Dwindling hope for diplomacy

Closing the U.S. embassy in Damascus is the clearest sign yet of how utterly and repeatedly international diplomacy has failed the people of Syria. But the alternative to diplomacy is worse.

President Bashar Assad has shelled and shot civilians and rebels in an attempt to put down an 11-month-old uprising.

The savagery of the Syrian government’s response has made the civil war the bloodiest of the Arab Spring, now in its 15th month. The United Nations estimates that 5,400 people have died in Syria alone.

Already, the Arab Spring rebellions have changed governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and threatened repressive reigns from Bahrain to Oman. But none of those uprisings faced the kind of desperation of Syria’s president, who was once seen as a possible reformer in a region that needs many.

Over the weekend, the U.N. Security Council deadlocked on the endorsement of an Arab League proposal for peace. China and Russia, at their cynical best, vetoed the effort.

America, Europe and most of the Arab world simply want Assad to leave. Russia and China, themselves repressive governments, don’t want a repeat of the upheaval in Libya.

They also want to do nothing to upset the flow of oil from Iran, Syria’s primary sponsor.

The result of the Security Council veto was the immediate escalation of brutality in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city. That renewed violence — which Washington warned presages all-out civil war — helped prompt the State Department’s decision to shut down the U.S. embassy.

It also raises the question of what comes next. The rebellion in Libya was against an isolated madman, widely reviled by his own people, in a huge country with one-third the population of Syria. Syria is a client state of Iran, densely populated, smack in the middle of one of the most volatile parts of the world. Despite his brutality, Assad still retains a substantial following in his own country.

Despite its failures over the weekend, and despite the shut-down of the U.S. embassy, diplomacy remains the right avenue to push for overthrow in Damascus. America has not yet cut off diplomatic relations.

So hope — now dwindling — remains for change, if not for peace.