President Obama is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday as Moscow reaps the fruits of months of diplomatic activity to put its own stamp on the global fight against the Islamic State.
A Russian troop buildup in Syria has not only bolstered the position of embattled dictator Bashar Assad on the ground, but also has shifted the focus of international diplomacy away from ending his regime. Iraq meanwhile announced Sunday that it would cooperate with Russia, Iran and Syria on “security and intelligence” against the extremists.
U.S. leadership of the anti-Islamic State coalition is shackled by increasing bipartisan criticism of Obama’s approach in Washington and the impending loss of its main coordinator, retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who reportedly is stepping down because he has become frustrated by White House micromanaging. There’s also the embarrassing admission Friday by U.S. Central Command that a U.S.-trained rebel commander had handed over some of his group’s equipment to the al Qaeda-allied Al-Nusra Front in exchange for safe passage, another blow to a $500 million program that’s already taking heavy fire on Capitol Hill for failing to meet its goals.
Obama may be forced in his meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York to accept what he has previously refused: including a role for Assad in Syria’s future and collaboration with Russia and Iran in fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
“President Obama’s overall aimlessness in the Middle East (with the exception of the Iran nuclear deal), his lack of seriousness and resolve in dealing with Syria’s savage wars that are threatening the whole Eastern Mediterranean region and his unwillingness to challenge Iran’s destabilizing activities in Syria and Iraq and his inability to pursue a comprehensive regional strategy against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, gave Putin a historic opportunity to re-assert Russia’s influence in the region,” wrote Hisham Melham, a columnist for the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya news channel.
Obama administration officials have insisted they are still unclear of Russia’s intentions in Syria and elsewhere against the Islamic State and are hoping Obama and Putin can agree on a “constructive” role for Moscow.
“I think we have concerns about how we’re going to go forward, but that’s precisely what we’re meeting on to talk about now. Our presidents will be meeting tomorrow,” Secretary of State John Kerry said before meeting Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “This is the beginning of a genuine effort to see if there is a way to deconflict, but also to find a way forward that will be effective in keeping a united, secular Syria that can be at peace and stable again without foreign troops present, and that’s our hope.”
But in an interview with “60 Minutes,” Putin made clear that one of his government’s priorities is something Washington had said is unacceptable: keeping Assad’s government in power.
“We support the legitimate government of Syria. And it’s my deep belief that any actions to the contrary in order to destroy the legitimate government will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions, for instance in Libya where all the state institutions are disintegrated,” he said. “We see a similar situation in Iraq.”
In the past week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has broken with the allied hard line against Assad and said he needs to be included in any talks on Syria’s future. Israel’s military meanwhile said it would coordinate with Russian military officers at a high level to ensure there’s no conflict between the two countries’ forces in Syria.
In a way, the meeting itself is a victory for Putin. The Russian leader has been isolated internationally since the still-unresolved Russian land grab in Ukraine. But administration officials argued that it’s a good opportunity to make progress on that issue as well as resolve concerns about Moscow’s intentions in Syria.
“Given the stakes -– the human stakes, the strategic stakes of what’s going on in Ukraine and Syria -– the president believed it would be irresponsible to let this occasion in which the two leaders would be in the same city pass without trying to test to see whether progress could be made on these newly intractable crises,” Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
