Working with dictators – chilling, but necessary

Geoff Sifrin

TAKING ISSUE

Much less comical handshakes, however, have been in the news this week, some between people holding enormous power, on whom the future of desperate peoples and countries depend. Such as the icy pressing of the flesh on Monday between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The two men came out of a door at the UN together, quickly shook hands like robots for the cameras, and left in different directions, without smiles, as if neither could really stomach touching the other. This obligatory diplomatic handshake was necessary to show the world that a friendly relationship exists between Russia and the West – the powers that split the world from the end of the Second World War until 1991. But the truth is that they are again uneasy rivals for global dominance who don’t trust each other.

The handshake took place against the backdrop of Syria disintegrating after four-years of civil war that has reportedly killed some 300 000 and sent 4 million Syrians fleeing their country.
It has become the most dangerous local arena in which international forces are confronting each other – Isis, Russia, the West, Middle Eastern dictatorships, and others. Obama and Putin are taking opposite views on how to deal with Syria, the rise of Isis, and the future of the country’s dictator-ruler, Bashar al-Assad.

Obama, espousing liberal, moral logic in his UN speech, proposes ousting the loathsome Assad, whose forces began the killing of his own Syrian people in 2013, and who opened up the country to the hell it is now experiencing. The US president defended democratic values, appealing to the Western ideal which fervently believes in exporting the “democratic” revolution to the entire world and shunning dictators.
Putin sees this as mere “feelgood” moral grandstanding, and argues that only by straightforwardly supporting Syria’s “legitimate” government – meaning Assad – can a grand coalition be created to end the slaughter. As distasteful as it is, the US and its allies must work with Assad and his Lebanese and Iranian allies. That is the “realpolitik” which is necessary.

Obama’s foreign policy statement repudiates cynical realpolitik. According to that logic, he says: “We should support tyrants like Bashar al-Assad who drops barrel bombs to massacre innocent civilians.”
Putin, on the other hand, is motivated by cold, Machiavellian logic and makes no pretence to be democratic. He is attempting to lead an anti-Islamic State coalition built around Assad, starting with an effort to convince countries to stop demanding his ouster. In the last month, Russia has begun a significant deployment of military equipment to western Syria.

Syria is a bloody wasteland today. Who is more likely to be able to fix it? Obama and the West, with their ideals about democracy and human rights and only working with the “good guys”? Or Putin the Machiavellian, who has no qualms about working with dictators like Assad and regimes like Iran?

Handshakes certainly don’t tell the full story or predict the future. The most famous one regarding the Middle East was between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO lead Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn in Washington at the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, in the presence of US President Bill Clinton.
The NY Times reported: “Moments after the documents were signed, Mr Clinton took Mr Arafat in his left arm and Mr Rabin in his right arm and gently coaxed them together, needing to give Mr Rabin just a little extra nudge in the back. Mr Arafat reached out his hand first, and then Mr Rabin, after a split second of hesitation and with a wan smile on his face, received Mr Arafat’s hand.”
Sadly, the hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace embodied in that 1993 handshake has not been realised.

South Africans have had their iconic handshakes too. One of the most important was between Nelson Mandela and President FW de Klerk in 1990 in Cape Town, after announcing an agreement on steps that would lead to talks on ending white-minority rule. In that case, the handshake lived up to its promise – it did lead to an end to white minority rule.

Regarding the Obama-Putin handshake this week, it is too early to know how it will be recorded in history. But sadly, the signs are not good that it foreshadows greater world peace.

Geoff Sifrin is former editor of the SAJR. He writes this column in his personal capacity.