Obama's Empty Promises Pushing Europe to Putin's Way of Thinking on Syria

Journalist Elias Harfouche believes that the West's crisis of leadership has given Vladimir Putin an opportunity to bring the Europeans closer to his way of thinking on the Syrian crisis. In particular, this means seeing more Europeans calling for the West to focus its efforts on defeating Daesh, instead of trying to topple the Assad government.

In his analysis for the al-Fadjr newspaper, translated by WhatTheySayAboutUSA.com, the Algerian journalist explained that Western leaders are in the midst of a leadership crisis, vis-a-vis the United States, recognizing "that betting on the Obama administration is like betting on Don Quixote's giants."

Commenting on the events of the past month, Harfouche recalled that two key US allies, France's Francois Hollande and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have been given upleasant reminders of the US president's political paralysis, Hollande returning "empty-handed" following his visit to the White House, where he sought "Obama's support in fighting ISIL after the Paris attacks," and Erdogan finding "himself alone in front of Putin, in the wake of downing the Russian Su-24 bomber" over Syria.

The Turkish leader, the journalist recalled, "was expecting NATO's support, especially that of the US, but has since had to regress and look for mitigating excuses, such as the claim that the Turks didn't know that the jet was Russian."

As for Hollande, he "didn't get anything substantial from Obama, who just offered him a speech on the sweet memories he had with his wife in Paris. To be fair, Obama did also offer to boost intelligence cooperation, and stressed 'the necessity to terminate ISIL'," but offered "no real commitment on the ground, or even in the skies," in fact reducing the number of US air attacks against Daesh targets.

According to the journalist, US passivity and incompetence have only given "Vladimir Putin the opportunity to fill in the gaps," from Ukraine to Syria to Russia's strong reaction against the Turkish provocation.

Nonetheless, Harfouche noted that despite his foreign policy "paralysis and the absence of any practical plan to eliminate ISIL, Obama wasn't embarrassed to declare that his administration has the 'proper strategy of confrontation', which the US will stick to till the end. However, the only strategy which exists in Syria is the one being followed by Vladimir Putin, which supports Bashar al-Assad."

With Russia confronting Turkey over its alleged support for ISIL, and lambasting Ankara over its suggestion that it wasn't aware that the downed Su-24 was Russian, Putin also took the opportunity to stress to President Hollande "that the Syrian army and President Assad personally are natural allies in the war on terrorism. Hollande was shocked by this frankness of the Russian president, who was aware of the French attitude toward Assad's regime. Hollande, for his part, stressed that Assad should step down 'in the context of a political transition'."

Ultimately, according Harfouche, with US allies such as France and Turkey coming to the conclusion that they are unable to count on their ally "until the end of Obama's presidency," and with Russia "boosting its aerial and maritime presence in Syria, especially after the downing of its jet," Russia has an excellent opportunity:

With "issues of security…dominating the European agenda," and "France and Britain becoming more concerned about the war against ISIL, this gives Vladimir Putin an opportunity to draw Europeans closer to his line. Thus there are more European voices calling for war on ISIL, rather than toppling Assad."