The Tic-Tac-Toe of Foreign Policy

"It's smarter to be  lucky than it's lucky to be smart."

from the Broadway musical comedy "Pippin"

This morning the television round-table discussion on CNN concerned the situation in Syria and the Obama administration's efforts to force President Assad of  that country to divest himself of all his chemical weapons. The panel was composed of a number of talking heads of a variety of opinions.

The first speaker claimed that the crisis is averted, that the President and Secretary Kerry have obtained their goal by having Assad place all his poison gas in the hands of the Russians, who will oversee their destruction (Question: how are they destroyed?) Then a woman who I would characterize as a hatchetman. tore into the president, saying this is a disaster, that the Syrians will undoubtedly  cheat or President Putin will, and the US was operating from a position of weakness throughout this crisis. She said that Putin is playing chess and we are playing tic-tac-toe.

Newt Gingrich chimed in, saying the president is a lucky tic-tac-toe player.

So I'm wondering: isn't it said that luck is the residue of design? Obama was placing the US navy in position to attack Syria. There didn't seem to be any way to avoid attacking Syria without backing down on the statement that their use of chemical weapons was unsatisfactory. Meanwhile, it was clear that public opinion was against intervening in the Syrian civil war, and it was becoming very clear that the Republicans in the House of Representatives would not authorize use of force there. 

Then Secretary Kerry made this supposedly off the cuff remark that an international solution might be found. Right away the Russians volunteered to act as the nation that would receive the Syrian poison gases, and the solution was at hand. Obama and Kerry were careful to keep the pressure on Assad by saying we would not wait  long for the transfer and it  must be verifiable. 

How is this inept in any way? We get what we want, not a shot has been fired by us, and we have dodged involvement in the morass of Syria. What's not to like? If our side is playing tic-tac-toe, I'd say they played it very well.

As an aside, one has to wonder why Assad used these terrible gases knowing that President Obama had said their use would require a response from us. Is it possible that he didn't order it, that some general made the decision without Assad's approval. 

By the way, it's raining hard here, and after all the rain we've had lately the ground is saturated and there's a lot of potential for more flooding.