin ignored his role in sowing the chaos in the Mideast and around the globe. No country in recent years has violated international law, sovereignty and territorial integrity more than Putin’s Russia Federation. When confronted with a determined Western alliance, Putin backs down, actually disappeared during Saturday night’s missile assault on al-Assad chemical weapons’ facilities. “Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the U.N. Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations,” said the Kremlin. When the Kremlin speaks of violating the U.N. Charter, there’s nothing in the Charter permitting the use of chemical weapons. Whatever happened to Syria’s sovereignty in the 2011 Arab Spring, it has nothing to do with al-Assad using banned chemical weapons to reclaim his territory.
Trump said it best when he asked Putin what he was doing defending a regime the uses banned chemical weapons. Joint statements with rogue regimes like Iran only harm the Kremlin’s credibility. When you consider Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi told Russian media Russia shot down 71 of the 105 missiles shot at Syrian chemical weapons targets, it shows Russia’s desperation to save face. Syria’s S-300 Russian-made missile defense did nothing to intercept allied missiles before hitting their targets. Pentagon officials vigorously disputed Rudskoi’s disinformation. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can’t feel too good about putting a hefty down payment on a $2.5 billion S-300 missile defense system. Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad welcomed Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW] inspectors, hoping to visit Douma, the site of last week’s chemical attack.
European Union officials backed the U.S., U.K. and French missile strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons sites. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and EU Council President Donald Tusk should put Putin on notice that any further action against the EU or its allies could result in a loss of energy contracts. Putin, above all else, is a businessman, who values the billions in yearly revenue from the EU. When Trump declared “mission accomplished” after the April 14 missile strikes, he referred to only the specific aerial bombardment that crippled al-Assad’s chemical weapons capacity. He made no promise of ousting al-Assad or, for that matter, assuring the Western alliance that Syria would not use chemical weapons. Trump put al-Assad on notice that one more use of chemical weapons would result in a regime change operation, not targeted air strikes.
Al-Assad, Putin, Rouhani and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah all think Trump’s actions were a publicity stunt. One more chemical attack would trigger a more extensive military campaign to change regimes in Damascus. Trump hoped Putin would salvage his damaged credibility by not backing al-Assad’s rogue regime. Announcing new sanctions today, U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley let Putin know that he’s damaging the Russian economy. Already faced with a plummeting stock market and severe currency devaluation, Putin needs to recalculate the damage he’s doing to Russia defending al-Assad. “The American military knows well that going towards a wider confrontation and a big operation against the regime and the army and the allied forces in Syra could not end, and any confrontation would inflame the entire region,” said Nasrallah, totally misreading Trump and the Western alliance.
