For over a decade, as he solidified presidency-for-life and modernized Russia’s armed forces, Vladimir Putin has been seizing every opportunity to implement what I called the Putin Doctrine: the recovery of geostrategic assets lost by the Soviet state after 1991. He has been patient, alert, and bold. His move into Syria is yet another step on this road: regaining the stature of a (if not the) dominant outside player in the Middle East by saving its oldest, continuous regional client. Providing “comprehensive assistance to the legitimate government of Syria,” Putin declared in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly yesterday, is of “utmost importance.”
By contrast, his “partners,” as he likes to call them, in the Obama White House appear to be perennially baffled as to “Mr. Putin’s intentions” and, in their reaction to Putin’s moves, often swing between shameless, obsequious cajoling and sanctimonious lecturing. “We cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion,” President Barack Obama boldly stated in his speech at the U.N. “The strongmen of today become the spark of revolution tomorrow.” Most of all, he wanted Putin to understand that the United States does not want “to isolate Russia.” Quite to the contrary: America wants “a strong Russia that’s invested in working with us to strengthen the international system as a whole.”
I don’t know how many Russian cargo planes, filled with soldiers, tanks and howitzers, landed in the Russian base outside Latakia, Syria, in the short interval between Obama’s speech and Putin’s retort. What is clear, though, is that they will keep coming.
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