Syria bears witness to a rerun of barbarism with the renewed use of chemical weapons against its own people by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Seven years after the Arab Spring, the irony could scarcely have been more bitter.

The irony must be tragic too as the repressor remains entrenched in the presidential palace in Damascus. Hundreds of people are said to have been suffocated by Saturday’s chemical attack in Douma, a rebel-held suburb on the outskirts of Damascus.

The hideous offensive by the beleaguered dispensation has been effected exactly five years after the use of Sarin gas in 2013. The offensive makes a mockery of the laws of war, and reaffirms the calculated malevolence towards humanity generally.

The use of chemical gas is said to be one of the oldest taboos in the conduct of warfare… between nations or internally. The striking feature of the latest manifestation of barbarity must be that Assad is acutely aware that he can get away with it ~ a form of killing that appears to have been tacitly condoned by Vladimir Putin’s Russia and which Donald Trump’s United States seems rather helpless to confront.

More accurately, the Kremlin cannot evade its responsibility. There is little doubt that the Syrian air force was able to bomb Douma because Russia controls western Syria’s airspace. Russian advisers are present at the airbases from which Syrian missions fly.

The Kremlin may not be privy to the Syrian decisions, but it does provide military and diplomatic cover for the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons. Russia’s potential to veto at the United Nations any effective counter-measures has doubtless buttressed the Assad regime’s determination to kill its own people.

And for all the occasional bluster by President Trump, US policy remains ever so indecisive. This was evident in the context of Iraq, when US policy was indecisive under Barack Obama.

Geopolitics is definitely chaotic under Donald Trump. Indeed, US policy on Syria has repeatedly flip-flopped, especially towards the Kurds. In January, the then Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, pledged that US forces would remain in Syria well after any defeat of ISIS. And yet only a week ago, Trump announced that “it’s time” to bring US troops home.

Double-think runs wild as a day later he changed his position, saying the troops would stay for months. The Big Powers are seemingly at sixes and sevens, and Assad appears to have exploited the prevailing confusion to devastating effect.

For all the jaw-jaw in the Security Council, neither the permanent members nor the comity of nations ~ pre-eminently the Western powers ~ have responded suitably to the horrifying deaths last Saturday.

On closer reflection, Assad’s crimes have been made possible by the failure of effective legal, diplomatic and military sanctions. Syria showcases the failure of international diplomacy; the use of chemical weapons takes the issue beyond geopolitics and strategy.