Russia, as you may know, has proposed a solution to the knotty matter of Syrian President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons -- the Russians will help remove them from Syria and place them under the supervision of "the international community."
Since this proposal was floated, many of the policymakers in the overall Syria debate have proceeded under the premise that this is something that could actually happen in the world. But as Yochi Dreazen points out over at The Cable, they have all sort of run away into a strange fantasyland. The bottom line: it's going to be a hard job to pull off in the middle of Syria's ongoing civil war:
Experts in chemical weapons disposal point to a host of challenges. Taking control of Assad's enormous stores of the munitions would be difficult to do in the midst of a brutal civil war. Dozens of new facilities for destroying the weapons would have to be built from scratch, and completing the job would potentially take a decade or more. The work itself would need to be done by specially-trained military personnel. Guess which country has most of those troops? If you said the U.S., you'd be right.
"This isn't simply burning the leaves in your backyard," said Mike Kuhlman, the chief scientist for national security at Battelle, a company that has been involved in chemical weapons disposal work at several sites in the U.S. "It's not something you do overnight, it's not easy, and it's not cheap."
Dreazen goes into great detail, so go read the whole thing. You will probably be left with the opinion that this is one caper that you couldn't get Danny Ocean to undertake.
With this in mind, let's swing back to the John Kerry ad-lib/gaffe that set the wheels of this cunning geopolitical strategem in motion:
Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week -- turn it over, all of it, without delay and allow the full and total accounting ... But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done.
Give Russia and Syria some credit for jumping on this idea, potentially saddling Kerry with some small amount of embarrassment. But the operative phrase here is "it can't be done." That's Kerry's out. He would be wise to take it, if only because further pursuit of this notion is patently unrealistic.
Kerry's original statement wasn't stupid, but continuing to proceed under the notion that the idea presents some sort of "breakthrough" is.
READ THE WHOLE THING: There's Almost No Chance Russia's Plan for Syria's Chemical Weapons Will Work [The Cable]
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