The UNSC Resolution on Syria's Chemical Weapons.

In the very early hours of this morning the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted resolution UNSC 2118(2013) on Syria's chemical weapons program. The reason that this resolution was able to pass unanimously is that in terms of Syria's chemical weapons it is completely meaningless. The resolution only requires that Syria complies with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and that the OPCW reports any violations back to the UNSC for discussion. This is the standard framework laid out in the 1993 Convention of Chemical Weapons that Syria has voluntarily joined meaning all that the UNSC has done is announce that it has no intention of altering the 1993 convention which answers the question nobody had asked.

Therefore the UNSC vote and the diplomacy leading up to was much more about the UK - acting as an agent of Saudi Arabia and Qatar - forcing itself into a discussion it had no place in. Having forced itself into the discussion the UK then used the spectacle of a UNSC vote to reassert its dominance by mounting another vicious attack against largely me personally. The idea was that the stress of the vote would combine with the broadcast on UK TV of a two week old interview with Rihanna and few other things to turn me into something of a nervous wreck. Therefore the UK would be able to gain prestige by showing itself to be the all powerful puppet master.

Although the UNSC resolution is utterly superfluous to the situation regarding Syria's chemical weapons that does not mean there were not winners and losers in the diplomacy. The biggest losers are of the US and Russia - ironically the two nations that sponsored the plan.

The US are big losers because they've just committed themselves to at least a year of complex diplomacy on the issue in which any Syrian refusal to an OPCW request no matter how reasonable or any rumour of chemical weapons being moved or hidden no matter how false will take on the intensity that the original August 21st chemical weapons use generated. The UK has already positioned itself to make this as rough a road as possible by donating some USD3million to the OPCW in the hope of buying influence to make the OPCW rule things violations that need to go to the UNSC. Then if Syria's chemical weapons are destroyed the US will then come under intense diplomatic pressure to allow Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply larger quantities of ever more powerful conventional weapons to the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA). Based on their current track record the US will inevitably cave to this pressure meaning that the Syrian government will be over thrown leaving the US to deal with the fall out of a failed state and its knock on security impacts on Iraq, Lebanon and Syria to name but a few. Added to that the Saudi and Qatari Irregulars will quickly redeploy to carry out the same trick in another Middle-Eastern or African nation most likely Egypt.

The Russians are big losers because it won't take long for their international allies to look beyond all the anti-US Imperialist banner waving to realise that Russia has sold a long time ally down the river in order to secure that banner. The Russians have also signed up for at least a year of complex diplomacy and based on their efforts so far Russian diplomats are nowhere near as slick or as clever as they think they are. Finally if Russia is to prevent the overthrow of the Syrian government it is going to have to spend a lot of time very publicly playing the bad guy vetoing UNSC resolutions and explaining why Syria is perfectly entitled to break its obligations under the 1993 Convention. This is not going to lead to many of the happy photo-opportunities Sergei Lavrov was clearly craving in his address to the UN General Assembly (UNGA).

The almost impossible situation the US has played itself into on this issue is highlighted by the OPCW's insistence that they will not start work on establishing a timetable for the destruction of chemical weapons until November 15th 2013. This is also the date that Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour is scheduled to come to an end in New Orleans, US. Therefore the 41 nations of the OPCW seem to be sending the message that they will not be co-operating with the US until the US ends its Rihanna operation. This is a huge problem for the US because unless Chris Brown's restraining order is reinstated and something dramatic is done to alter Rihanna's current trajectory - both things that represent a massive climb down for the US - it could be considered that the Rihanna operation is being continued in an effort to delay the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. That is something that's going to make everybody p*ssed off at the US including the small group of nations that support the Rihanna operation.

(Originally Posted) 17:30 on 28/9/13.