Maybe Russia faces no legal restrictions, but what about plain, simple morality? On the day Antonov spoke, Syrian exile groups reported that government forces shot and killed more than 60 people during an attack on a
Damascus suburb -- almost certainly firing Russian bullets. Russia is Syria's principal arms supplier.
Almost the entire world wants to see Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad thrown out of office -- every nation save for Russia,
China and a few other states like India that revel in being contrary. It obviously matters little to these countries that Assad, who has now slaughtered more than 6,000 of his own citizens, is indisputably guilty of massive crimes against humanity. By Tuesday,
UNICEF announced, at least 400 Syrian children have been killed.
On Saturday, Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution -- drawn up by the Arab League, not the Western nations the two states so resent -- calling for an end to the carnage and urging Assad to step down. The vote was 13-2 -- on the bloodiest day since the uprising began. Syrian troops massacred more than 200 people.
Why are both Russia and China so intent on blocking the world's effort to stop Syria's
Pol Pot? As
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, put it: "We have between 30 and 100 people being killed violently, every day. We have the torture and abuse of huge numbers of people, including children. How many people need to die before the consciences of world capitals are stirred?"
All of that "for a little rotten dictator," Leon Aron, director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told me.
Last Saturday, tens of thousands of anti-government protestors turned out in
Moscowonce again, in subzero weather, calling for Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin to step down. These demonstrations have become a regular feature of Russian life, since monitors discovered rampant fraud in December's parliamentary elections.
More and more often now, Russians are repeating an old joke about Putin's so-called "sovereign democracy" that goes like this: What is the difference between democracy and sovereign democracy? It's the same as the difference between a chair and an electric chair.
In China, meanwhile, angry Tibetans are in open revolt. For years the only sign of their fury over continuing Chinese occupation and religious repression had been two dozen Buddhist monks who lit themselves on fire -- including three more last week. Now Tibetans are staging a full-blown uprising. Chinese troops have killed at least six people and wounded dozens more. Today, Tibet is under undeclared martial law.
Like Assad, the autocrats in both Russia and China are facing their own popular revolts. Is it any wonder that neither of them was willing to support a U.N. resolution calling for regime change? Both of them certainly fear that, sooner or later, that sword will be turned on them.
As it is right now, both Russian and Chinese leaders sound just like Assad, blaming others for the popular anger over their own ugly repression. In Damascus, Assad continues to loudly proclaim that foreign-backed "terrorists" are responsible for the ferment and death.
Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news service, quoted a foreign ministry spokesman saying: "Overseas forces for Tibet independence have been fabricating rumors and distorting the truth to discredit" China.
And in Russia, a state-owned TV station ran a
documentary that accused Michael McFaul, the new U.S. ambassador, of paying protestors to take to the streets. That tells me the leaders of both countries are running scared. In Syria, both Russia and China see reflections of themselves. Russia also faces a more practical concern. Its arms dealers have contracts with Syria worth up to $6 billion, a Moscow-based security institute reported last week. So Antonov, the deputy defense minister, found himself stammering through baseless circumlocutions as he tried to explain that Syrian forces couldn't possibly be using Russian arms to shoot protestors.
"We have agreements with Syria" governing the permitted uses of weapons, he protested. "This has been recorded in documentation."
Shame on you.
(Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is
a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the
New York Times.)
