As a tsunami of public and congressional opposition puts a damper on the Obama administration’s warmongering against Syria, at least for now, the establishment is making clear that it has no intention of letting the latest crisis go to waste. Instead of launching a full-blown military strike for “regime change,” which may still happen regardless of what Congress says, it appears to analysts as though there may be a new strategy at work — strengthening the United Nations and its supposed “court.”
In essence, the establishment appears to be hoping to exploit the disaster in Syria to further empower the dictator-dominated UN and its so-called International Criminal Court (ICC) while painting the Russian government as a legitimate force for peace. Syria, of course, is not a party to the agreement creating the self-styled “court.” Neither is the U.S. government, meaning the ICC has exactly zero jurisdiction in the Syrian conflict. The notion of Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a responsible government working for peace, meanwhile, has been dismissed by critics as ridiculous.
Of course, the war drums are still beating frantically in Washington, D.C., as an increasingly isolated Obama administration pleads for support from the American people, Congress, and the “international community.” However, with the intense opposition to more war from lawmakers and the public solidifying, while the U.S. government touts the support it has from assorted Islamist tyrants, analysts say the establishment’s plot to directly attack Syria seems less likely to materialize than it did just a week ago.
Obama boasted openly yet again on Monday that he was considering defying Congress by launching a war even if lawmakers refused to submit. With the prospect of impeachment over another unconstitutional war looming large, though, the new plan — already being touted by belligerent governments on both sides of the conflict, including the Obama administration — involves having the UN step in and, supposedly, make everything better. That is what the public is being spoon fed, at least.
The most widely reported element of the new global scheme would see the Syrian despot surrender his chemical weapons stockpile to “international control” before it is destroyed. Virtually every government involved in the negotiations, including the Assad regime, promptly agreed to the general idea. However, there is a great deal more to the plan that has not received nearly as much coverage.
Among the less discussed parts of the latest Syria scheme, tentatively endorsed by the Russian and Syrian governments after a remark by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, is the UN Security Council resolution currently being drafted by French authorities. According to multiple news reports, the document being prepared by France’s socialist government would explicitly purport to mandate that “the authors” of the chemical weapons attack — blamed on Assad by the West in its resolution but on rebels by other governments — be prosecuted and tried by the International Criminal Court.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius explained that his government would stop seeking to use military force only if the UN resolution met all the conditions he laid out. Among those requirements, he was quoted as saying, is that Assad place all of his chemicals under “international control,” that the UN scheme be “binding,” and finally, that those allegedly responsible for the August 21 attack be referred to the ICC for prosecution and “trial.” “All options are still on the table,” Fabius threatened, perhaps attempting to sound tough.
Joining the socialist French government in calling for an ICC trial was German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who also said that the court should investigate and prosecute. “I have again pressed for the UN Security Council to give a mandate to the ICC to examine the chemical attack in Syria,” Westerwelle said during the G20 summit in Russia. “We have launched this initiative already in January…. The situation has worsened sufficiently for another initiative.”
Separately, former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, who in 2011 claimed to be investigating American and NATO forces for war crimes perpetrated during Obama’s military campaign in Libya, also called on governments to empower the court over Syria — again, despite the nation not being a party to the international agreement. Myriad establishment-backed human rights groups have echoed the calls to have the UN court step in and deliver supposed justice.
Secretary of State John Kerry is reportedly set to discuss a draft UN resolution with Russian officials today that would explicitly blame “Syrian authorities” for the alleged chemical weapons strikes. The document would also refer the regime to the ICC for prosecution, potentially setting Assad and his allies up for a trial in the Hague. Russian authorities, however, have publicly suggested the attack was a “false-flag” orchestrated by rebels, as has occurred before in the conflict, so Russia would probably be unlikely to support at least that provision.
Kerry said a non-binding resolution on the matter would be “unacceptable” to the Obama administration, too. The U.S. government, he continued, must have “a full resolution from the Security Council in order to have confidence that this has the force that it has to have.” The UN Security Council measure must have “consequences if games are played and somebody tries to undermine this,” the secretary of state added.
It was not immediately clear whether the Russian and Communist Chinese governments, which also have a veto on the UN Security Council, would support any resolution that threatened military force or mandated ICC prosecutions. However, amid the global “regime change” war on Libya aimed at bringing down Moammar Gadhafi and probably his publicly owned central bank, both governments agreed to a resolution calling for UN trials and prosecutions at the Hague.
Of course, the U.S. government is not a party to the agreement creating the Hague-based UN court, which operates in a way that flies in the face of bedrock American constitutional principles. However, despite the U.S. Senate having never ratified the dubious ICC — widely criticized as a kangaroo court that outrageously claims to have jurisdiction over every person on Earth — the Obama administration has been lawlessly and feverishly working to empower the illegitimate body.
In fact, the president’s misplaced affection for the international court is so brazen that the global government-promoting Council on Foreign Relations celebrated what it called the administration’s “honeymoon” and “lovefest” with the ICC this year. In a report for the CFR’s Foreign Affairs journal, law Professor David Kaye reported approvingly that Obama officials “enthusiastically attend the ICC’s annual meetings” and “speak in support of the court at the UN Security Council.”
“For the first time, the United States is not only cooperating with the ICC but encouraging cooperation and information-sharing with the court,” gushed Kaye in the report, pointing out that the Obama administration sent troops to Africa to help find “suspects” wanted by the UN entity. “In short, although the United States is not a party to the ICC’s charter, the Rome Statute, it is arguably doing as much as, if not more than, member states are doing to bolster the work of the court…. Even more remarkable, the administration’s embrace of the court has been met with little, if any, resistance from Congress.”
Also part of the new plan on Syria by the international community is forcing the Syrian regime, which is under relentless attack by foreign-backed, Christian-murdering jihadists linked to al-Qaeda, to submit to various UN schemes against its will. Indeed, Western powers have already made clear that if Assad wishes to avoid a deluge of U.S. missiles raining down on the country, he must obey.
Unsurprisingly, Syrian officials said they would comply. “We want to join the convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons,” Assad Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said in a widely quoted statement. “We are ready to observe our obligations in accordance with that convention, including providing all information about these weapons…. We are ready to declare the location of the chemical weapons, stop production of the chemical weapons, and show these facilities to representatives of Russia and other United Nations member states.”
Separately, amid the push to strengthen the UN court, calls are once again growing to “reform” the UN Security Council by eliminating the veto power currently held by five governments, including Russia and the United States. As The New American has previously reported, the efforts to abolish the veto are openly described by proponents as a way to allow the global body to expand and employ its ever-growing power more easily.
If Western powers and Islamic Arab dictators hoping to depose Assad fail to secure enough semblance of support for open warfare, that does not mean globalist forces will let the crisis-opportunity pass them by. Strengthening the UN and its supposed court has been a longtime goal of the establishment, as The New American has documented extensively.
Of course, even though the U.K. Parliament voted against going to war and Congress would almost certainly do the same absent a real or staged attack, the prospect of unconstitutional military strikes by Obama against Assad remains very real. Either way, though, the establishment’s scheming on war and empowering the UN’s lawless court should be firmly resisted by U.S. lawmakers.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected].
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