“Red Line: The Unraveling Of Syria And America’s Race To Destroy The Most Dangerous Arsenal In The World” By Joby Warrick Discussed At PIRCENTER

MOSCOW, JUNE 24, 2021. PIR-PRESS. ” There is an interesting story for me in this book about US-Russian cooperation on the problems of chemical weapons in Syria, which partly arises from  the “muscle memory” of many years of cooperation between the United States and Russia on chemical weapons issues. People like Laura Holgate or Vladimir Orlov were involved back in the 90’s in a broad expert sharing. And some of those relationships end up surfacing in 2011 and helped to revive this cooperation.” – Joby Warrick, journalist, author of the book “Red Line: the Unraveling of Syria and America’s Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World”.

On June 9, within the project NONPROLIFERATION.RU& NONPROLIFERATION.WORLD* a discussion dedicated to the book “Red Line: the Unraveling of Syria and America’s Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World” by an outstanding journalist, Washington Post National Security correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick was held.

During the discussion, the participants of the event discussed the following theses:

• conflict in Syria will progress. The regime of Bashar al-Assad is unlikely to fall, which, in addition, can lead to some painful effects. It is necessary to find a realistic approach to the functioning Government of Syria.
• Russia’s role in the elimination of chemical weapons in Syria is significant. Moreover, the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles showed that Russia and the United States are able to maintain fruitful cooperation when they have a mutual interest.
• The OPCW has always been considered a technical organization. But now its mandate is changing. But now an attribution function is likely to emerge. Although the establishment of a system of punitive measures seems unlikely, it is important that the organization formulate more clearly its conclusions on a particular situation and establish responsibility.
• Depriving Syria of the right to vote in the OPCW is just one of the diplomatic tools, the main purpose of which is to force Syria to comply with the terms of the OPCW, and not an attempt to “punish” the Assad regime that the West does not support.
• The elimination of the Syrian chemical weapons arsenals is certainly an achievement of the international community. At the same time, there is still no comprehensive approach to the elimination of WMD in the Middle East. Syria justified the possession of chemical weapons by the nuclear threat from Israel. The issue of chemical weapons in Syria could have been a good pretext to discuss the possibility of eliminating WMD throughout the Middle East.

The event was attended by employees and consultants of the PIR Center, as well as external experts.

The recording of the meeting is available at the link.

*NONPROLIFERATION.RU&NONPROLIFERATION.WORLD are the projects of the PIR Center aimed to create a modern, technologically attractive and easy-to-use online platform for training and education in the field of WMD nonproliferation and global security, which will become a scientific, educational and communication portal for the current and future generation of experts in the field of international security.