Russia and China are still betting on Assad

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The UN Security Council last month approved a six-month extension of the UN’s remaining cross-border aid corridor to Syria, after a lengthy debate. Eight years ago, the Security Council voted unanimously to launch this humanitarian aid mechanism under Resolution 2165, granting UN-led humanitarian groups the legal authority to deliver aid. into Syria through four designated border crossings with Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.

This resolution marked the first time the United Nations agreed to this approach – and the first time China and Russia voted to overrule Syrian authority because of the human suffering in Syria. But China and Russia now want to end this access to humanitarian aid and centralize the delivery of aid through Damascus. My research suggests that this change would limit access to aid for millions of people in hard-to-reach areas of Syria.

Northern Syria depends on UN aid. It could end.

Russia and China want to preserve the Assad regime

The 2014 vote allowed cross-border humanitarian access, regardless of Syrian consent. For Russia and China, this was a sea change from their earlier refusal to support such resolutions in Syria.

A series of high-profile attacks in 2013 – including the Ghouta chemical attack – targeted Syrian civilians, fueling calls within the international community for military intervention in Syria. This has increased international pressure on Russia and China to prioritize the protection of civilians.

For Russia, the punitive actions of the UN in Syria risked undermining the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s first strategic partner in the region, and threatened the Russian naval base in Tartous. China had its own reasons for vetoing UN proposals relating to the Syrian conflict, in part because Beijing had vast economic interests in the region. Beijing also abstained during UN authorization for a humanitarian intervention in Libya in 2011 – and Chinese policymakers believed that the rampant action of NATO, under UN authorization, had caused the collapse of Libya and the ensuing civil war.

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After this abstention, China strategically used its veto in the Security Council to delegitimize regime change in Syria and push for non-intervention alternatives in the Syrian conflict. Successive vetoes, particularly on the proposed referral of the Syrian case to the International Criminal Court, have left Beijing vulnerable to claims by the UN Commission on Human Rights that China’s position could fuel new atrocities in Syria. This has soured relations with the Arab League, especially with Saudi Arabia, which resigned its seat on the Security Council in 2013 in protest against Chinese and Russian vetoes.

The UN had a rare moment of consensus

In 2014, Russia and China joined Western members of the Security Council in unanimously adopting Resolution 2139, which demanded the lifting of all sieges in Syria, as well as immediate humanitarian access and the delivery help. As Assad continued to resist UN demands, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2165 in July 2014.

Why did China and Russia support the resolution? The trade-off was that Western powers would not push to allow the use of force, which Russia and China feared would be given as a pretext for military intervention and regime change. The compromise, Security Council members believed, would extend UN authorization for humanitarian agencies to access hard-to-reach opposition-held areas.

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Resolution 2165 enabled the UN to mitigate the deterioration of the humanitarian situation without the Syrian government obstructing the delivery of aid, but it also reduced the likelihood of armed intervention and a diet change. This compromise, however, meant that China and Russia, staunch supporters of Syrian sovereignty, also legitimized a major tenet of the UN’s Responsibility to Protect doctrine – that humanitarian concerns can trump law. presupposed a sovereign government.

Pressure from Russia and China on the UN-led humanitarian system to centralize aid in Syrian-controlled Damascus is growing, casting doubts on the longevity of the cross-border mechanism. China and Russia are instead promoting “cross-cutting” aid from Damascus, to send aid across battle lines to opposition areas. Russia has gradually undermined the current mechanism by closing UN-approved crossings through Jordan and Iraq – only aid access through Turkey remains. Russia and China have also pushed to reduce the renewal period for this cross-border access from one year to six months and added new requirements for the UN secretary-general to produce routine status reports. operations.

The United States and its partners say the cross-border mechanism remains essential for humanitarian assistance to reach Syrians who live outside government-controlled areas and lack essential infrastructure, health services and food security. In a 2022 survey by the UN Refugee Agency, more than 92% of Syrian refugees in the region consider conditions in Syria to be untenable for their return in the coming year, due to lack of security and basic services. And while the UAE is leading the normalization of Arab relations with Syria, Western policymakers have little faith in the Syrian regime’s ability and political will to oversee post-conflict reconstruction.

China and Russia have claimed that non-governmental organizations, neighboring countries and Western nations are exploiting aid routes to undermine Assad. Both countries say Assad would work to alleviate the nation’s suffering if he were empowered to do so through international aid rather than sanctions. Western aid groups, however, point to the disarray and rubble in areas like the southern city of Dara’a, where conditions have improved little since the city returned to government control four years ago.

Russia and China are still betting on Assad

Eight years after Russia and China agreed to Resolution 2165, the Assad regime has regained control of much of the country and wants to exert more control over outside humanitarian efforts. Assad now leads the eventual restoration of state control in most geographic and normative areas of governance, including humanitarian efforts.

China has already given the green light to deeper economic and political cooperation with Syria, welcoming it under the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative and unlocking access to Chinese funding. for reconstruction projects. Russia, concerned about its invasion of Ukraine, continues to support the Assad government militarily, but will likely look to China to take on a bigger role in building Assad’s political, economic and bureaucratic capabilities.

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Jesse Marks (@JesCMarks) is a nonresident scholar at the Stimson Center, specializing in China-Middle East relations.

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