добро пожаловать

Russia’s President Putin is combining his military move into Syria with a diplomatic effort to convince America that Russia and Bashar al Assad are indispensable to success in the fight against the Islamic State. Putin wants Washington to understand that Russia is a great power and cannot be ignored, in particular in the Middle East. How should Washington react?

The forward operating base the Russians are deploying near Latakia certainly represents a major escalation of Moscow’s engagement in Syria. At the very least, there is a need to deconflict Russian air operations with Coalition combat missions conducted nearby. No one needs an incident in which Russian and American forces come to blows. But that can be done quietly out of the public eye.

It is not clear yet whether the Russians intend to use their deployment to attack insurgents in Syria. Their base could be a defensive move, one intended to keep western Syria safe for the Russian naval facility at Tartous as well as for the regime’s Alawite supporters, and possibly for Bashar al Assad if he is forced from Damascus. For the moment at least, the housing being built can accommodate something like 1500 troops. That’s a far bigger commitment than the few advisors Russia has maintained in Syria in the past, but it is not a force likely to make much of a difference in the civil war in the ongoing civil war there.

If they do decide to engage against insurgents, the Russians are unlikely to distinguish between what the American-led Coalition thinks of as relative moderates and jihadi extremists associated with the Islamic State or Jabhat al Nusra. Nor are they likely to have a lot more success than the Coalition against the extremists, unless they deploy far more substantial ground forces. From the Coalition perspective, this Russian deployment is still small and aimed at least in part at the wrong targets.

So should we resist the Russian deployment, negotiate with Moscow, or do something else?

It seems to me there is an argument, expressed in the title of this piece, for not doing much to try to foil this Russian move or to accommodate it. There is little risk that 1500 Russians can accomplish much on the military side, beyond protecting western Syria from being overrun and the Alawites slaughtered. Any damage the Russians do to relative moderates won’t be decisive. It is at least as likely that the extremists will do significant damage to the Russians than the other way around.

As for the Russian argument that we should all unite with Bashar al Assad to defeat the terrorists, it really isn’t worthy of much of a response. Bashar and his forces have made it clear for years that their real enemies are the relative moderates the Coalition is supporting. Bashar has no real possibility of reestablishing control over all of Syria. His military tactics of besieging civilian areas and terrorizing their population with barrel bombs have done far more to generate terrorist recruits than to reduce their numbers. Russian forces, who honed their tactics in Chechnya, may kill a lot of people but won’t be any better at counter-insurgency warfare.

If there are to be negotiations, the Coalition would do best to continue to insist that they be based on the June 2012 United Nations communique, which called for a mutually agreeable transitional governing body with full executive authority. There is no reason to abandon that oblique formula, which in practice precludes Bashar al Assad from power even if it does not name him.

So rather than take the bait, Washington would do well to keep its cool and resist the temptation to over-react. The Russian deployment wouldn’t be necessary if Bashar al Assad were strong and getting stronger. Moscow is already overstretched in Ukraine. Letting the Russians double down on a bad bet in Syria is the right approach.