Trump’s China reset puts Russia out in the cold by defending Syria at UN

Russia’s lonely veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the April 4 chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, and calling for an investigation of the attack, places blame squarely on Russia for complicity in the brutal event, at a minimum in the court of public opinion.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad said Wednesday that the accusations of a chemical weapons attack were “100 percent fabrication” used to justify American air strikes but something unique happened in the U.N. vote, a shift that may be attributable to Mar-a-Lago diplomacy. For the last eight U.N. resolutions concerning Syria, beginning in 2011, China has vetoed, lockstep with Russia, with the exception of one vote in 2016.

{mosads}The normally irrelevant machinations of failed Security Council resolutions has real meaning, when China’s abstention effectively isolates Russia as the only permanent member of the Security Council that quashed the resolution from going forward.

The deal to rid Syria of chemical weapons was heralded at the time as a tremendous success. But the obvious question raised by the April attack — if the accusations that Assad is behind the attack are correct — is: How did Syria have the chemical weapons if they were all destroyed?

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the U.N. destroyed tons of chemical weapons in Syria. But key to their initial conclusion that the Mission had destroyed Syria’s stockpiles was in the U.N. report itself, which stated, “Of the 27 facilities, 24 have been verified by OPCW as having been destroyed.”

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Was this the Obama administration’s fault for failing to acknowledge the fact that the deal had gaps? A well-documented report by the Wall Street Journal concluded that the 2013 deal negotiated by Russia with the U.S. revealed, “one of the best kept secrets in international diplomacy” — that the deal failed to rid Syria of all of its chemical weapons.

The original Fact Finding Mission (FFM) of the OPCW was not empowered to attribute responsibility but merely to “gather facts regarding the incident of alleged use of topic chemicals as a weapon.”

The Mission concluded in June 2014 that “100 percent” of all declared weapons materials had been removed. But, the thrill did not last long; by September 2014, the Mission began to point to new chemicals weapons attacks and the breakthrough came in 2015 when the U.N. created the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the U.N. and the OPCW to identify individuals and governments involved in the attacks.

In 2016, the JIM found what it described as “sufficient evidence” of three cases of chemical weapons use — two chlorine gas attacks on civilians by the Syrian air force, and another use of “sulphur-mustard” gas by ISIS.

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At the U.N., Britain’s Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters, that “scientists in the United Kingdom have now assessed samples from the site of the 4th of April attack, and have confirmed that it was sarin — or a sarin-like substance — that was involved.”

Nonetheless, the U.N. resolution vetoed by Russia on Tuesday was destined to fail. The neon sign was the paragraph that required Syria to submit flight plans and flight logs filed on April 4, 2017; names of all individuals in command of any helicopter squadrons; and to provide access to relevant air bases from which attacks involving chemicals as weapons may have been launched. Russia wanted the language removed.

But, unusual as it was, China’s Ambassador Liu Jieyi abstained and Trump lauded the success. Several diplomats talked about the implications for North Korea and their recent use of VX gas, a chemical weapon deadlier than sarin.

After the vote, I asked Staffan de Mistura the U.N. Special Envoy for Syria why Syria said that its chemical weapons stockpiles had been destroyed and verified by the U.N. His response was telling.  “That was some time ago and now everyone has been asking for an investigation” and that is what should be done, he said.

At the U.N. and in nation’s capitals, diplomats took note of the China position. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister thanked the countries voting in favor, acknowledging China for abstaining.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said, “If the regime is innocent, as Russia claims, the information requested in this resolution would have vindicated them,” and then summed up the day at the U.N. in a tweet, “After today’s vote to hold Syria accountable it’s: A strong day for the U.S., a weak day for Russia, a new day for China & doomsday for Assad.”

Now, it is up to Russia to allow access and information to the world.

Pamela Falk, former staff director of a House of Representatives Subcommittee, is CBS News TV & Radio Foreign Affairs Analyst & U.N. Resident Correspondent and holds a J.D. from Columbia School of Law.  She can be reached at @PamelaFalk. 

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