Vladimir Putin may discover that the trouble with using force to strengthen one’s negotiating position is that other sides follow suit.
The Russian military intervention in Syria has triggered much outrage, always a useful alternative to policy.
Some – the Syrian opposition, the Western allies, and the Gulf Sunni states – are outraged because it gets in the way of their own plans for the country, namely a “transition” away from the Assad regime and a joint effort under US leadership against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Some are outraged that the West is not “joining forces” with the Russians, though this appears to be rather because slogans like “common cause”, “overcoming old prejudices” and “fighting terrorism together” give a false appearance of political goodwill than from any constructive principles based on observed reality.
After all, some of those making the call to impose a military solution on Sunni Islamist rebels are the very same people who have sneered for more than a decade at America’s failed attempts to bomb Sunni militants into submission across the Middle East and Central Asia.
Beyond the outrage, few are asking whether Russia has a longer-term strategy, other than to give temporary hope to President Bashar al-Assad. Fewer still ask whether any such strategy will work.
While the Russian air force is undoubtedly better than the regime’s, it is not as good as America’s, and as conflicts from Yemen to recent events in Iraq have shown, even American air power is of only limited use against a determined insurgency.
Pro-regime sources in Damascus and Lebanon suggest that Russian air power will now be followed by a ground offensive, led certainly by Hizbollah and according to one report by an additional wave of Iranian troops. These will attack the non-Isil rebels in central and north-western Syria that are the main threat, currently, to the Assad regime.
Against an insurgent force that adds up in total to tens of thousands, perhaps 100,000 men, more if the separate tens of thousands of Isil forces are added in, a few hundred Iranians and a few thousand Hizbollah fighters will not be enough to reclaim the large areas of Syria that have fallen out of regime control.
The first aim, then, is most likely to prevent further losses. After that, the Russians and Iranians presumably hope that once they are no longer advancing, Syria’s rebels will once again fall into faction-fighting, extremism and chaos. President Obama and his Gulf allies would then give up on them, and either withdraw support or at least seek a peace deal on terms favourable to Russian and Iranian interests – including the preservation of the regime and even perhaps of Mr Assad himself.
All that, of course, leaves out of consideration the possible response by the regime’s enemies.
In June 2013, a temporarily resurgent Syrian army, fresh from victories near the Lebanese border and buoyed up by Hizbollah reserves, moved on rebel-held Aleppo, with many expecting it to inflict a decisive victory.
The rebels held out. Their backers in the Gulf and Turkey – with White House approval – sent in some Konkurs anti-tank missiles and other military kit. It wasn’t much; the first regime advance was stopped with just 50 Konkurs missile systems, according to one rebel source at the time. But it was enough.
What will the equivalent response be now? This is something that Gulf diplomats rarely discuss, even off the record. But there is no reason to think those countries most committed to the rebel cause, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, are currently in the mood to be anything but bloody-minded.
They have often argued with each other as much as anyone else, rivals for moral leadership of the Sunni world. But now they are presenting a united front.
Last week, a key event took place in the Qatari capital Doha, something that would normally have been of interest only to followers of the intricacies of Middle East politics.
The Saudi ambassador, the Qatari prime minister, and the spiritual head of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood, Yusef Qaradawi, all appeared alongside each other at a function.
Saudi Arabia has, until this year, been a leading opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood and its brand of Islamist politics, which Qatar has backed. This new rapprochement says one thing: that in the war against Shia Iran and proxies like the Assad regime all old intra-Sunni hatreds, even of political Islam, must be set aside.
Qatar’s British-educated Emir Tamim al-Thani put it bluntly in his speech to the United Nations general assembly. He blamed the entire Syrian crisis on the “atrocities” of the regime.
He demanded the world “impose” a solution on Syria that “ended the reign of tyranny”. “The question is not whether this is possible, it is possible if there is a will among certain countries,” he said.
This Gulf alliance is already fighting Iranian-aligned forces in Yemen. It believes it is winning that war.
In doing so, it is in formal alliance with al-Qaeda’s Yemeni arm. It is a development which has caused mutters in Washington but no worse.
There seems no reason to suppose the alliance will not pursue a similar arrangement in Syria: indeed, Qatar is already dealing with Jabhat al-Nusra, the local al-Qaeda affiliate.
Russia may just discover that the trouble with escalating force to strengthen one’s negotiating position is that other sides follow suit.
Agencies
