Supping with Putin in Syria

What’s so bad about Russia’s declared intention to bomb ISIS in Syria? “What difference does it make,” to quote Mrs. Clinton out of context, if the bombs drop from Russian planes or from US, French or British ones? Isn’t the enemy of my enemy my friend?

Whether playing devil’s advocate or just pursuing journalistic due diligence, several reporters have asked me this question.

And it should not be dismissed out of hand.

If (as the post-modern canon compels us to do) we detach the ”author” from the “text,” the actor from the action, and the nature of the regime, its ideology and the objectives that this ideology dictates, and its tactics from its policies – in short if we detach the “what” from the “why”— then, yes, there is nothing to be afraid of.

But ideology shapes objectives, and objectives dictate tactics.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin arrives to attend a summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, October 2, 2015. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau.

So let’s look at the whys.

Why is Putin in Syria? Yes, to save Assad’s regime. Yes, to damage ISIS in order to protect Russia’s “soft underbelly” — post-Soviet Central Asia (especially Tajikistan) — from destabilization, cut the steady stream of Russian recruits to ISIS, and prevent their returning home to engage in jihad for the Russian Caliphate.

But these are tactical goals, in many respects a means to a few more important ends:

• To establish a sustained, open-ended Russian military presence in the Middle East for the first time since President Sadat sent Soviet personnel home in 1972, thus recovering a key Soviet geopolitical asset as postulated by the Putin Doctrine.

• To establish the Russia-Iran-Syria (and possibly Iraq) de facto alliance as the dominant military and thus political actor in the Middle East.

• To boost patriotic mobilization in Russia, which increasingly is the Putin regime’s sole claim to legitimacy. With the economy tanking fast, the ruble down 57% from this time last year, inflation at around 15%, and the seemingly stalemated war on Ukraine no longer generating enough heat to keep the patriotic fervor a-boil, Putin needs another “short, victorious war” (as the Minister of Internal Affairs Vyacheslav Plehve hailed the ultimately disastrous Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05).

Yes, the enemy adage is a wise one. But if a decision-maker intends to act on it, she or he needs to counterbalance it with another proverb: “He who sups with the devil, should have a long spoon.” Your spoon must be faster and more effective than your dining companion’s, and you must be prepared to deploy the spoon to wrap the Devil across his knuckles if he grows too greedy.

This is easier said than done. Churchill famously declared that he would deal with the Devil himself to defeat Hitler. And he did, by allying with Stalin. Yet even this genius politician was unable to deploy the spoon (in large measure because Roosevelt disdained Churchill’s attempts at hard bargaining and the threatening force, and relied instead on his charm to persuade Stalin into behaving in a civilized manner in the occupied Eastern and Central Europe). Untold suffering by millions during the forty-five years of totalitarian slavery followed.

Bearing in mind this cautionary tale, in dealing with a man who seems to admire Stalin’s “leadership,” are the US, NATO, and the EU ready to respond if Russia’s “engagement” in Syria results in:

• An “accidental” (wink, wink) shoot down of a US or British or French plane? By all accounts, President-for-life Putin is on a roll. After berating the US in New York, he negotiated, like an equal, with the president of the only country that matters to the Russians, the United States – traditionally one of the most surefire methods of boosting the legitimacy of any Soviet or Russian leader. Why not up the brinksmanship a couple of notches to whip up patriotic pride at home (while apologizing to the victimized country and blaming the “accident” on the “fog of war)?

• Persistent and deliberate Russian bombing of areas outside of ISIS’s control? The White House spokesman Josh Earnest has called the Russian airstrikes “indiscriminate military operations against the Syrian opposition.”

• A humanitarian disaster and a new wave of refugees into Europe?  If Putin’s “pacification” of Chechnya in 1999-2004, complete with indiscriminate shelling and bombing which reduced Grozny to Stalingrad-like rubble is any indication, the humanitarian crisis in Syria is set to deteriorate further as Russia proceeds with attacks supported by air-to-surface targeting technology described by Russian experts, as being “30 years old.”

So those who welcome supping with Putin’s Russia in Syria should be ready for a very long, distasteful and ultimately poisonous meal.

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