05/10/2015
Mira Milosevich, Lecturer of International Relations at IE University
In his speech to the UN General Assembly last September 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed to create a large international coalition to combat the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), although there is already one led by the US. This coalition should include dictator Bashar al-Assad, and resemble the one created during World War II against Hitler. A few hours after the bilateral meeting between Putin and the US President Barack Obama, independent from the UN summit, Russia started bombing the sites of the opponents of Assad's regime: the rebels, the ISIS and the al-Nusra Front (an al-Qaeda branch).The countries of the alliance led by the US have demanded the Russians to end the bombing of targets other than those of the ISIS. French President Hollande added two other requirements: ensuring the protection of civilians and implementing a political transition that includes the departure of Assad. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stressed that ‘the solution in Syria involves a political process and not only military’ and that the process should include all parties to the conflict, including Assad.
While the West raises its complaints and focuses on the political and ethical question of whether or not Assad should be a part of Syria's future, Putin keeps repeating his mantra that the ‘legitimate president’ is essential to the fight against jihadism, but now deals with other matters, because he is always a step ahead.
Unlike the West, Putin thinks Syria is a disintegrating failed state, and thinking about the future of Assad as president or not of the 2011 Syrian border makes no sense. As can be seen on the map,
Syria's territory is divided into four parts. The north is controlled by the Kurds and is under the influence of Turkey. The eastern area is the battleground between the ISIS and the US. The remains of the regime and of Assad's army are concentrated, with the help of Hezbollah, on the coast and in the Damascus-Homs axis. The rebels are in the Nubl-Alepo-Idlib axis and in the south, in Deraa and Quineitra. Some parts of its territory are dominated by the forces of the al-Nusra Front.
In these circumstances, Russia's strategic goal is to ensure the permanence of Assad in his stronghold and defend him from both the jihadists and the US and its allies. To do this, it has military bases in Tartu and Latakia, an intelligence unit in Baghdad shared with Iraq, Iran and the Syrian regime, and a clear plan: land and air support to the ground forces of Assad's military alliance, to Hezbollah's mercenaries paid by Russia and to hundreds of Iranian troops who have entered Syria's territory in recent days.
The risky Russian initiative of getting involved in a complex war that could escalate into a major conflict between foreign powers is explained by their traditional interests, by their need to ensure their presence in the Mediterranean (as a counterweight to NATO's strengthening of the eastern flank Baltic Sea-Black Sea) but, above all, by Obama's failure to make the Syrian opposition a political and military alternative to the regime. Putin has ‘stolen the war’ from the US and its partners in the predominantly Sunni area (Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) creating an alliance with the Shiites in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The American analyst David Rothkopf sums it up very graphically: ‘In geopolitics, as in physics, nature abhors a vacuum.’
After four years of war, the US president has not achieved his two main objectives: to overthrow Assad and defeat the ISIS. With their premise that there is no military solution to the Syrian Civil War, Americans have made little air intervention and did not contemplate the possibility of a ground one. Average daily airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq during the first half of 2015 were 15. To get an idea of how small American intervention was, we must remember that in 2011 NATO conducted around 50 daily airstrikes against Libya. In 2001 the average against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was 85, and in 2003 against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, reached 800, that is 50 times what is currently recorded in this country and in Syria against ISIS terrorists.
When Putin talks about establishing a coalition similar to the one created against Hitler, he's not just thinking of the type of alliance established between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. Like Stalin, he knows that his power will reach as far as his armies do and that he will not get at the negotiating table what he has not previously won on the ground. So he does not offer the West any camaraderie, but a new division of the Middle East into spheres of influence. For now, this means rescuing and expanding Assad's stronghold and the increasing power of Russia and Iran and the Shiites of Syria and Iraq in the region.