The whole rationale for British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to cancel his visit to Moscow was that he was needed at the G7 summit in Lucca to push for a ‘united front’ against Russia. US Secretary of State Tillerson would then go to Moscow as a single envoy on behalf of the whole G7, presenting the Russians with the united position Boris Johnson had forged.
That Friday’s missile strike on Sharyat air base was an impulsive and ill-judged move ordered by an inexperienced and emotional President after seeing television pictures of dead children gained further support on Sunday when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the President’s National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster both gave television interviews which bore all the hallmarks of a damage limitation exercise.
Ever since British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to cancel his trip to Moscow the Russian embassy in London has been enjoying itself trolling him with a succession of witty tweets.
It is not in fact difficult to see why Boris Johnson decided to cancel his visit.
Shortly after the alleged chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Syria the Russian Defence Ministry claimed that the release of chemical agents following the air strike happened because the Syrian air force struck a warehouse where the Jihadis were producing and storing stockpiles of chemical weapons.
The US missile strike on Syria’s Sharyat air base provides a good opportunity to compare the sharply different approaches the US and the Russia have to the use of force.
The Russians use force sparingly as an instrument of state policy to advance what they see as their national interests. Every Russian military endeavour since the end of the Second Word War has been judged and carried out to further some concrete objective of the Russian state.
Yesterday, within hours of the US missile attack on Syria’s Sharyat air base, President Putin met with Russia’s Security Council to discuss the US attack.
Russia’s Security Council, for those who don’t know, is the highest decision making body of the Russian government. It meets regularly every week under Putin’s chairmanship, and its remit covers every aspect of Russian policy. This includes domestic and economic policy as well as foreign and defence policy.
Whilst I do not know who carried out the Syrian chemical attack in Idlib province, I must agree with my colleague Adam Garrie that it is unlikely it was carried out by the Syrian government, and I think it is barely conceivable it was authorised by President Assad.
The debate about the Syrian chemical attack yesterday and President Trump’s comments during a news conference with the King of Jordan have led to speculation that the US might be readying an attack on Syria.
Hours after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during a visit to Turkey that the fate of Syrian President Assad should be decided by the Syrian people – reversing the Obama administration’s demand that Assad must go as part of any Syrian peace settlement – Nikki Haley, the US’s ambassador to the UN, has confirmed that there has indeed been a change in US policy, and that the US is indeed no longer ‘focused’ on getting President Assad to go.
An offensive launched two weeks ago by Al-Qaeda in the northern areas of Syria’s Hama province appears to be unravelling, with Jihadi forces in the area coming under heavy bombing by the Russian air force and forced onto the retreat by a counter-attack launched by the Syrian army.
