SYRIAN “STAND-DOWN” IS A WATERSHED MOMENT ===> LEVERAGING “RIGHT” WITH “MIGHT” FOR MAXIMUM DIPLOMACY!

 

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Diplomacy, without a military component is a dead letter.  That’s what President Obama just revealed to the world this past week.  We now know that Obama engaged Russian Vladimir Putin at last year’s G-20 conference about a strategy to resolve the Syrian chemical weapons issue.  President Obama chose his timing well when delivering a military ultimatum to Syria at this year’s G-20 summit in Moscow.

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Secretary of State John Kerry’s shot-across-the-bow statement this week, i.e., that Syria could turn over its chemical weapons in one week to settle this matter, was jumped on by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, thereby setting in motion Russia’s subsequent dictate to Syria, its client-state, to turn over its complete stockpile of chemical weapons to international control.  None of this would have come about but for President Obama’s drop-dead threat to rain down missiles on Syrian military installations unless its chemical weapons were handed over to the international community and destroyed.

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Syria folded like a cheap suit yesterday (Monday) by quickly accepting Russia’s suggestion for its client-state to transfer its chemical weapons to international control for destruction.  This blogger is fairly certain that Syrian President Bashar al Assad will see this thing through for one very good reason:  he knows he’s a dead-man walking otherwise and that his country is needlessly going to get a huge military spanking that will further alienate him from his people (if that’s even possible at this stage of the game).

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President Obama has just unleashed a new era in World diplomacy:  maximum military “leverage” = maximum military diplomacy!  Military might will increasingly become wedded to diplomatic efforts to produce the maximum thrust for confronting truly hot spots around the globe with truly full-dominance leverage.  It is crude but it is going to work and is probably the only thing in the foreseeable future that will guarantee the roll-back of intransigent rogue nations and/or actors (Al Qaeda, et al., North Korea, Iran).

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The President has been setting the stage for this week’s culmination of events (Syria and it’s lethal chemical weapons capacity) for a long time and deserves all of the credit for injecting another potent option in the international arena:  maximum military leverage will, in fact, produce maximum military diplomacy.  It’s all about the leverage.  It’s a common concept in real estate wherein you utilize the combined power of all of your assets and contacts to concentrate, accelerate and maximize your efforts.  There’s no reason why it can’t work in the international arena.  I think we are seeing the harbinger of what is to come.

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President Obama roped in all of the competition by outfoxing and outflanking.  He deserve all due praise and recognition inasmuch as he has injected something a little different into the world order that will have significant repercussions for a very long time!   In essence, he is leveraging Right with Might – and not the other way around!

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