Michael Young

It didn’t take long for European states to change their attitude toward the regime of President Bashar Assad. A few hundred thousand refugees, and many governments were suddenly advocating for new openness toward the Syrian leader.

The British government has proposed that Assad remain in power for a limited period while a transitional government takes over. Spain’s ambassador in Beirut, with Madrid’s approval, called for a dialogue with the Syrian regime. The United States, through Secretary of State John Kerry, indicated it might be flexible on Assad’s exit under a transitional plan.

Everyone is rushing to make concessions to Assad, and, if Syrian behavior is anything to go by, the regime will reject everything until it gets precisely what it wants. It started doing so by rebuffing the British proposal that Assad momentarily lead a transitional government, saying it was unrealistic to ask him to later step down in the midst of the battle against ISIS.

This is all standard operating procedure for the Syrians. The refugee crisis was made worse by the regime’s facilitating the departure for Europe of Syrians in government-held areas. Thousands have already been allowed to cross into Lebanon and transit to ports from where they embarked on ships to Turkey. The Assad regime, in a classic case of exporting its problems to save itself, is exacerbating the refugee crisis, knowing it will make the Europeans change their attitude toward him.

You have to admire the Russians and Syrians for having the number of all those who once claimed to be their adversaries. The cynicism is paying off, and we’re all discovering that neither the Europeans nor the Americans have the software for dealing with such behavior. The defenders of human rights and a rules-based international system are empty shells.

Better still, Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin have grasped that all it takes is to drop a few bombs on ISIS to suddenly become de facto partners in the anti-terrorism campaign led by the Americans. In recent days the Syrian air force, which has generally avoided hitting ISIS targets, regarding the group as an objective ally in combating Syrian opposition groups, has suddenly taken to doing so, supposedly “with new weapons provided by Russia.”

It’s all so transparent, so obvious, that you have to marvel at the European and American ability to be taken in by such a sham. But the explanation lies not in the stupidity of American or European officials, but in something far more sinister: their growing impatience with the war in Syria, and ultimately their utter indifference to what happens to the Syrian population, except when their suffering causes them to rush to Europe for a better life. That’s why Europeans have had trouble describing the exodus as a refugee crisis, preferring the more neutral, and contestable, description of it as a migrant crisis.

We can already guess what the next step will be in Russia’s and Syria’s splendid game of dupes: the consolidation, through a political process, of Assad rule. That is why the Russian deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, met this week with a delegation of representatives of Assad’s “internal opposition.” He reaffirmed the 2012 Geneva principles, which seek to put in place a transitional Syrian government with executive powers.

For a long time this was regarded by Western states as a mechanism to ease Assad out of office. However, the Russians do not see things in that way. When the United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, suggested that Assad become a head of state with ceremonial powers, this was strongly opposed by Moscow and Tehran. The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said no to Assad’s resignation, while the Iranians insisted he should be part of a political settlement of the Syrian conflict. The fact that several European states and the Obama administration have budged on Assad’s departure shows Assad and his backers that they are gradually getting their way.

The lack of a coordinated strategy by Europe and the United States reflects how much damage Barack Obama’s foreign-policy disengagement has wrought. Only the Americans could have facilitated a unified position over Syria. However, the U.S. president, who still bores us with references to America’s global leadership, has consistently refused to make it a reality.

One day the West will realize that Syria, far from being “someone else’s civil war,” was a poisonous nail in the foot of the Western alliance and European unity. The kindest thing that can be said about Europe’s response to the refugee problem is that it is incompetent – leaving aside for the moment that it has generally been racist, inhumane and completely at odds with the values that the European states claim to exemplify.

As for NATO, after intervening in Libya in 2011, it has been thoroughly ineffective in its response to Russian actions in Ukraine. Today many NATO members almost seem to welcome Moscow’s deployment in Syria, after initially expressing hypocritical reservations about it. Putin may contribute to resolving a major European headache. That blithe assessment looks far from certain, is in fact dangerous, and is really not much of a principle upon which to build an alliance.

Syria was Putin’s way of striking back at the West following its campaign in Libya against Moammar Gadhafi. The Russian president got much more. He has helped highlight a rift both between the European states themselves and between the United States and Europe, showing the extent to which the two have lost a sense of common purpose internationally.

In contrast, Russia, despite its soft spot for mass murderers, knows what it wants. There is nothing praiseworthy here, but with the United States and much of Europe shifting on Assad, while remaining cold to his crimes, Putin couldn’t care less.