Washington is getting sidetracked again

Michael Young
Daily Star (Beirut)
20 May '10

(Somewhat speculative, but excellent analysis piece in any case.)

Political Washington has a gift for getting sidetracked into marginal disputes. The latest example is the decision of 12 Republican senators to block approval of Robert Ford, who was recently named the US ambassador in Damascus, because of reports that the Syrians have sent Scud missiles to Hizbullah.

The State Department has a different perspective. It believes an ambassador in Damascus is necessary to better relay the Obama administration’s messages to Syrian President Bashar Assad. This is partly due to the fact that Assad’s man in Washington, Imad Mustapha, is mistrusted by his American counterparts.

The senators, in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, responded that Ford’s appointment would be a concession, even a reward, “if engagement precludes prompt punitive action in response to egregious behavior, such as the transfer of long-range missiles to a terrorist group.” The Republicans want new sanctions to be imposed on Syria, or a deadline from the administration to determine whether engagement is working before new sanctions are put in place.

The points of view on both sides conceal a far more significant problem. Undue focus on whether an ambassador should be sent to Damascus or not is secondary to the fact that the Obama administration is not really clear about how to bring about a change in Syrian behavior where it has demanded such change – namely Syria’s ending its destabilization of Iraq, its support for Hamas and Hizbullah, and its efforts to reassert its hegemony over Lebanon.

Naming an ambassador should only be a means of advancing policy. But because the policy is unclear, the appointment process has taken center stage. For the State Department to defend an ambassador as necessary to get Assad’s ear is ridiculous. In itself, the transmission of messages is not, and should not be, what justifies a significant political reversal, especially when the previous ambassador was pulled because the US assumed that Syria had ordered the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.

On the other hand, the Republicans, by making Ford the issue, have also confused matters. The sanctions they are demanding may be justified, but sanctions, like the dispatching of an ambassador, do not in themselves constitute policy; they are instruments of policy. What the Republicans (and Democrats) should be asking of the Obama administration is whether its engagement strategy with Syria has any chance of succeeding – and if not what must be done to ensure it succeeds – and whether American strategy is cohesive, so that a dialogue with Syria does not actually give it wider latitude to pursue those very aims that Washington is seeking to undermine.

(Read full article)

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