By
WASHINGTON — Taking advantage of the paralysis
of American policy in Syria, Russia’s dramatic escalation of military activity
in that country seeks to reorder the strategic landscape of the Middle East.
Few appear to grasp the full scope of what
Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, is attempting. This is partly because,
in theory, this should be beyond Russia’s capabilities. But Mr. Putin cannily
senses an opportunity, at the very least, to restore Russia to the role in the
Middle East that it lost in the 1970s.
Russia’s intervention anticipates a resolution
of the Syrian conflict through de facto partition. The Reuters news agency reports that, months ago, Iran proposed the joint offensive, now underway, to save
the dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad from imminent collapse. Maj. Gen.
Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite
Quds Force, is depicted poring over maps of Syria with Russian
officials in the Kremlin.
Russian firepower is aimed at securing the larger, western part of the
rump Syrian state that is still controlled by Mr. Assad — in particular the air and naval bases near Latakia and Tartus. And aside from
forays into northern trouble spots like Aleppo, Iranian and Hezbollah forces
will mostly concentrate on the lower half of this strip, which
runs from the Lebanese border through Qalamoun, up to Damascus, and from there
to the port cities and coastal heartland of the Alawites, the Syrian Shiite
sect loyal to Mr. Assad.
For all of the talk of combating the Islamic
State, Russia’s real aim is to push back rebel groups and secure this
ministate. Given what Mr. Assad’s allies are willing to do to salvage this
“Little Syria” — compared with the limited intervention being considered by Mr.
Putin’s international antagonists — this is probably an achievable goal.
Such a partition of Syria would leave other parts of the country in the hands of nationalist
and Islamist rebels, a Kurdish area in the north, perhaps some smaller enclaves
and, most ominously, the “caliphate” of the Islamic State in the north and
east. Despite Kremlin propaganda, the Islamic State is already among the biggest winners from the Russian
intervention.
At the end of last week, for example, the group
took advantage of Russian airstrikes, some 90 percent of which have reportedly targeted other rebel groups, and captured several villages near Aleppo. The
militants also killedsome of Iran’s most senior commanders in Syria,
including Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani. These advances are realizing Mr. Assad’s
goal of making the choice for both Syrians and the world at large appear to be
between him and the jihadists.
Russia’s unspoken but unmistakable message is that
Moscow is trying one— and perhaps the only— way of ending the conflict by means
of a Lebanese-style segregation of Syria into zones controlled by rival
militias. To Washington’s perennial concern in any Middle Eastern imbroglio,
“Tell me how this ends,” Moscow responds: The Syrian conflict will be
“resolved” on Russia’s terms, even if Mr. Assad proves dispensable to the
Kremlin in the long run.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s desire to
see the conflict end without actually doing anything itself means that, as
Bloomberg View suggested recently, there is a group of senior
American officials prepared to go along with the Russian plan. After all,
America’s own policy in Syria has rapidly moved from tragedy to farce. The
latest fiasco was the cancellation of the $500 million military training program
for anti-Islamic State rebels that produced barely a handful of fighters on the
ground.
So if Moscow has a policy, and Washington
doesn’t, why not just support that?
Beyond the fact that it’s absurd to hope that
Mr. Putin’s approach is likely to benefit American interests, giving way to
Russia’s policy would, in effect, entail abandoning the fight against the
Islamic State in Syria. And the militants cannot be effectively countered in
Iraq alone. So what this final, ignominious capitulation would really mean is
that not only would Mr. Assad (or some Russian-appointed successor) menace
Syrians for the foreseeable future, but so too would the Islamic State.
No wonder Gen. John R. Allen, America’s envoy to
the international coalition against the Islamic State, recently announced his resignation. Being in charge of a
farce is bad enough; no one can accept being the front for a fraud.
Even worse, viewed through a broader regional
framework, American acquiescence to this Russian initiative would ultimately
mean an accommodation with a major reshaping of the strategic order in the
Middle East. Moscow is clearly trying to accomplish the creation of a powerful
alliance with Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah, “Little Syria” and others. To secure this
new compact, Russia is willing to risk not only confrontation with the West, but
also its recently improved relations with other regional powers like Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
There’s no good reason Washington should go
along with any of this. Russia is manifestly less powerful militarily,
economically and diplomatically than the United States. But it’s no longer a
matter of capabilities; it’s become a matter of will. On paper, Russia is in no
position to barge into the Middle East and throw its weight around. But after
the interference in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and the Syrian chemical
weapons debacle, Mr. Putin correctly judged that nobody would stop him.
Mr. Putin is canny enough to know that he is
already overstretched, faces potential quagmires and has core differences with
putative allies like Iran. So, at any given moment, he’ll be ready to pocket
his gains and do a deal with the Americans — from an already advantageous
position.
The remaining question is: How far will he be
allowed to go? At the moment, the astonishing answer appears to be: all the
way.
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