Last week the mayor of London heaped praise on the president of Syria for liberating Palmyra, and thereby saving its prized antiquities from ISIS. In his column for the Telegraph, Boris Johnson wrote that he knows “Assad is a monster, a dictator. He barrel-bombs his own people. His jails are full of tortured opponents. He and his father ruled for generations by the application of terror and violence."
But according to Johnson, "There are at least two reasons why any sane person should feel a sense of satisfaction at what Assad's troops have accomplished." First, as bad as Assad and his forces may be, they're still better than the Islamic State forces they vanquished in the campaign to retake Palmyra. Second, writes Johnson, "the victory of Assad is a victory for archaeology."
Johnson's first reason is arguable. Assad's forces have killed many times more people than ISIS, which entered the war several years after Assad started the conflict by firing on peaceful protesters who took to the streets in March 2011. ISIS is vicious and publicizes its gore on social media, but Assad and allies have done the same abundantly. Indeed, Palmyra is where the Assad regime built a dungeon in the desert decades ago to torture and murder political prisoners. Five years ago, Bashar al-Assad emptied that prison, Tadmor, of its Islamist inmates with the purpose of sowing chaos, and many of them became ISIS figures.
Johnson's second reason for praising Assad—as the champion of archaeology—is evidence that the West has become undone. The mayor of one of the world's greatest cities—next in line to lead Britain's Tories—praises Vladimir Putin for his "ruthless clarity" in helping Assad's troops rescue antiquities. London, which has given birth to some of the great glories of the English language, now publishes encomia to an Oriental despot who saves stones as he tears men's flesh.
On Easter Sunday, a delegation of French figures visited the butcher of Damascus. The group comprised a few well-known antisemites and other right-wing extremists among the visiting politicians, journalists, and intellectuals. They paid their respects, smiled, and posed for selfies with a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. French diplomatic sources warn that this gruesome caravan may be a sign of things to come, with many French policymakers now leaning toward an accommodation with Assad.
This is not how Paris wanted it. French planes were ready to hit Assad in August 2013 when Barack Obama called off the attack. François Hollande was the last European leader who demanded Assad's removal. The French president declined to take part in the anti-ISIS campaign in Syria because he feared it would strengthen Assad's hand. After the massive ISIS attacks on Paris in November, Hollande joined the Obama administration's halfhearted war on the Islamic State because there was no other choice.
So Assad is enjoying a popular revival, praise from figures like Boris Johnson, and reconsideration from EU policymakers, because Europe is cornered: ISIS is on the march and the Obama White House will not lead the West and is proud that it will not.
The ISIS attack on Brussels two weeks ago that left 35 dead and almost 300 wounded merely confirmed for Europe that its major threat is about borders and immigration. It's true that Assad's sectarian campaign against Syria's Sunni Arab population is responsible for the vast majority of refugees, and Putin is manipulating the refugee crisis to his own advantage. But when death comes to the continent, European officials logically label ISIS the major problem. They're concerned with their own security, not the big picture—like how to deal ISIS a decisive blow, or contain Iran, or knock Putin back down to size. The Americans are supposed to do the big picture. They have the military, the economy, the prestige to shape a global strategy. After all, they built the post-WWII international order.
And as Brussels burned in the wake of a major terrorist attack, where was the president of the United States? Obama was in Havana watching a baseball game with the leader of a state that sponsors terrorism. If you let the terrorists disrupt your routine whenever there's a terrorist attack, Obama said, then the terrorists win. But that's not the message he sent when he decided to sit next to Raúl Castro rather than stand by Europe.
The message was this: Isolating Cuba for 50 years was wrong. For Obama, even when the Soviets based nuclear weapons 90 miles from America, it was a mistake. It was wrong to make too big a deal out of the differences between communism and capitalism, Obama told an audience in Argentina shortly after his Cuban excursion. Forget these distinctions and go with whatever works, said the American president. The whole Cold War was a mistake, Obama thinks, and all the ideas that came out of it, like enmity with Iran, like NATO, like the international order that America has underwritten since the end of WWII. Who needs Europe anyway? As Obama told a journalist, allies like France and the United Kingdom are "free riders."
Foreign policy isn't poetry. It's not for the solitary genius, but the grinders. It's the hard and meticulous work of many men and women over many generations who understood the world is flawed, as are they and the nation, America, they serve. Still, as they well knew, morality in international affairs is the privilege that American power afforded the United States and our allies. That moment is in jeopardy. To preserve it will require leadership, sacrifice, and humility—all qualities that after the last seven years America will have to rediscover.