|
That Silly “Chilly” Syria Piece Does Not Get Russia’s Strategic Aim
According to the New York Times:
Bashar al-Assad Finds Chilly Embrace in Moscow Trip.
That headline of that page A1 piece awoke my interest because the White House clearly had a different impression than the New York Times scribes:
We view the red carpet welcome for Assad, …
If this was a “chilly embrace” why was there a “red carpet welcome”? And what about that exclusive dinner?
Senior Russian officials joined Mr. Putin and Mr. Assad for dinner including the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu; the prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev; and Mr. Lavrov, the foreign minister.
Was that also “chilly”? Was the borscht served cold?
There is nothing in the “chilly” headlined piece that supports the claim made in the headline. Indeed not Russian or Syrian voice in it and all who are quoted have no more knowledge about the meetings than anyone who read the news agency reports. The whole thesis is taken from “chilly” air.
Mr. Putin’s military has forcefully intervened to shore up Mr. Assad’s government in its struggle against an array of insurgents, but, even as Mr. Assad flew secretly to Moscow on Tuesday night for a meeting to assess the fighting in Syria, the chilly personal relationship between the two men has not changed, according to officials, diplomats and analysts.
Up to that paragraph there is nothing in the piece that actually establish that Putin and Assad had or have a “chilly personal relationship”. There might well have no personal relationship at all. The two have only seen each other once before, in 2005.
By all accounts, the two leaders remain distant and wary of each other.
But what are those accounts:
“It’s not personal, this whole thing,” said Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, referring to Mr. Putin’s intervention. The highest priority of the Russians, he said, has been saving the central authority of the Syrian state as much as Mr. Assad himself in hopes of stemming the spread of chaos and, with it, the fertile ground in which the Islamic State can take root.
…
“To them, Assad is not a sacred cow,” Mr. Trenin added. “The issue to them is to save the Syrian state, to prevent it from unraveling the way Libya unraveled, Yemen unraveled.”
Fine. So what is “chilly” about that?
“Not being wedded to Assad does not mean that they’re prepared to negotiate a way for him to go,” said a senior administration official in Washington
Correct. And not “chilly”.
“There’s not much chemistry in the relationship,” said one long-serving Western diplomat in the region.
Yeah. How could there be when they met only once before ten years ago?
Mr. Assad has, in fact, proved at times to be a reluctant partner in Russia’s efforts to end the conflict. He has stood up on many occasions to the Kremlin, to the extent that diplomats and analysts say it has irritated Mr. Putin.
“I think they know how confused the Assad regime is, and they’re frustrated by it,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has followed the conflict closely, referring to the Russians.
So the Israel lobby is asked to add to the spin even those Tabler knows nothing about Russia or the relations between Putin and Assad.
The whole spin in that “chilly” piece is without any sources or examples that support the claim. Russia and Syria might have, at times, different views? Of course they have. But they are allies, fight together against common enemies and value each others’ contribution. A red carpet and a first class dinner with the most important people of the Russian state bear witness to that.
There is actually no hint at all from Russia or Syria that Russia would make Assad go or that Assad is seeking exile in Moscow. All such talk is silly spin. Russia will fight together with Syria until the Islamist threat is reduced and the Syrian state re-stabilized. There will then be some new government that includes some non-violent opposition members and that government will prepare for new elections to the parliament and for the president. Assad may be one of the candidates and may even win. That and not much less is, I believe, what Russia is willing to settle for.
The main strategic (and value) issue for Russia is to not condone any more U.S. induced “regime change” by “color revolutions” or by force. To end the unilateral catastrophic misbehavior in foreign policies that has become a U.S. habit. That is the most important and often repeated point president Putin has made. No more unilateral regime changes. He again made that point today at the Valdai Club meeting.
If Russia would let Assad fall it would concede “regime change” in Syria to Washington. It can not see Putin, or any other Russian president, do that. Not under any currently thinkable circumstance.
On a more serious note, the US/NATOstan are beginning to have glimpses of a larger Russian strategy behind the Syrian move. As NATO encroaches into what has traditionally been a Russian security zone in Eastern Europe, the Russians are carving themselves a niche at the Mare Nostrum, right on Europe’s underbelly.
Russians already have a naval facility at Tartus, and a few days ago, Russian Colonel General Andrey Kartapalov, in a landmark interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda, stated Russia will likely create a unified military base, with air/land/sea components,
[…] – Can we speak today about the creation of two high-grade Russian bases in Syria – a ground base near Latakia and the Navy in Tartus?
– I think that, most likely, we should talk about the creation of one Russian military base. This will be one base, which will be composed of several components – sea, air, and ground […]
an idea that was welcomed by the Syrians.
The governor of Latakia, Ibrahim Salim, said that the government of his province welcomes the establishment of the Russian military base. Earlier, there were reports about the possible establishment of a Russian military base in Syria.
The formation of a full-fledged Russian military base in the Syrian province of Latakia would allow its residents to feel more secure, Governor Ibrahim Salim told Russian journalists during an interview […]
Russian navy has recently secured berthing rights in Cyprus, NATO is now concerned Russians are too close to home.
“Russian surveillance and electronic warfare assets now have the potential to be legally and regularly brought close to the British Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri, home of one of NATO’s most important listening stations.”
The Syrian intervention appears to be but one step in an overarching Russian strategy aimed at stopping the US interventionist policies in the ME, and as a response to NATO’s advance into Russia’s traditional safety zone. From a base in Syria, Russia can reach the entire ME/Eurostan/Maghreb with Kalibr-NK LACMs, same ones recently launched from the Caspian Sea.
US/NATOstan are even more concerned about the Russian’s de facto no-fly zone over Syria.
The no-fly zone in Syria already exists. It is run by Russia and Washington is unable to jam it.
NATO is desperate. The Pentagon is desperate. Imagine waking up one day in Washington and Brussels just to realize Russia has the ability to electronically jam — detect, trace, disable, destroy — NATO electronics within a 600 km range across Syria (and southern Turkey).
Imagine the nightmare of row after row of Russian Richag-AV radar and sonar jamming systems mounted on helicopters and ships jamming everything in sight and finding every available source of electromagnetic radiation. Not only in Syria but also in Ukraine.
Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army units in Europe, was even forced to qualify Russian electronic warfare capabilities in Ukraine as “eye-watering.”
As Pepe Escobar calls it, “the empire of chaos is in a jam,” and they can’t see a way out of it any time soon. The four, ehem, “options” they have for Syria, are what Einstein called madness, which is to do the same thing again and again expecting different results.
[…] The first option is containment — which is exactly what the Obama administration has been doing. The recipe was proposed in full by the Brookings Institution; “containing their activities within failed or near-failing states is the best option for the foreseeable future.”
But that, Think Tankland argues, would “crush the popular opposition” in Syria. There is no “popular opposition” in Syria; it’s either the government in Damascus or a future under the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh Salafi-jihadi goons.
The second option is the favorite among US neocons and neoliberalcons; to weaponize the already weaponized opposition. This opposition ranges from the YPG Kurds — who actually fight on the ground against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh — to Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria and its Salafi-jihadi cohorts. Al-Nusra of course has been rebranded in the Beltway as “moderate rebels”; so this option means in practice the House of Saud weaponizing al-Qaeda while they fight under the cover of US air strikes.
Pure Ionesco-style theatre of the absurd. Compounded by the fact those apocalyptic nut jobs who pass as “clerics” in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, have duly declared jihad against Russia.
The third option will go nowhere; Washington allying with “Assad just go” and Iran — not to mention Russia — in a real fight-to-the-finish against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. Obama boxed himself in a long time ago with “Assad must go”, so he remains immobilized by a self-inflicted ippon.
The fourth option is the neocon wet dream; regime change, achieved, in theory, by what I call the Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists (CDO), as in the NATO-GCC embrace, with a Turkish starring role and attached US air strikes, plus all those thousands of CIA-trained “moderate rebels” slouching all the way to Damascus. As if the Russian campaign did not exist […]
So, while the empire of chaos remains trapped by their own delusions, without a clear strategy other than mayhem, the Russians are killing two birds with one stone: one, propping up Syria’s struggle against the wicked takfiris, under the umbrella of a wide alliance, a struggle for self-preservation; two, building up their anti-NATO defenses, at the edge of the Eurasian mass, with the strategic depth of an entire continent covering their backs.
The empire of chaos never saw the ensnaring bear coming.
Posted by: Lone Wolf | Oct 23 2015 5:17 utc | 72
|
