Buying Time

Russia has to know that their offer to disarm Syria of chemical weapons isn't going to work. The revolution will be over--one way or another--before even an honest effort to remove chemical weapons could be completed. But even a short delay could benefit Russia (and Assad).

With an American strike on Syria apparently imminent, Russia was in the position of needing to do something to shield their ally Assad from our strikes. John Kerry gave Russia their chance to buy time to do something.

So what will Russia do with the time? I wondered what the "special cargo" Russia said they were sending to Syria is. We could have struck before the ship and cargo could arrive in Syria.

But now Russia has a chance to get the special cargo to Syria and unload it, as well as deploy other ships around Syria to interfere with our possible strikes. Not to fight us, mind you, but just to get in the way and report on what we are doing to Assad for warning and to Moscow for future reference or for sharing with anyone else who might think about fighting us one day.

And could the special cargo simply be Russian-manned equipment that can be placed around really critical regime targets as trip wires/human shields to limit our target list to things and people that Assad can afford to lose?

UPDATE: With Russia involved, this is no longer just a US-Syria question. We need to make Assad pay a price for being a murderous, WMD-using dictator just to knock Russia down a peg and demonstrate that Russia can't protect a thug ruler despite its loud efforts to do so.

UPDATE: Of course, by not striking quickly after the chemical attack, we allow Russia to point to their deployments and statements to argue that any US strike that takes place now will be unbelievably small only because Russia deterred an effective use of force. This will be more believable than our claim that we intended for this diplomatic route all along.

So it's a diplomatic rout for us, I suppose. Without the British at our side, I guess we lost the "e" at the end.