An Opportune Moment for Russia’s Foray Into Syria

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/world/an-opportune-moment-for-russias-foray-into-syria.html

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BRUSSELS — The maneuvering of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia continues to fascinate and exasperate the West in equal measure. His rapid mobilization of Russian forces in Syria — a step the United States and its allies have refused to take — is only the latest example of Mr. Putin creating facts in a fashion designed to display Russian power and to frustrate Washington and NATO, whose defense ministers met on Thursday in Brussels.

Analysts, senior Western diplomats and former Western intelligence officials believe that Mr. Putin acted now in Syria for three main reasons.

First, he has closed off Western options that might have threatened the current regime in Damascus, the Syrian capital. This summer’s large flow of refugees stemming from the Syrian conflict had begun to focus European minds on how to resolve the underlying problem. Britain, France, Jordan, Turkey and Washington had begun at long last to talk seriously about creating so-called no-fly zones over Syria.

Those zones were intended to create areas of safety inside Syria for opposition forces and for thousands of displaced people, reducing the refugee flow. The tactic was intended to prevent the Syrian air force from attacking rebels and their supporters opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, who was steadily losing ground as his officials admitted to shortages of manpower.

The presence of sophisticated Russian warplanes and Russian personnel on the ground makes it almost impossible for the United States and its allies to risk such a no-fly zone.

Second, the Damascus government, which Mr. Putin has strongly supported, was weakening, showing the effects of nearly five years of civil war and sanctions, with moderate rebels being squeezed by radical and more sectarian Sunni groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Mr. Assad had already turned to heavy military and financial help from Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, but the trend lines were bad.

Mr. Putin “moved to stop the rot,” as one former Western intelligence official said, requesting anonymity to express frank views. He is using his air force, navy and missiles — and now the promise of Russian soldiers (“volunteers,” à la Crimea and eastern Ukraine) — to prop up the Assad government, particularly in what is considered “useful Syria.” That is the capital and the home of Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect in the west, around Latakia.

Mr. Putin presented Russia’s intervention as part of the anti-Islamic State campaign led by the United States, but the vast majority of Russian airstrikes have been in the west, against forces that most directly threaten the Assad heartland and Russian assets like the air base in Latakia and the naval base in Tartus, and not in the north or east against the Islamic State.

Some of the groups attacked in the west have been supported by Washington and its Persian Gulf allies, which is just added spice to the real motivation: to show Russian influence outside the former Soviet Union, to show that Russia stands by its allies and to show that Mr. Putin is a man of action — in contrast, perhaps, in Syria as in Ukraine, to President Obama and European leaders.

The Russians also know that, at this point, even the United States does not want a quick collapse of the Assad government. Creating a vacuum in Damascus now would invite a takeover by radical Islamists, or even by the Islamic State itself. That would not only be a catastrophic defeat for Western goals but would also prompt another huge outflow of refugees, of Alawites and Christians who would have even more reason to fear for their lives.

Russian intervention is unlikely to bring an end to the war, however, even if it stabilizes Mr. Assad’s hold on Alawite territory. As a former Israeli general intelligence official, Yaakov Amidror, points out, a stable partitioning of Syria is unlikely. “The rebels want more than to just bring Assad to his knees,” Mr. Amidror said. “They want to end the Alawite regime itself, and that is something neither the Alawites nor Russia and Iran will ever abide.”

There is a third plausible reason for Mr. Putin to act now. Moscow’s hopes for a more widespread uprising in eastern Ukraine have been disappointed. Ukraine itself remains unstable but is not collapsing, while life in the so-called liberated east is no paradise. The same is true in Crimea, which Russia has annexed, but which is a significant drain on Moscow’s resources.

The Crimean annexation also brought tough sanctions on Russia. Sanctions, combined with a collapse in the price of oil, have caused major economic problems for Russia and signs of internal dissatisfaction.

A new foray in Syria, labeled in Russian propaganda as a sign of a revitalized Russia defending its friends and fighting terrorism and radical Islam, changes the domestic argument. The Russian media is again filled with patriotic slogans, with Mr. Putin presented as an action hero.

Russia has stated that its support is not tied to Mr. Assad himself. Mr. Assad is no Saddam Hussein or Muammar el-Qaddafi. He is not a one-man band, but the public face of a family and religious network that controls the government.

If Mr. Assad “retires” in a negotiated solution, maintaining the structure of the regime, that would be fine with Mr. Putin. It would seem to be just fine with Washington, too.