Whatever the final result of American-Russian negotiations in Geneva over Syria, and whatever the fate of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal, the way the Syrian regime has dealt with this problem has revealed a series of facts, and will have a series of repercussions and aftereffects. It seems that after the United States of America and its allies abandoned their plan for a quick military strike against its forces following accusations of it having made use of chemical weapons against its own people, the regime's victory cry in reality conceals the size of the major strategic concessions this regime has forced Syria the nation to offer, for the sake of its own survival. It is common knowledge that the Syrian regime used to absolutely refuse to discuss joining the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and that it had tried to play the game of obscurity about whether or not it possessed such weapons. Thus, it would declare at every occasion that this issue was connected to the conflict with Israel and to the balance of power and deterrence with the latter's nuclear weapons. The regime had even denied possessing such an arsenal after the eruption of the protest movement, when it was accused of resorting to it. It was later confirmed that it did in fact possess a massive arsenal of such weapons, which were used against Syrian civilians in the first confrontation that posed a threat to the regime in the Rif Dimashq governorate, in an attempt to spread terror and panic in the hearts of those Syrians who oppose it, and force them to abandon their demands and beg for its mercy! In other words, the Syrian regime has given up all of the elements of the balance of power and deterrence with Israel merely because it considered its own survival to have become at risk, as a result of threats of a Western strike against its forces. It is not without significance for Israel and its view of the Syrian front that the regime has given up its arsenal of strategic deterrence after the Golan front has been calm for such a long time. In this sense, the Syrian regime's concession serves Israel's interests as well, and represents the declared end of the strategy of the balance of power. It also represents the end of the strategy of resistance and defiance, the latter having lost its central element, namely that of deterrence. In parallel to this, the Syrian regime has given Russia the authority to negotiate on its behalf directly with the United States in Geneva. The background of such a move is the fact that the regime considers that providing assets to Moscow, which seeks to restore the balance of power between itself and Washington, would make of the regime's survival a vital need for Russian diplomacy, one which would make threatening the regime tantamount to threatening Russia. This is true in one its aspects, but its other aspect, the one more dangerous for the state and the nation in Syria, is that of having relinquished an essential part of the sovereignty which the regime had always boasted of protecting. It also makes of Syria a Russian "protectorate", at least diplomatically, despite the constant supply of Russian weapons to it. At the same time, and under the slogan of their alliance of defiance, Iran is exploiting Syria's strategic exposure before Israel, after having relinquished its chemical arsenal, to compensate for it with a missile defense shield which Iran would be directly in charge of, either through Iranian experts or through members of Lebanon's Hezbollah. Here too the regime is relinquishing a vital element of its sovereignty in favor of a foreign power, in a manner by far exceeding that of merely making use of foreign fighters on the ground to confront the advance of the armed opposition. President Vladimir Putin has won a round of his confrontation with President Barack Obama, by taking charge of negotiations in Syria's name over its chemical arsenal in exchange for stopping the march to a military strike against the Syrian regime. The regime may well have bought itself some time through these negotiations, but it has shown itself to be willing to make all kinds of concessions to foreign powers in order to save itself, including the sovereignty of the state, on a background of unprecedented inflexibility in the face of the people's demands, to which has now been added the restoration of such sovereignty.
