Is the Kremlin an Accessory?

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The United Nations report on the Syrian chemical attacks and the response of the international organizations makes the political classes of the United States and the U.K. look pathetically weak — enough to call into question basic assumptions of the post-Cold War world. It’s bad enough that the report confirms that mass civilian casualties resulted from an air bombardment using the Sarin nerve agent. Secretary General Ban calls the attack a “war crime.” If so, what about the question of whether there is an accessory?

The United Nations investigators were not allowed to name the source of the attack, but they point their finger, in effect, at the regime of Baschir al-Assad. They state that the Sarin was delivered by surface-to-surface missiles and give a trajectory from the northwest. The details jibe with Secretary of State Kerry’s charge that the missiles were launched from government controlled territory. Much worse is what the report tells about the mammoth in the room, Russia.

The investigators found large parts of one rocket used to deliver the gas. The details in Appendix 5 (“Munitions recovered . . .”) raise chilling questions. While investigating death sites at an apartment building in Moadamiyah, the team found a crater in the backyard terrace with an intact rocket motor nearby. The bottom ring of the engine showed engravings, in the Cyrillic alphabet. The letters transliterate as “G”, “I” (or “J”), “shch”, the numbers 4-25-67-179, and a final “K”.

It’s been documented that the Soviet Union and its successors taught Syria how to make nerve gases, including the deadlier VS agents. Russia signed a treaty with Syria in 1992 to provide precursor chemicals “for research purposes,” and there have been reports of on-going shipments through the Baltic. A Finnish policy analyst, Timo Hellenberg, has written that the “Arctic Sea,” the cargo ship mysteriously seized in 2009 by “pirates” off Sweden, might have been carrying chemical weapons contraband.

The question of Russian involvement in the actual munitions is even more serious. Are these chemical rockets coming from Russian stockpiles? How recently were they made? Given the short shelf life of Sarin gas, what is the Russian role in preparing the warheads? Any sign of Russian manufacture or delivery of chemical munitions after 1997 would be a serious violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Mark that the key to current diplomacy is Syria’s decision to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and accept policing by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the convention’s enforcement arm. By the 15-year deadline set by the Convention, the OPCW had destroyed 80% of the world’s declared chemical weapons. But both Russia and America are behind schedule.

America says it won’t finish the job at least until 2020; Russia says it is shooting for 2015, but few credit that claim. Both countries cite budget and environmental problems, but a darker force could be at work, a kind of retrograde deterrence. Neither power wants to be second-last in eliminating its stockpile.

According to the OPCW secretary general in his opening statement to the annual Conference of the States Parties in November 2011, Russia has only destroyed 58% of its poison gas, and it has been slowest in eliminating its deadliest nerve agents, Sarin, VX, and the far more lethal new generation called Novichok. If Russia is playing games with its ally Syria, questions arise about its good faith in disarmament and about the end of the Cold War. These concerns might weigh heavily on Mr. Putin himself and explain his haste to shut down the Syrian arsenal. If the Syrian regime has committed a war crime, doesn’t the Kremlin camarilla look a lot like an accessory?


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