President Obama's ambition to create a peace process in Syria was always compromised by his administration's other priorities including trying to save Iraq from the demons unlocked by the U. S. invasion of 2003. While irrationally supporting Israel in spite of its continued settlement expansion the U. S. has tried in vain to thread the needle between theKurdish fighters supporting the war against Isis while Premier Erdogan seeks to destroy the Kurdish independence movement on his southeastern border lands.
This has opened the door to a new, impressive relationship for Russia in the region. Its rising star has not only forced U. S. acceptance of its expansion in Ukraine but advanced its role as leading peacemaker when U. S. dogmatics failed to stop the slaughter in Syria.
It's worth unpacking the symmetry between the horrible Aleppo death spiral and this downward spiral of U. S. effectiveness in its relations with Russia. Several months ago political scientist John Mearsheim (co-author of The Israel Lobby) concluded that the U. S. "was incapable of entering into any agreement with Russia." This institutionalized dogma was visible when retired diplomat, Nicholas Burns, last week lamented on PBS not for the hundreds of thousands dying in the Syrian conflicts but that the proposed cease fire "was finally coming down to agreeing with Putin in order to forge the agreement."
The dimensions of this rebuff by Russia to U. S. dominance in the Middle East has many moving parts but the result described by the Council on Foreign Relation uses a Moscow journalist writing in the English language Moscow Times to give voice to glaring instability. Vladmir Frolov underlines the
"gaping lack of trust between Moscow and Washington, unruly and suspicious local proxies, unhappy outside players in Iran and in the Gulf states, a hodgepodge of legal loopholes and lack of viable enforcement mechanisms...for Moscow there is so much to love in this deal that it is surprising it took three months to negotiate."
Everyone knows that the bloody roots of all this lie in the centuries old battles for oil among world hegemons, re-enacted in the recent Gulf Wars and in the struggle that continues today in the flawed U. S. preference for Israel as virtually a 51st state.
The domestic political lock-down behind this is one of the reasons for the deepening paralysis of political life in the U. S. with its corrupt practice of buying and selling votes to please favored factions for very narrow reasons. Two weeks ago such corrupt politics was on display when the California Assembly and Senate voted 69 to 1 and 270 to 1 respectively to block any California company from doing business in California if it boycotts or divests from U. S. companies doing business in the illegally occupied West Bank Settlements. This irrational behavior may get worse with both Clinton and Trump promising to fully support the U. S. "understanding" with Israel, no questions asked.
That's not all that's on lock-down. The moral incapacity to see the deepening complexity and the absurd choices that Americans keep making suggests that in faith communities where ethics and morality are supposed to be taught there is a retreat underway from understanding faithfulness as a critical appraisal of the demonic. The result may be a surprise to contemporary worshipers who could discover the blood of Aleppo is also on their own hands. It may even help open the door to possible catastrophe in the form of a Trump victory.
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