Teasing literal Hell from the old Fertile Crescent:
A little kabuki, a little shadow puppetry, and a lot of surprised observers
If Obama and his advisers had wanted to start bombing, they would have. Why do some folks have to make it more complicated than it is? Paid by the word? Armchair analyst hubris? Embarrassed they were fooled by the secret dealings? For what it's worth, I'm very and only anti-intervention, anti-bombing, and anti-imperialist. Your mind blown, just listen a sec.
I mostly saw it coming, or was hoping I did, as did many others. No, not the exact way it began playing out, with Syria's chemical weapons hopefully going into sort of a receivership and supervised, but generally there was no way the two highly experienced superpower governments, despite appearances, were going to allow a powder keg like Syria, situated in a region that is the largest ammunition dump in the world, to experience the spark of an American bombing. A horrible war crime with poison gas was conducted. A rift had been torn in some fabric or other. Something had to be done. Talks were held. Ideas were thrown about. It was largely ad hoc, and how rough the moving parts had been became apparent once it all began to surface.
However, what appeared to be incoherent kabuki, actually wasn't. It was awkward though, and it wasn't smooth, or especially convincing to those with more than a veneer of information, and it jerked our attention from one direction to another, with an orchestra leader's skill with both dynamism and subtlety, but it worked. We were all only along for the ride. People who pay less attention hardly even noticed the fuss, their personal Richter scale unmoved.
What you're waking up from was the shell game. Look over here. Oops, it's over there instead. You might've experienced diplomatic vertigo, but it wasn't because the leaderships didn't know what they were doing. It's because that was the misdirection required to navigate among all the intensely motivated interests involved. Kerry, et al, aren't top-notch trained actors, but actors nonetheless, and sloppy magicians but workmanlike. Consider it the boomer generation leaders learning their chops, now that the old masters are vanished. Almost makes one nostalgic, doesn't it?
What you're waking up to is where it was going all along, absent a closing detail or two. What you saw as a Kerry gaffe, was acting, amateur but effective enough. When you saw the Russians and then Syria play along with the supposed gaffe, it was because it had been planned, last-minute maybe, but spontaneity was required (because, I'm guessing, the plan had to be withheld from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, as well as rebel groups they fund, because they have been the ones blocking negotiations all this time, with Putin and Assad actually in favor).
Remember, these are the long-time superpower governments we're discussing here, and they are not new to this dance. They've been doing it at the highest level of world stage since the 1940s. Allies in World War II. Cold War coexistence. Eastern Europe versus Western Europe. The Warsaw Pact versus NATO. The Space Race. Detente. The START treaties. Mutually assured destruction. Balance of terror. Vietnam. Two Arab-Israeli wars. Two Afghanistan wars. The former Yugoslavia wars. Two Iraq wars. And most all of it not far from Russian borders. They even took turns boycotting each other's Olympics. They are supreme realists, despite the nonsense and utter bluster they regularly spout.
The Syrian situation was a powder keg, and no one wanted to see a spark that could set off the entire area. So, behind the scenes, where all the power lives, things were moving, like passing comets and incoming flares. It all was moving toward a negotiated settlement, and at least bombing is not imminent. It worked, for now. The negotiations may blow up, but the path has been begun, and a resolution is more likely than not. These people running things are all conflicted, compromised, and self-interested, and so it's a clunky, reluctant, uptight process, but so can be regular diplomacy, and diplomacy is what you are waking up to as well.
Just remember, it's not really about you or me. It's about the people actually suffering, in Syria and related locales. The rest of us matter also, of course, but not nearly as much as the actual victims and their survivors. Revenge isn't deterrence. There is no perfect diplomatic outcome. There is only what works, and so far it is effective. Bad kabuki or no bad kabuki. It's the only kabuki we had. And if it's led to a slightly awakened mutuality, then all the better. Can't wait for the next act. Hope it works with Iran too.