Putin Wants To Preserve Syria – This Is Not About Russia-US Relations
When the US and USSR were engaged in their proxy conflicts during the cold war in Central America, in Africa, even in Afghanistan there was always an ideological element and the forces of the two countries never confronted each other directly on the battlefield. The risk of a superpower conflagration was kept at one remove.
It is tempting to see the first Russian airstrikes in Syria and Russias recently increased military presence in and around Latakia as an old-style proxy conflict, shorn of its ideological aspect and replayed as raw geopolitics. On the one side are the US and its allies, including the UK, who have the ultimate objective of removing Bashar al-Assad, to which they have added a mission to turn back Islamic State. On the other side is Russia, determined not to lose its last remaining foothold in the Middle East to the west, and using the fight against Isis as a cover to keep its ally, Assad, in power.
Such an interpretation may be too simplistic and misread Russias motives. But it does not make the current situation, in the short-term at least, any less fraught with risk. On the contrary. Yesterdays airstrikes by Russia, of which Washington received an hours notice via a Russian general in Baghdad, held out the very real possibility of an air clash by accident not design. No wonder the US swiftly agreed to top-level military talks with Russia about coordinating action in Syria.
Nor can it be excluded that this was one reason why president Vladimir Putin gave the order for the first airstrikes within 24 hours of the Russian parliament giving the political go-ahead. Russia wanted to show that it was an equal player with the US in the region, and that it was not going to fit into whatever Washington decreed. It wants a say.
If one interpretation of Russias action is a concern to maintain national dignity and not be seen to take orders from Washington, another could well be Putins desire for post-Soviet Russia to be treated as a state with global interests, not confined to a mere regional role in and around Ukraine. Russias involvement in Syria is, to be sure, a convenient distraction for the Russian public at a time when Moscow may be looking to disengage from Ukraine. But it is not just that.
more...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/01/putin-syria-russia-us-airstrikes
Nitram
(22,671 posts)Putin is playing a dangerous game of brinksmanship that risks a real world war.
Response to Purveyor (Original post)
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geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)And replace him with who? You think we would have learned after Iraq and Libya, but no.
Chan790
(20,176 posts)I think the hope/goal was that organic leadership would arise, much like we counted on it to rise in the other Arab Spring nations (and largely did elsewhere.) so that we wouldn't have to do the regime-change/police-action thing we aren't so hot at. (See: Iraq, Afghanistan.) Then...there wasn't organic leadership rise in Syria. Then...the moderate populace we counted on to insure that a moderate self-governing state ultimately result fled as Daesh filled the void.
So, yeah...we fucked this one up. Maybe we'll learn that we need to stop trying to shape the world to our desires.