G20 Summit in Russia. A view of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother of God in Saint Petersburg, in the background, on the left. (EC Audiovisual Services, 5/9/2013).
In an unprecedented move the American President Barack Obama asked yesterday all and each one of the G20 leaders participating in the Saint Petersburg summit to back ‘his’ war against Syria by signing a paper (joint declaration) authorising the US to use military force. This is an attempt by the US to neutralise the United Nations’ denial to authorise a military intervention in the devastated by civil war country. Obama spoke of a ‘paralyzed’ UN just because the Security Council doesn’t follow Washington’s warmongering strategy in the Middle East and repels a direct foreign military intervention in Syria.
The Americans even asked the Spanish leader Mariano Rajoy to sign this war authorisation, despite the fact that Spain is not a member of the G20. The White House wanted a round number of 10 countries to appear as supporting their war petition because a 9 doesn’t ‘sell’ well in a G20. On top of that the Americans in order to reach the number of 10 in their list of war supporters included in it the Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta who clarified later on that he has strong reservations about military action.
The European Union as a block didn’t undersign the American demands because many member states disagree with the external aggression against Damascus. The 10 countries which ‘authorised’ the US to bombard Syria are Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey and the U.K.. As noted above Spain is not a member of the G20. On the other side of the fence another 10 members of the G2O didn’t undersign the US military action: Argentina, Brazil, China, the European Union, Germany, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa. A 10 to 10 score is not the best outcome that Washington wanted.
Override the UN
This is a clear effort by Washington to put aside the UN as the only source of legality in a case like this that is an international military operation against a regular member of the Organisation. It is exactly the same tactics used by the American administration under George W. Bush when the US invaded Iraq. Who can forget the ‘alliance of the willing’ of 2003, which completely destroyed this country on falsified proofs about the use of mass destruction weapons? The British Prime Minister Tony Blair then was even tried in a British court for using false evidence in order to drag Britain into that war. The negative vote of the British Parliament recently, on PM David Cameron’s proposal for the United Kingdom to take military action against Syria together with the Americans, is a direct outcome of the fact that there is not one person in Britain who is not convinced that Blair lied back in 2003.
As in Iraq
Again the Americans use exactly the same tactics to persuade as many countries as possible to support their cause in order to make the war against Damascus look like a global initiative and not their own affair, designed to serve some well hidden goals. Today the three once most influential and politically strong Arab countries of the Middle East, Egypt, Iraq and Syria, are all in a desperate state without any ability to influence the political and economic developments in their region, not even being able to enforce their own authority on their soil.
It seems however that the strong and decisive backing that Russia offers to the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the fact that the Russian President Vladimir Putin managed in Saint Petersburg to gather active support against the US plans for Syria from at least seven G20 member states, are infallible signs that the Americans would not have an easy job in the Middle East. Putin went as far as to make crystal clear that Russia will support Assad in every possible way, with arms, humanitarian aid and economic help, and all that before and even after a plausible US bombardment.
In this way Russia is actually telling the Americans that their attack cannot change the balance of power on the ground and Moscow will continue having the upper hand on the soil. Putin, by stressing Russia’s full military support to Syria, is like ‘inviting’ the US to compare their military technologies.
All that on the corpse of a once prosperous country. As the Greek poet Konstantin Kavafis says ‘they all harm Syria as much”.
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