If
Mikhail Bulgakov had come back to life and written a Levantine sequel to The Master and Margarita, he
could not have devised a scenario more lurid than what we now observe in Syria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is now the leader of the Free World against
Islamist terrorism, directing the efforts of France and Germany and setting
terms for American involvement. Reeling from last week’s massacre in Paris,
France lacks both the backbone and the brute force to avenge itself against ISIS,
but in alliance with Russia it will make a more than symbolic contribution.
In
2008 I endorsed Putin for the American presidency, in jest,
of course. Now he is leading America’s president by the nose and directing the
anti-terror efforts of France and Germany. No-one could have anticipated
Putin’s sudden ascent to global leadership during the past several weeks.
Russia is in the position of a a vulture fund, buying the distressed assets of
the Western alliance for pennies on the dollar. Faced with an American
president who will not fight, and his European allies whose military capacity
has shrunk to near insignificance, the Russian Federation seized the helm with
the deployment of a mere three dozen war planes and an expeditionary force of
5,000 men. One searches in vain through diplomatic history to find another case
where so much was done with so little. As an American, I feel a deep
humiliation at this turn of events, assuaged only slightly by Schadenfreude at the even
deeper humiliation of America’s foreign policy establishment.
The
world runs by different rules than it did just a few weeks ago. Putin has
answered the question I asked in September (“Vladimir Putin: Spoiler or Statesman?”). President Obama declared at the Nov.
17 Antalya summit, “From the start, I’ve also welcomed Moscow going after
ISIL…We’re going to wait to see whether, in fact, Russia does end up devoting
attention to targets that are ISIL targets, and if it does so, then that’s
something we welcome.” After this week’s Russian and French airstrikes on ISIS’
stronghold in Raqqa, that is a moot point. It seems like another epoch when
Mitt Romney declared that Russia was America’s greatest geopolitical threat.
Russia, on the contrary, is pulling America’s chestnuts out of the fire. Obama
is utterly feckless; by the time the next American president is sworn in, the
world will be a difference place. Ukraine? Never heard of it.
Obama
wants to follow, not lead, as he told reporters at Antalaya: “What
I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American
leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that
has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American
people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to
protect our allies and people like France... I’m too busy for that.”
Russia
is happy to give him the opportunity to follow. Obama’s reluctance to put
American forces on the ground took America out of contention, along with aerial
rules of engagement so risk-averse that only one in four American sorties against ISIS released its bombs. The
Russians are not squeamish about collateral damage and likely to be far more
effective.
Putin
meanwhile told his commanders, “A French naval battle group led by an
aircraft carrier will arrive in your theatre of action soon. You must establish
direct contact with the French and work with them as with allies.”
Just
what sort of alliance this will be is clear from raw numbers. The Russian air
force has 67 squadrons flying modern fighters (against France’s 11), including
15 bomber squadrons (the French retired their Mirage VI bomber in 1996) and 14
assault squadrons. 25 squadrons fly ground-attack aircraft a bit lighter than
America’s A-10 “Warthog,” namely the SU-24 and SU-25. Even allowing for poor
Russian servicing, which leaves many planes unable to fly, Russia has vastly
more air power than its French ally.
To
make more than symbolic contribution to the Syria campaign, France will have to
remove fighter aircraft now supporting its more than 5,000 military personnel
in Africa. Germany’s air force, I am told, will assist by picking up the slack
in Africa so that French aircraft can redeploy to the Levant. Although Germany
is not officially part of the Syria campaign, Berlin appears to be coordinating
closely with Russia and France, although its own military air fleet is in
notoriously poor condition.
Russia’s
willingness and ability to use force in Syria gives Putin considerable
diplomatic flexibility. Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull suggested today that Russia might throw
Syrian President Basher Assad under the bus and agree to a power-sharing
agreement along ethnic and confessional lines on the Lebanese model. As the
leader of a military coalition to reduce ISIS, Putin can afford to let Assad
go, provided that the West agrees to preserve its naval station at Tartus. In
the broader diplomatic context, Putin would expect the quiet expiration of
economic sanctions against Russia directed at its seizure of Crimea as part of
the overall bargain.
A
very different sort of Middle East might emerge. Russia and China in the past
have allied themselves with Iran against the Sunnis, largely because their own
restive Muslim populations are entirely Sunni. If the Russian-led coalition
succeeds in humiliating ISIS, the two Asian powers will have less use for their
obstreperous Shi’ite allies of convenience. Although Russia and Iran are allied
against ISIS, they have quite different objectives, according to Saheb Sadeghi, the editor of the Iranian foreign
policy journal Diplomat. Writing in Al-Monitor, Sadeghi explains:
Russia
is thus pursuing the revival of the Syrian military as its leverage in the
country, with the belief that the only way to influence the future of Syria is
through restoring the Syrian military to its condition before the eruption of
the civil war in 2011 — in other words, a secular army that can easily be
controlled.
Iran,
on the other hand, has chosen a completely different path. When Iran saw that
the Syrian army was near collapse, it sought to strengthen irregular forces
made up of volunteers. The Islamic Republic thus established a massive force
composed of Alawites. The latter has now become the main force combating the
different armed opposition groups and is more powerful than the Syrian army on
the battlefield. These volunteer forces, which number about 200,000 men, take
orders from Iran rather than the Syrian government. According to some reports,
about 20,000 Shiites from Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan have also joined them.
These forces may very well come to play an important role in the future of
Syria. Moreover, the Islamic Republic hopes to use them as a viable alternative
to the Assad government.
The
Iranian-backed irregulars have been singularly ineffective in taking territory
back from ISIS, however, compared for example to the Kurds, by far the most
effective fighting force on the ground. Russia and its allies probably will
solve the problem by sending in ground forces. ISIS cannot stand up to the
combination of a modern ground army with close air support. That will devalue
Iran’s contribution to the military effort and its ability to influence a
future political outcome. Russia wants to win the war on the ground and control
the terms of the peace without interference from the apocalyptic adventurers in
Iran.
It
is noteworthy that Russian officials and news media kept mum about Israel’s reported air strikes against a Hezbollah weapons depot at
the Damascus airport last week. As usual, Israel’s defense ministry neither
confirmed nor denied the reports in the Syrian media, but the working Israeli
press reports reflect off-the-record confirmation. Israeli sources tell
me that the attacks did indeed occur, and under the nose of the Russian
air force. BBC’s Russian service notes that previous Israeli
strikes drew official condemnation from Moscow. Russia’s silence on this
occasion suggests that Moscow sanctioned the strikes. If so, Moscow
will have sent a message to Hezbollah that it should avoid a fight with
Israel and stick to killing Sunnis in Syria.
There
have been reports in fringe media that China has gotten involved in the Syrian
conflict, repeated by the hapless US presidential candidate Ben Carson. That is
surely wrong; not only does China lack the intelligence and diplomatic
resources to involve itself in the Syrian tangle, but its air force does not
currently possess a single ground attack fighter like the American A-10 or
Russian SU-24. The People’s Liberation Army is not equipped for foreign
intervention, and China has neither the intent nor ability to intervene.
Beijing is happy to stay in the background and quietly support Russia’s role in
the region.
Beijing
has enormous economic influence over Iran, though and could use it to
dissuade Tehran from stirring up trouble in the region. I speculated two years
ago that China might preside over a “Pax
Sinica”
in the Middle East. Former Reagan National Security Advisor Bud McFarlane and Ilan Berman argue in the Nov. 18 Wall Street
Journal that
“pressing
Beijing to exert its extensive influence over Tehran to force it to steer a
more moderate course can and should be a top American priority.”
China
has a great deal to worry about from its Sunni Muslim population, especially
the 15 million Uyghurs in its westernmost province of Xinjiang. Hundreds of
Uyghur separatists are fighting for ISIS in Syria, and the Chinese accuse
Turkey of providing passports and safe passage for separatists leaving China
for Turkey through Southeast Asia. A Chinese official told me that Turkish
embassies in Southeast Asia have stockpiled 100,000 blank passports for the use
of Uyghurs. Wealthy Saudis are funding Wahhabi madrassahs in China, and a large
part of China’s Muslim population has become radicalized.
For
all these reasons, China has a deep interest in the defeat of ISIS. It has as
much reason to fear the metastasis of Sunni jihad as does Russia, as well as
the quiet support for the jihadists coming from Istanbul and some elements in
Saudi Arabia. A humiliation of the self-styled Islamist Caliphate would crush
the morale of its emulators in China as well as Russia, and Beijing will find
ways of supporting Putin’s efforts without any direct or visible commitment of
military resources.
As
for France: several days ago I wrote that France will do nothing in response to the Paris massacre. I
may have been wrong. Russia will do a great deal, and in consequence, France
will do more than round up the usual suspects.
The
opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily
reflect the view of Asia Times.
Comments
If we
could unwind 50 years of cold war and post cold war mistakes, we would have let
South Vietnam quietly slip under Communist control. We would not have had a “war on
poverty”. We would be energy independent
with oil and natural gas. We would not
have provided military foreign aid to Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. We would not left our borders open or
accepted many immigrants. We would not
have signed on to NAFTA or UN Agenda 21. We would not have increased the
federal government to include unconstitutional departments, agencies or
programs. We would have avoided the Bush / Clinton / Bush administrations. We
would not have elected Barak Obama. We
would be solvent with very little debt.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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