Putin Shifts Fronts in Syria and Ukraine
Jackson Diehl – The Washington Post
Throughout the summer, Russia’s forces in eastern Ukraine kept up a daily drumbeat of attacks on the Ukrainian army, inflicting significant casualties while avoiding a response by Western governments. On Sept. 1, following a new cease-fire, the guns suddenly fell silent. Optimists speculated that Vladimir Putin was backing down.
Then came the reports from Syria: Russian warplanes were overflying the rebel-held province of Idlib. Barracks were under construction at a new base. Ships were unloading new armored vehicles. Putin, it turns out, wasn’t retreating, but shifting fronts — and executing another of the in-your-face maneuvers that have repeatedly caught the Obama administration flat-footed.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, shakes hands with members of the Syrian delegation prior to a meeting with Qadri Jamil, former deputy prime minister representing Syria’s opposition Popular Front of Change and Liberation, in Moscow, Aug. 31, 2015. (AP)
Don’t Trust Putin on Syria
Andrew Foxall – The New York Times
The Western powers — the United States and Europe — have no good options to combat the Islamic State, but they can’t do nothing. Either they must work with Mr. Assad’s regime to combat the jihadists, or ignore its existence and undertake military action alone to push back the jihadists. Thus far, though, the American-led air campaign against the Islamic State has done little to halt its advances.
This stark choice is a result of the failure of recent Western policy. One person who understands this better than most is the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
On Sept. 4, Mr. Putin announced that Russia had been providing military aid to Damascus against the Islamic State — support that has recently been ramped up. He also called for “some kind of an international coalition to fight terrorism and extremism.” This is in keeping with Moscow’s Syria policy, which has been consistent since 2010: Block any American-backed move to remove Mr. Assad from power and instead force the West to embrace him as a partner.
Islamist terrorism is an issue close to Mr. Putin’s heart; it helped him rise to power in the first place. Over several weeks in September 1999, a series of bombings destroyed four apartment buildings in Moscow and two other Russian cities. Almost 300 people were killed, with hundreds more injured.
Islamist terrorists from the southern Russian republic of Chechnya were blamed for the attacks. Given that pretext, Russia’s traumatized public readily acquiesced when Moscow began a second war in Chechnya. A few months after the invasion, Russia’s then relatively unknown, recently appointed prime minister, Mr. Putin, was swept into the presidency.
All Penitents go to Moscow
Jed Babbin – The Washington Times
Quietly, over the past few weeks and months, the United States and some leaders of the Arab world have gone to Moscow seeking to resolve the four-year old Syrian civil war. No one came here seeking President Obama’s guidance and leadership. Instead, we and some of our Arab allies went to Moscow like medieval penitents seeking help from a local warlord.
The Syrian war and the mass exodus of refugees continue because of two facts: first is that while America has forfeited its influence over these matters, the influence of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, have grown stronger to the degree that they will determine the outcome in Syria; and second, the European Union nations’ inability to agree on how to limit or control the flow of people fleeing to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa.
To boil this down to its essence, Russian President Putin has no reason to help Europe constrain the flow of refugees from Syria and the other nations because — in his eyes — it’s a “twofer”: he gets to maintain Bashar Assad as a destabilizing influence in the Middle East and gets a bonus of helping to destabilize European democracies at the same time.
FILE – Russian navy personnel are seen disembarking from an armored personnel carrier (APC) in Kaspiysk, Russia, Aug. 5, 2015. (Reuters)
What’s All This About Russian Forces Going to Syria?
Melik Kaylan – Forbes
The media noise machine is abuzz about the Russians putting boots on the ground to support Assad in Syria. And not just the ground nor merely footsoldiers but air power and armor too. Three questions come to mind. Why now? Is it a full commitment? Is it a bad thing for the West?
No matter how loud the sounds of tut-tutting from the US State Department, the US doesn’t consider the Russian incursion a serious threat or even an undesirable one. Obama has spent his entire political capital in keeping the US from re-entering Mideast wars whatever the cost to his prestige because he saw that the struggle would never end. Nobody is going to make order out of chaos there for a generation, nobody nice anyway. Not even if US troops had stayed in Iraq.
A migrant girl waits to board a bus after arriving by train at Schoenefeld railway station, south of Berlin, Germany, September 13, 2015. (Reuters)
How to Begin to End the Syrian War
Editorial Board – Bloomberg View
The renewed willingness to talk is welcome, but it needs to be based on reality: No side in this war is in a position to win, and any proposal based on restoring central control across the country is illusory.
A soft partition could square some of these diplomatic circles and help freeze at least part of the conflict.
