Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has scored a diplomatic coup by inserting his country into the rearming of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad with new weapons and plans to set up an air base in the Alawite stronghold of Latakia. His objectives are to get out of the diplomatic isolation decreed by the United States and the West because of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, including the absorption of Crimea and the arming and support of rebels in eastern Ukraine.
While Russia helped in the negotiated United States-Iran nuclear deal, it remained in the doghouse, with Western economic sanctions continuing to bite the Russian economy. President Putin has kept his military moves in Syria suitably vague yielding immediate results in a meeting of Russian and American defence secretaries topped with a meeting schedule with his American counterpart. Moscow has asserted its right to be a major player in determining the future of Syria and the region.
Russia had previously made it clear that it rejected the Western objective of dethroning President Assad as a prior condition for setting in pace a new order. In recent remarks, US secretary of state John Kerry moved closer to Moscow’s position by suggesting that Mr Assad need not go on day one of negotiations but should depart within a reasonable period of time.
The timing of President Putin’s insertion of new military hardware — reportedly including high-tech surface to air weapons and Russian “advisers” — was perfect because the refugee crisis overwhelming the European Union has reached such dimensions that there is urgency in Western capitals in seeking to stem the tide at source. It is no secret that the US and Western actions in Iraq, Syria and Libya led to the mass movement of people across dangerous waters to reach the haven of European shores.
Russia, of course, has its own objectives in seeking to fight the dangerous phenomenon of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS because it has a soft underbelly in the Caucasus with its rebellious Muslim population. But the larger objective is to warn the United States and the West that in the increasingly complicated sets of crises that have engulfed the Middle East need Russian cooperation to sort out.
With Iran set to expand her diplomatic reach after the nuclear deal with the United States and being a Russian ally in support of President Assad, Moscow has greater room for manoeuvre. It is no coincidence that the second Minsk ceasefire in eastern Ukraine is holding, a signal Moscow is sending Western capitals that it is in a mellower mood in seeking a modus vivendi with Kiev on the basis of an autonomous eastern region.
No one expects Russia to part with Ukraine, which was in fact gifted by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to a republic which was then part of the Soviet Union. It is also the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Given the deep divisions between Russia and the West, in particular the United States, détente between the two sides will not happen overnight, but Syria could be the beginning of a process that could lead to a less acrimonious phase of relations. It is no secret that European Union countries are keener to see an end to Russian sanctions because their own exports are suffering.
How to unscramble the Syrian crisis is the key question. The United States remains vulnerable because after one year of airstrikes, the ISIS, or Daesh to give it its local name, remains in possession of large chunks of Syria and Iraq and rules over its domain with all the attributes of a nation state. American efforts to train and arm a moderate Syrian force have been a miserable failure, while the most effective fighters against the ISIS are various strains of Al Qaeda-linked forces or Syrian Kurdish forces and the Turkish Kurds belonging to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
President Putin is suggesting that he, along with Iran, are key factors in bringing a measure of peace and stability to a country destroyed and divided by more than four years of civil war. Indeed, the fractures in Syrian society and the sheer desperation of Syrian refugees flooding Europe, with millions displaced at home, are facts of life. For one thing, the European Union has realised that it needs to help neighbouring countries bearing the biggest burden, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, with much-needed cash.
Europe itself is finding out how vast the task of winnowing and settling the refugees will be, with Germany in the lead in taking in the largest number. Circumstances have thus forced East-West antagonists to rethink the larger geostrategic picture and take the hand offered by Moscow.
There has, of course, been a dramatic change in the geopolitical picture in the Middle East. For one thing, Moscow’s arming of Syria led Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hasten to Moscow to ensure that new Russian weapons do not impinge on Tel Aviv’s interests, including the possession of Palestinian and Syrian land. Somewhat patronisingly, President Putin replied that Russia was a responsible power.
The Arab countries of the region are still nervous about Iran’s future status as the leading Shia power unencumbered by the prevailing economic sanctions. Ironically, this has led to an implicit convergence of interests between the Sunni Arab world and Israel although neither side wishes to broadcast it from the housetops. As it is, an Egypt ruled by the former Army Chief and post-coup President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has a cosy relationship with Tel Aviv in the struggle against Muslim extremists is a common one of crushing Palestinians further in the beleaguered Gaza Strip.
Thus, the harrowing tales of whole Syrian refugee families drowning in the sea while trying to reach Europe could have a salutary effect in egging on the major outside powers to get down to ending the Syrian civil war. After all, the United States and other Western powers, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, bear responsibility for what Syria and the region have become.
