Syria intervention “would not be a defining issue in the Russian-American relationship”

Dmitri Simes offers an interesting nugget here on Russia’s Syria views (my emphasis): Russians think the Obama administration is a little hypocritical, because as they have told Washington, [if] it is so committed to removing Assad, they certainly can do it the way it was done in Iraq, the way it was done during the ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

Dmitri Simes offers an interesting nugget here on Russia's Syria views (my emphasis):

Dmitri Simes offers an interesting nugget here on Russia’s Syria views (my emphasis):

Russians think the Obama administration is a little hypocritical, because as they have told Washington, [if] it is so committed to removing Assad, they certainly can do it the way it was done in Iraq, the way it was done during the liberation of Kosovo from Serbia, without Security Council blessing. The Russians are saying it would be a mistake, they would criticize it, but they would not resist it militarily, and it would not be a defining issue in the Russian-American relationship. Russian officials believe the Obama administration really does not want to intervene in Syria, but they’re using Russia as a whipping boy, to blame on Russia what the Obama administration does not quite want to do itself.

In another part of the interview, Simes elaborates on how the Libya intervention–and the perceived abuse of the Security Council resolution in that case–angered Russian officials and produced a harsher policy. "The Libya episode energized the Putin camp, and gave them evidence that Medvedev could not be trusted to stay as president and to run Russian national security." Taken together, these comments suggest that bypassing the Security Council may, in certain situations, be the best way of preserving key P5 relationships. 

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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