That appears to be the three-word summary of the correspondence of Mr. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, to Mr. Barak Obama, President of the United States of America, over the latter's move to apply military action against Syria for the use of chemical weapon against civilian population in Damascus recently. Earlier, the British Parliament had warned the ebullient and filibuster Prime Minister, Mr. David Cameron, against a precipitate military action on Syria; much the same way that the US Congress had cautioned Obama against any rash decision on the chemical weapon allegation against the Assad regime.
I find it curious that the Barak Obama government in the United States was comfortable with the position that once there is conclusive evidence that chemical weapon was used against civilians in Damascus; it was irrelevant who used it and would hold the Basher Assad regime liable. Such an obviously presumptuous and impolitic conclusion agitated the mind of thinking people and provided ample room for Russia to make a clever diplomatic move that proposes a less bellicose and a less sanguinary solution to the Syrian chemical weapon debacle, even as it laid the responsibility for the use of chemical weapon in Damascus on the door step of the rebels who calculated that such a move would pitch the world against the Assad government.
The diplomatic option proposed by Vladimir Putin was against military intervention, but in favour of getting the Syrian government to surrender the chemical weapons in its possession to the Security Council of the United Nations, which ideally, should have been allowed by the big powers to conduct its investigations and come up with concrete suggestions to guide wise decisions. Luckily, the Russian maneuver kept military action against Syria at bay, but the Geneva talk between the Scribes of the two world powers whittled down the one month period proposed to get Assad to surrender the chemical weapons in his arsenal to 7 days.
While the Russian intervention may be commended for getting America to explore the diplomatic option in resolving the Damascus chemical weapon issue, it remains to be seen whether good sense will prevail in the mental attic of Mr. Assad who now, obviously, suffers from a delusion of grandeur. If indeed, the Assad regime did not use chemical weapon in Damascus as is being alleged, good sense demands that Mr. Assad should allow the global community, including nations like China and Russia which had urged patience and understanding in the Syrian crisis, to secure its chemical weapons for the safety of the Syrian people; more so now that the rebels have access to chemical weapons.
Whatever else might be said about the likelihood of the Putin correspondence to Obama preventing military strike against the Assad regime and whatever reprisals and collateral damage it might occasion, what has emerged from the unfolding scenario is that Russia and China appear to be thinking more out of the box by insisting on tact and diplomacy in resolving the chemical weapon debacle in Damascus, whilst the political leadership in the United States, Britain and France have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing from the remote and recent past regarding the use of force against sovereign governments to compel the ouster of unpopular, inconsiderate and defiant leaders, like Assad.
But something else should be said of the intransigence of President Basher Assad. Leaders in America, Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain, China and Japan, to name a few, have learnt to leave office whenever their people are tired of their rule. No matter the quantity of sycophants urging political leaders to stay on in power, they should be told by everyone including their children and wives, to quit the stage when the ovation is loudest. Consider the thousands of Syrian people that have been killed since Assad started insisting that he must stay on in power. Consider also the calamity that will befall Syria and the turmoil that will engulf the region if the Putin diplomatic maneuver fails to secure the Syrian chemical weapon to the satisfaction of war hungry world powers. Why does Assad think that staying on in power is more important and valuable than the lives of his countrymen being wasted needlessly in the ongoing civil war? Does he think, as things stand now, that the civil war will end in his favour with normalcy returning to Syria if he remains in office?
The Greek Plato had proposed long ago that until philosophers become rulers or rulers become philosophers the political society will continue to be plagued by upheavals and instability; the type going on in Syria. Since the time of Plato, the wise nations of the world have evolved mechanisms of breeding political leaders that are less terrible than tigers leaders whose tenure is temporal, and who at any rate, can be quitted from office in the event of proven allegations of corruption or gross incompetence in the running of the affairs of state.
I fancy the leadership and succession cultures in America, Great Britain, France, Germany, China, South Africa, Ghana and even the small island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, but I remain a great admirer of Vladimir Putin for his accurate reading of the world's political temperature and Mikhail Gorbachev for respecting and giving in to the wishes of the Russian people when they wanted a change.
Now, as Nigeria boils in cauldron of the ruling PDP crisis and the Boko Haram daily terrorist carnage, can Goodluck Jonathan forget about 2015 and transform into a Vladimir Putin or a Mikhail Gorbachev to save the country from the incarnation of Lebanon or Syria?
National Mirror