Lakhdar Brahimi Set to Resign as Special Envoy to Syria

Today United Nations and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi meets first with Russian and U.S. diplomats; then Britain, China and France join the group, followed later in the day by Syria neighbors Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as representatives from the Arab League. Nick Cumming-Bruce and Alan Cowell have the story from Geneva, "Diplomats Try to Push Syria Peace Conference."

This is the last gasp for Geneva II. If peace talks don't get off the ground Brahimi is set to resign. This is from Somini Sengupta's profile "Few Eager to Talk Peace in Syria, but a Mediator Won’t Stop":

A former United Nations official who has spoken to Mr. Brahimi recently described him as “his own greatest skeptic.” 

“He thinks if talks do happen, it’s by no means assured anything concrete will come out of it,” said the former diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private, adding that he believed that if Geneva II did not happen in the next few weeks, Mr. Brahimi would step down. 

He has once before, under somewhat similar circumstances. Mr. Brahimi spent two years, starting in 1997, trying to stanch low-intensity fighting between the Taliban and Northern Alliance fighters in Afghanistan. 

He talked to commanders on the ground and every neighboring country that had influence over them before finally resigning in September 1999. 

“We kept going around in circles, the fighting continued, and the people of Afghanistan were held hostage to those groups whose interest seemed to be in the continuation of the conflict, not in its solution,” he said in a speech last year. He said he told the Security Council that “I was giving up because I felt I had no real support from them.”

Afghanistan is what Syria is to become if it isn't already -- a failed state rife with heavy machine gun toting jihadis. Cumming-Bruce and Cowell quote the latest data:

The talks in Geneva opened against a backdrop of increasing humanitarian alarm in Syria. 

According to the United Nations, the number of Syrians needing help has surged to 9.3 million from 6.8 million in June. The figure represents some 40 percent of the estimated 23 million people in a country that has been seized by conflict since a crackdown on peaceful protest against President Assad began in March 2011. 

Since then, more than 110,000 people have died and, while Mr. Assad has agreed to dismantle chemical weapons stockpiles, fighting with conventional munitions still claims a daily toll, forcing many to flee their homes and blocking efforts to deliver humanitarian assistance. 

Valerie Amos, the top humanitarian official at the United Nations, told the Security Council on Monday that the number who have abandoned their homes but remained in Syria stood at 6.5 million compared to 4.25 million in June. Her remarks in a closed briefing to the Security Council were relayed by a spokeswoman, Amanda Pitt. 

“The humanitarian situation in Syria continues to deteriorate rapidly and inexorably,” Ms. Amos said.

And it will continue to deteriorate because the Obama administration talks out of both sides of its mouth: working to get Geneva II up and running at the same time it assures the Saudis it is on the same page. This was on vivid display with Kerry's visit to Cairo just prior to the opening of the show trial of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. This is from a story by the excellent David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh, "Egypt’s Ex-President Is Defiant at Murder Trial":

And the timing, analysts said, also proved awkward for Secretary of State John Kerry. On a visit to Cairo just a day before, he had said that — despite a series of mass killings of protesters, the shutdown of opposition news media outlets and apparently politicized trials like Mr. Morsi’s — “there are indications” that the generals who ousted Egypt’s first freely elected president intended to restore democracy. 

The visit was “unbelievable timing,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt scholar at the Century Foundation in New York. He argued that opponents of the Islamists would see the trip as an American effort to protect Mr. Morsi, while Islamists would hear Mr. Kerry’s “soft and optimistic statements as a U.S. blessing to the new military-led political order.”

The Saudis are rattled because they don't think -- based on Obama's failure to launch a strike against Damascus at the end of summer -- that the United States is willing to unilaterally exercise its "full spectrum" dominance. Kerry was in Riyadh to assure the House of Saud that its security is guaranteed. This is from Michael Gordon's report, "Kerry Reassures Saudis U.S. Shares Their Goals":

Differences between the Obama administration and the Saudi leadership burst into view last month after Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the head of Saudi intelligence, privately complained to diplomats about the White House’s reluctance to intervene in Syria — concerns that were later echoed publicly by Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former intelligence chief. 

At the root of much of the Saudis’ criticism was the perception that President Obama was uncomfortable with exercising power on the world stage, a gnawing worry for Saudi officials who have become increasingly concerned about the role of their nemesis Iran in Syria and elsewhere in the region. 

As much as American officials sought to dispel such criticism, the fact that the Obama administration has felt it necessary to offer such assurances has highlighted the strains. 

Mr. Kerry said at the news conference that Mr. Obama had told him to make clear to Saudi Arabia that the United States would defend the kingdom from external attack — a public promise that American officials would not have found necessary to make several years ago.

What the Saudis don't seem to appreciate is that the American system of government is based on a duopoly, a kabuki of "indispensable enemies" where trenchant foes come together and divvy up the loot. Foreign policy, particularly nasty foreign entanglements like imperial wars, has traditionally been a bipartisan affair. When you get real change in this country — i.e., the Civil War — it is preceded by a break down in the duopoly.

That's what we are starting to experience now -- a breakdown in the duopoly. The Republican Party is at war with itself, a war hastened by Obama's 2008 landslide election, similar to but nowhere nearly as radical as the Democratic Party split after Lincoln's election in 1860.

Obama would have liked to have delivered that attack on Syria that his allies wanted but he knew that to do so could have precipitated a catastrophic system failure of the duopoly, splintering not only the GOP but his party as well.

Kerry will kiss the rings that need to kissed; he will kneel and scrape. Peace talks will not happen. Brahimi will resign. War will rage on.