Give It Time

There’s an unseemly amount of Republican glee that Putin may have pulled a fast one on President Obama. But I’m not at all clear that Putin’s new line puts things back at square one. Not at all. What’s clear, as we noted earlier, is that Russia does not want a Chapter 7 resolution on Syrian chemical weapons – which would essentially mean one that came prepackaged with a UN use of force authorization if Syria didn’t fully comply (compliance the US, for instance, could choose to determine on its own.) But a UN mandated disarmament is still on the table. The US still has a lot of opportunities to work with here. Now’s when we’ll see how deft or not Obama’s foreign policy team really is. Let’s see how this plays out.