French flip-flops on Syria

Get out the 'freedom fries' - them Frogs can't be trusted!

G20 summit ends poorly for Obama as France pulls back on Syrian time scale

 Vladimir Putin says he and US president stood their ground and neither blinked

Irish Times,

7 September, 2013

The G20 summit in St Petersburg ended poorly for US president Barack Obama yesterday as France, his closest ally for military action in Syria, pulled back on the time scale for an attack. The president’s chances of getting the support of Congress in the United States also seemed far from secure.

Not surprisingly, Mr Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin put very different emphases on how G20 leaders took up their positions as the summit came to an end.

Mr Obama told reporters that most leaders of the G20 countries had agreed that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack against civilians that killed more than 1,400 people.

Mr Putin, on the other hand, was adamant that most of the representatives of the world leaders at the summit had opposed an immediate military strike against Syria in retaliation.


Coalition


On the summit’s first day Mr Obama’s objective of gathering a coalition of countries in support of an attack on Syria suffered setbacks when the European Union announced it favoured pushing the issue through the United Nations Security Council. Also Pope Francis, in a letter to Mr Putin as host of the summit, called for a peaceful rather than a military solution to the crisis.

The surprise decision by France’s president François Hollande to wait for the report of UN inspectors made things even more difficult for the US president yesterday.

It is generally believed that it could take another three weeks before the UN inspectors can come up with their report. This means if the US was to strike urgently it would have to do so by itself, without French participation.

All in all there is little doubt that Mr Putin has come out of the summit on his home territory with more kudos than Mr Obama.


‘Strong response’


While the White House issued a statement that 11 countries had condemned the chemical weapons attack in Syria and had called for a “strong international response”, it was not clear how many of them agreed that such a “strong response” involved military action.

The one thing that most leaders at St Petersburg agreed on was that chemical weapons had been used but there was a difference of opinion on who had used them.

Mr Putin has demanded that evidence of the use of banned weapons including sarin gas should be put before the Security Council and that this evidence be of a scientific nature showing the weapons were used by Syrian government forces.

He ruled out agreeing to non-scientific evidence obtained through eavesdropping or other types of espionage.

“There has been a long discussion with a clear split in the group,” a G20 source said after the dinner in a Tsarist-era palace in Russia’s former imperial capital, St Petersburg.

Mr Putin said he and Obama stood their ground and neither blinked but at least there was dialogue. “We hear one another, and understand the arguments but we don’t agree. I don’t agree with his arguments, he doesn’t agree with mine. But we hear them, try to analyse them,” Mr Putin said.


‘Political solution’


China’s Xi Jinping also tried, unsuccessfully, to dissuade Mr Obama from military action.

“A political solution is the only right way out for the Syrian crisis, and a military strike cannot solve the problem from the root,” Xinhua news agency quoted Mr Xi as saying.

“We expect certain countries to have a second thought before action.”

US response to the use of the Security Council as a basis was formulated in a blistering attack on Russia’s use of its veto by the US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power.

In what has been interpreted here in Russia as a cold war response, it has been stressed in Russian media that little criticism was made of China, which has also used its veto consistently against US policies at the council.

France flips on Syria - Russia, China rush Warships

Whiteout,

6 September, 2013

St. Petersburg. Today at the G20 meeting in Russia, French President Francois Hollande dealt President Obama another embarrassing setback over Syria. 

Shocking his US ally, Hollande announced that France would not join the US in a military strike and would instead wait until the full UN report is made available. At the same time, Russia and China continue to swarm the Mediterranean Sea with warships in preparation for a war with the US.

The way things are shaping up, President Obama may want to stop asking America’s allies if they would join him in a war against Syria and instead quickly find out who’s willing to defend America against Russia and China. Nobody seems to know what Barack Obama is doing. But everyone can see what Russia and China are doing. They’re building up their military forces, including hundreds of thousands of troops, to fight the United States in World War 3.

France walks away from Obama

As one US ally after another refused to join President Obama in his ‘coalition of the willing’, pro-war advocates repeatedly fell back on the consolation, “At least France is with us.” Today, the French President changed that position. Now, they won’t be attacking and will reserve their decision until after the UN report is published.

In a Herald Sun report breaking the news only hours ago, the outlet points out that earlier this week the French government swore it had the evidence itself proving the Assad government used chemical weapons. Now, President Hollande has shelved that position in lieu of the anticipated UN inspectors report. “Yes, we will wait for the inspectors’ report,” he told reporters at the G20 Summit.

During his post-Summit press conference, President Obama looked worn and weary as he took question after question about Syria. At one point, he criticized a reporter for asking the exact same question that was asked five minutes earlier – would he attack Syria if Congress voted down his request? The President continued his refusal to answer that question.

Earlier, Obama had met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a closed-door 25-minute meeting. At the exact same time the two men spoke, both nations were speeding their naval fleets to the Syrian coast for possible war with each other. 

While the Russian President has previously said he would not retaliate militarily against the US after a strike on Syria, Putin purposely never commented on what the Russian response would be to a US and Israeli attack on Iran. Many critics believe Obama’s desperate need to attack Syria is a necessary precursor so Israel can attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, Turkey can attack the Kurds in Syria and the US can attack Iran.

Russian and Chinese warships on the move

As reported by CBS News only hours ago, the Speaker of the Russian legislature announced that his nation was cancelling its planned visit to Washington to discuss the crisis in Syria. He blamed the decision not on ill will by his government, but instead on what he termed “deplorable” actions by US Senate President Harry Reid (D-NV) and US House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). The Russian Speaker said both US legislative leaders refused to meet with their Russian counterparts to avoid hostilities between the two nations. When contacted by CBS, both Boehner’s and Reid’s spokespeople confirmed they had rebuffed the Russian offer to meet.

At the same time Russian news outlets were reporting that US officials refused to meet to discuss peace, they continued on their week-long warning that World War 3 is rapidly approaching due to US aggression. Illustrating their predictions, they reported that two more Russian warships were being dispatched to the Mediterranean Sea. Russia has a naval base on Syria’s coast that it has maintained since the Soviet era. In recent months, more and more warships have joined the rapidly growing fleet.

As far back as June, Whiteout Press began reporting on the Russian Naval buildup in Syria (US and Russia deploy Forces to Syria Conflict). At the time, Russian officials announced they would again patrol the Mediterranean with their nuclear submarine fleet, something they hadn’t done in over 20 years. More ominous, Russian officials confirmed they had ordered their Far East Naval fleet to immediately redeploy to the Mediterranean Sea in preparation for an escalation in the Syrian conflict.

In August, Russia sent even more warships to the Syrian coast including an anti-submarine ship and a missile cruiser. Two days ago, Bloomberg News reported that two more Russian warships were dispatched to the area including two destroyers - the Nastoichivy, the flagship of the Baltic Fleet, and the Moskva missile cruiser. Today, Russia announced that two more warships were heading to Syria including ships from Russia's Black Sea Fleet, the frigate Smetlivyi and the landing ship Nicholai Filchenkov.

Illustrating the buildup even more, three more Russian warships arrived off the coast of Turkey en route to Syria yesterday. As reported by Yahoo News, they included the SSV-201 intelligence ship Priazovye, accompanied by the two landing ships Minsk and Novocherkassk.

China sends warships to Syria

Yesterday, Russian news outlets reported that Chinese warships were also deployed to Syria. Chinese officials claim they are only there as “observers” and should not be seen as a military provocation. As reported by Infowars, the Peoples Liberation Army will deploy a number of Chinese warships to the area, including the Jinggangshan, which was just observed nearing the Suez Canal for entry into the Mediterranean.

Standing in opposition to the growing Russian and Chinese fleets are five US Destroyers and an amphibious warship. The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group are also stationed in the nearby Red Sea. The battle group includes the cruiser USS Princeton and the destroyers USS William P. Lawrence, USS Stockdale and USS Shoup. Even more frightening, Infowars and StoryLeak reported three days ago that the US has begun deploying its nuclear missiles and B1 Bombers for the possibility of strikes deep inside Russia. Read the following Whiteout Press articles for more information

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France cannot afford military operation in Syria

RT,

6 September, 2013

The G20 should be focusing on their flagging economies rather than planning a military operation in Syria they can’t afford, analyst, Alex Korbel, told RT. France, in particular, is at full stretch, with 16 military campaigns abroad and an ailing economy.

The Syrian conflict has eclipsed the G20 meeting in Saint Petersburg, as the international community is unable to come to an agreement over a possible military strike. Washington has put forward a plan for military intervention against the Assad regime, which it believes is responsible for a chemical attack in a Damascus suburb on August 21.

RT: If the UN team of inspectors finds that chemical weapons were used in the Damascus attack, do you believe military intervention could be justified?

Alex Korbel: I think there is no case for military intervention in Syria for several reasons. The first reason is that there is no national interest for France or the US to actually intervene in Syria. The regime of Bashar al Assad was not a problem in the past and it is not clear why it’s now a problem for France and the US. There is no clear objective in the military intervention as it is now presented. Is it about maintaining the credibility of the US? What credibility exactly? The credibility to intervene in unnecessary wars? Is it to ban the use of chemical weapons? Then why does the US have chemical weapons in its arsenal? Is it to weaken the Bashar al Assad regime? In that case you need to put boots on the ground. If it is a humanitarian way to help the civilians, then locking on cruise missiles is not the right solution. 

For all of these reasons the US and France has decided to move ahead with limited military intervention. But still there is a danger of falling down a slippery slope. What if a military intervention has no effect? Are we going to see full war? What would be the consequences in the region? I am thinking about Iran and Lebanon and I am thinking about a war less than 1000 kilometers south of Russia.

There is no broad international support for this war. Germany is against it, the UK is against it, China and Russia are against it. The only countries that are in favor are France, which has not yet consulted parliament, US and Israel and Saudi Arabia. Finally, public opinion is clearly against it everywhere. We saw it in the UK and the public polls in the US and France that the public is massively against military intervention in Syria.

RT: Given the climate of economic crisis in the EU, can France feasibly participate in another military operation?

AK: The economic situation of the EU countries is really bad. We can see in France that public debt is higher than 90 per cent of GDP. We see economic growth is less than 1 per cent. We see across G20 countries on average that unemployment is at 9 per cent and growing, that public debt is 64 per cent and growing, that economic growth is 1 per cent and weakening. What needs to be done is not to intervene militarily in another country.

France is already intervening in 16 countries worldwide. Clearly we don’t have any money to finance a seventeenth operation. The purpose of France, the US and any western power is not to ‘play the cop’ around the world but actually to maintain a sound economic policy first and then maybe lead by example on the international scene. 
Steven Elliot