'Syrian Shadow Boxing'

"... Annan was never able to convince Russia to apply sufficient pressure on Assad to implement his plan while Washington's Gulf allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, continued to arm the rebels, undercutting their incentive to participate in talks.
The diplomatic impasse has shifted the center of gravity to Syria, where the future of the country is likely going to be settled on the battlefields of Homs and Aleppo...,
But while the noose didn't work in preventing the NATO and Arab League effort to topple Libya's dictator, it is firmly around its neck now -- suffocating any real action to bring peace or regime change to Syria, a country of much greater strategic importance to Moscow. And it has left the Obama administration looking feckless, impotent, and callous -- or perhaps simply politically opportunistic.
Russia has complained bitterly that the United States and its Western and Arab allies have manipulated the unrest in the region to expand their power and influence. Libya, in its view, was the first step in a wider geopolitical play for power that leads through Damascus to Tehran. Russian diplomats point to the role of Washington's regional allies, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia -- bitter regional rivals of Iran who have been arming the Syrian rebels -- in undercutting Annan's effort to get the rebels to the peace table. "A major geopolitical battle is being fought on the fields of Syria which has nothing to do with the interests of the Syrian people," Churkin declared after casting his country's third Security Council veto earlier this month. "It's all about Iran. It's all about the geopolitical complexion of the Middle East."...
The end result is that Washington has been forced to look for tactical solutions outside the United Nations, but in a manner that lacks the urgency of last year's military campaign against Qaddafi. The United States, backed by European and Arab allies, has imposed its own set of sanctions against Syria, and provided non-lethal assistance to the fractious opposition movement that emerged to challenge Assad. But ultimately the Obama administration gambled -- although often with little conviction -- that Moscow would recognize that Assad's days were numbered and assent to a U.N. path that would at least grant Russia a role in shaping a post-Assad Syria....
The Obama administration's reliance on the U.N. has harmed its standing within Syria -- where the opposition once looked to Washington with hope that it would act as forcefully as it did in Libya....,Radwan Ziadeh, a member of the Syrian National Council, said that the Obama administration's standing in Syria has plummeted..... "We did not get anything from them," he said. Ziadeh was particularly indignant that on July 23, the day Russia and China vetoed a second Security Council resolution on Syria, Obama delivered a campaign address in West Palm Beach, Florida, in which he cited the violence in Syria to highlight the need to protect Israelis....
Russia's commitment to blocking sanctions in the Security Council made it easy to demonize, but it also ensured Moscow -- and the United Nations -- would be central to any future agreement, or lack thereof. Thus, when former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was appointed special envoy to Syria, the menu of potential options had already been severely limited -- he would be held hostage by the precedent of having gone to the Security Council twice before and the necessity of Russian consent. As a result, Annan was forced to reframe the debate in Western and Arab capitals from ousting Assad to engaging him in a political deal.
The resulting plan contained nothing that was objectionable to the Russians. Notably, it excluded a proposal -- initially put forward by the Arab League and endorsed by the council's Western powers -- that would have required President Assad yield power to a transitional government. More importantly, it ensured that Assad would play a central role in any political deal on the future of the country....
Without a credible diplomatic process in place, the pressure for outside military intervention is likely to grow, making it ever more difficult for the United States not to get involved. But with the U.S. presidential election looming, and Syria ranking low on the radar screen of American voters, it seems unlikely that the administration is set for a major push in the months ahead to resolve the crisis. For now, the Obama administration has insisted that these efforts should not include lethal U.S. military support for the opposition, which U.S. political and intelligence officials are weary of arming, citing a lack of clarity about their long-term goals and uncertainty about the role of extremists groups, including al Qaeda, in the armed effort to overthrow Assad..."