Syrian air strikes is a well-calculated risk for Russia
With its traditional Cold War flair, Russia has waded into the murky waters of the Middle East. Two days after the US President Barack Obama warned against Russian action in defence of the Bashar al-Assad regime, Russian air force started its bombing campaign in Syria. So far, Russia has conducted approximately 20 air strikes, according to the Russian military.
Though Russia has claimed that its air strikes have targeted the Islamic State, Syrian rebel groups are complaining that the strikes have hit other groups as well, including some rebels believed to have participated in a CIA-supported training programme. Moscow is trying to frame this move as part of a stepped up counterterrorism plan that will include targeting the Islamic State. But the decision to include other opposition groups in its air strikes has raised the stakes much higher. Russia is targeting those militias that are battling the regime of Syrian President Assad, leading to the strengthening of the regime in the process.
Russian officials themselves have been making contradictory claims about who has been targeted. While the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov categorically rejected "the rumours" that the targets of these strikes were not positions of the ISIS as "groundless," a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin underscored that the strikes did indeed target multiple groups. "These organisations (on the target list) are well-known and the targets are chosen in coordination with the armed forces of Syria," he suggested. Iran, meanwhile, has announced its full support for the Russian air campaign.
With this move, Putin is trying to live up to his uber macho image that he has assiduously tried to cultivate. And it comes at a time when there are growing disagreements between the United States and Europe about what potential international negotiations to resolve the Syrian civil war should look like and the extent to which Europe should participate. While some Western leaders appear to be softening their opposition to a Russian role in the coalition against the Islamic State and backpedalling on demands that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must step down, Saudi Arabia, which supports a number of rebel groups in Syria, has called a Russian role in the fight against the Islamic State a "non-starter" and said flatly, "there is no future for Assad in Syria." Riyadh has also hinted that the Saudis might increase their support for the rebels. In his remarks to the UN General Assembly, Putin, on the other hand, had argued that Washington's efforts were failing and that Western nations needed to partner with Assad to fight the Islamic State rather than continue working to unseat him.
So even as Russian bombs have started falling in Syria, Washington is groping for a strategy. The strikes are by no means a surprise for Washington. Moscow cannot really afford to abandon its Mediterranean client state. Russia's only overseas military base is located at Tartus in Syria, which houses 1,700 Russian troops and gives Moscow a much greater forward presence than it would have otherwise. For a leader like Putin intent on projecting power in as geostrategically critical an area as the Middle East, this is clearly a risk worth taking. But not only is Syria important for Russia as a foothold in the region, but by taking the lead in sharing intelligence with the Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi military personnel, Putin has made Moscow impossible to ignore in the fractious debate over what to do next in the fight against the Islamic State.
Russia is re-emerging as a major global actor. Russia under Putin wants to establish itself as a major player in global politics, a balancer to the preponderance of the US might. Putin's nostalgia for the Cold War days is clearly evident. As he has said of the Cold War era, "There was an equilibrium and a fear of mutual destruction... And one party was afraid to make an extra step without consulting the other… Peace was reliable." It is to that "reliable peace" that Putin wants to take global politics.
For all the military bravado, however, Russia is not the great power of yore howsoever hard Putin might like to project otherwise. With falling oil prices and Western sanctions making it difficult to do business in Russia, Moscow's economy is in the dump. With its military forays into Crimea, Ukraine, and now Syria, Moscow has 25,000 hungry troops stationed in Crimea, is supporting rebels (and its own troops) in Ukraine, and now has stretched supply lines into Syria to support troops and dozens of high-tech fighter planes. Russia may be risking being sucked into a Middle Eastern quagmire by its actions in Syria.
But that is for another day. Today, Moscow may once again be relishing its moment in the sun where Putin's machinations have marginalised the West and re-established Russian footprint in the Middle East. The West is scrambling to react adequately even as the crisis in the Middle East has just gone from bad to worse. The stakes are high. New Delhi should take note and start formulating its own response, one that takes into account the growing divide between Russia and the West.