Putin has checkmated Obama in Syria
Saturday, 26 September 2015
Hisham Melhem
A few months after Russian President Vladimir Putin brazenly annexed Crimea from Ukraine, President Barack Obama dismissed those analysts who hailed Putin’s land grab as a masterful strategic coup: “Three or four months ago, everybody in Washington was convinced that President Putin was a genius and he had outmaneuvered all of us, and he had bullied, and strategized his way into expanding Russian power,” Obama told National Public Radio. “Today, I’d sense that - at least outside of Russia - maybe some people are thinking what Putin did wasn’t so smart.”
Less than a year later, Obama finds himself forced to stop his silent treatment towards Putin, ending the suspension of military talks with the Russians and agreeing to rehabilitate his adversary by meeting him formally for the first time in two years at the United Nations. How did Putin, a ruthless practitioner of hard power, get the best of Obama? How did Putin, while presiding over a country afflicted with serious structural economic problems, buffeted by a recession caused by collapsing oil prices and subjected to Western sanctions and political isolation, manage to freeze the Ukraine crisis and put it in the background, while elevating the war in Syria as the most urgent crisis requiring American and European attention?
Perplexed in Washington
President Obama’s overall aimlessness in the Middle East, (with the exception of the Iran nuclear deal), his lack of seriousness and resolve in dealing with Syria’s savage wars, that are threatening the whole Eastern Mediterranean region and his unwillingness to challenge Iran’s destabilizing activities in Syria and Iraq and his inability to pursue a comprehensive regional strategy against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), gave Putin a historic opportunity to re-assert Russia’s influence in the region.
President Obama’s epic failure in Syria brought Putin out of the cold and now Putin is trying to bring Bashar Assad out of the cold and into a Russian led coalition to fight ISIS and other radical Islamists
Hisham Melhem
In recent months and weeks leaders of Arab Gulf states, Egypt, Israel and Turkey went on Eastern sojourns to Moscow to discuss the future of a region on the verge of a meltdown. In recent weeks the Obama administration found itself once again trying to guess Russia’s real intentions following its large military buildup in western Syria. The confusion of a perplexed administration was on full display.
Russia’s enlargement of a civilian airport in Latakia, its deployment of a contingent of Special Forces, drones, dozens of jet fighters, ground attack jets and attack helicopters, anti-aircraft missiles and tanks and facilities to house up to 2,000 military personnel was pronounced by Secretary Of State John Kerry, the eternally optimistic Doctor Pangloss of the Obama administration as defensive in nature. “It is the judgment of our military and most experts that the level and type (of weaponry) represents basically force protection.”
Later on, according to press reports U.S. Intelligence agencies informed the White House that Russian forces in Syria are on the verge of conducting military operations and the “jets are ready to strike at any moment. The equipment we’ve seen out there is not strictly defensive,” one U.S. official was quoted as saying. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter was more explicit warning that Russian airstrikes would be tantamount to “pouring gasoline on the civil war in Syria. That is certainly not productive from our point of view.”
The arsonist as the fireman
President Obama’s epic failure in Syria brought Putin out of the cold and now Putin is trying to bring Bashar Assad out of the cold and into a Russian led coalition to fight ISIS and other radical Islamists like Jabhat al-Nusra, with the promise to the Europeans that this new coalition will help alleviate their Syrian refugee crisis, the very crisis Putin had helped in creating by his considerable lethal support of the Assad regime. If there ever was a deal made in hell this would be it.
Putin the arsonist is fading away, and Putin the fireman is emerging as the indispensable leader to fight Islamist terrorism in Syria, and to save Western Europe from those refugees storming its ramparts and trying to enter its rapidly closing gates. Every Russian move and every Iranian decision in Syria scream loudly that the two states are as committed as ever to the survival of the Assad regime.
Before his arrival in New York, Putin confirmed his intentions to support Assad in an interview with Charlie Rose of the “60 Minutes” program on the CBS television network when he was asked if he was planning to “rescue” Assad. “Well, you’re right.” Then he warned that the destruction of “the legitimate government” in Syria would create chaos and disintegration as was the case in Libya and Iraq, in a clear jab against American interventions in those two states. “And there is no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and rendering them help in fighting terrorism. But at the same time, urging them to engage in positive dialogue with the rational opposition and conduct reform.”
Redeeming the irredeemable
The false narrative of the Obama administration, and some European countries and a growing number of analysts that confronting ISIS, al-Nusra and other Islamists is the urgent priority now, has played into Putin’s narrative and is beginning to reflect a very disturbing shift towards rehabilitating Assad.
Assad’s regime is the most brutal military machine in Syria, responsible for the killing of more than 95 percent of civilians, according to human rights organizations. Syrians in the main are fleeing the country because of the depredations of the Assad regime. The United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura said it explicitly that it is “totally unacceptable that the Syrian air force attacks its own territory in an indiscriminate way, killing its own citizens. The use of barrel bombs must stop. All evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of the civilian victims in the Syrian conflict have been caused by the use of such indiscriminate aerial weapons.”
Secretary Kerry recently repeated his pro-forma mantra that Assad has no place in Syria’s future, but he indicated a willingness to keeping him around for a period of time that was negotiable. However the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was more generous towards Assad saying “we have to speak with many actors, this includes Assad…”
Following his meeting with Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan appeared to have fallen into Putin’s circle of thought saying Assad could take part in the transition process. What is so ironic about these political shifts towards Russia and Assad is they are taking place after the Assad regime has suffered serious military setbacks in the Idlib Governorate in the North, which prompted both Russia and Iran to step up their support for the regime. It is crucial here to clarify that both Iran and Russia are committed to defending their strategic and political interests in Syria more than they are wedded to the idea of keeping Assad in power indefinitely. But it is also true that both states are convinced that no future leaders in Damascus regardless of their religious background will give them the kind of unfettered influence and power that Assad has given them.
Partition?
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https://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2015/09/26/Putin-has-checkmated-Obama-in-Syria.html
