What Is Putin Really Up To in Syria?

politico.com; via AH on Facebook

14 top Putinologists weigh in.

[JB comment: Despite the wisdom expressed in the below comments, it's quite clear that no one in the "West" can fully agree on (knows?) what's going on re Russian military intervention in Syria, although think/Pentagon-tankers are aware that Russia does have a naval facility and airbase in Syria that provide its armed forces "direct" access to the Mediterranean space. 

(On the other hand, we all know the famous "riddle" quotation of Churchill regarding the Third Rome.)

Same incomprehension (willing incomprehension?) of the current Russia-Syria situation could be said about pundits/officials in Russia itself -- an ignorance perhaps shared by the very president of that country, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.]

BTW, I dutifully re-read the 19th century author Gogol (as I have since the beginning of Russia-Ukraine crisis, in order to "understand" what is "happening" with Russia's relations with the world in our current era.)]

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Vladimir Putin kicked this week off with a speech at the United Nations calling the West’s refusal to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad an “enormous mistake.” Days later, when Russian bombs began to drop on targets within Syria, many analysts warned that Putin was making a sizable mistake himself by inserting Russia into the middle of Syria’s intractable civil war. Other experts have labeled Putin a strategic grandmaster running circles around his Western counterparts.

Though Russian Defense Ministry Sergey Lavrov said [sic! - JB; where have all the copy editors gone?] on Thursday that Russia and the United States see “eye-to-eye” on combatting the Islamic State in Syria, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter proclaimed Wednesday that the Russian strikes “were in areas where there probably were not ISIL forces.” He was far from the only U.S. official to raise concerns that Russia is saying one thing about its actions in Syria but doing another. Russia may be using the pretense of combatting the Islamic State to justify its airstrikes, but its true objectives are up for debate. 

To help readers get a handle on the situation, Politico Magazine asked some of America’s best-informed Kremlinologists what Putin is trying to achieve in Syria. Is Putin just flexing his muscles at the United States? Simply attempting to shore-up Assad? Earnestly trying to destroy ISIL? Or are the motives of the erratic Russian autocrat beyond our comprehension?

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‘In [Putin’s] terms, he is winning. And on our terms we are losing.’
By Edward Lucas, writer for the Economist and senior vice-president at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think-tank in Warsaw and Washington, DC

Russia has won. That is the bleak conclusion facing the frontline states of Europe after a catastrophic week for Western diplomacy and American leadership.

The week began with Vladimir Putin’s triumph at the UN General Assembly. He spoke as a leader with a real interest in power. He berated the West for its weakness and recklessness, and feigned sympathy for the victims of ISIL. But his words were backed by a menacing willingness to break rules, take risks and endure pain. President Barack Obama was at his waffly worst: a leader who treats rhetoric as a substitute for policy.

The same day brought another triumph for Mr. Putin—a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Obama. Russia’s official media trumpeted this as evidence that the era of diplomatic isolation, supposedly a punishment for the war in Ukraine, was over.

Next came Russia’s move on Syria. The weapons that Russia is sending there are not an attempt to settle the conflict. They are there to protect the Assad regime, which is its cause. Moreover, ISIL does not have warplanes: Russia’s air defense missiles are in Syria for a different purpose.

This became clear on Wednesday, when America was given less than an hour’s warning that the Kremlin was imposing, in effect, a no-fly zone in Syria. With this the Russians not only mounted a direct challenge to American authority. They also ripped up the rulebook of military diplomacy. America was aghast, but had no response.

The first target in all this is Russian public opinion. The soap opera in Ukraine is over. The heroic separatists, their evil fascist foes, and the cynical Western meddlers have been retired. The new entertainment is a thrilling and exotic epic set in Syria, with the Assad regime as the heroic defenders of civilized values, Russian their valiant allies and the West as the defenders of jihadist barbarians.

Like most soap operas, this plot bears little relation to reality. A peace deal in Syria is possible—but Russia cannot broker or enforce it. Its central element would be a new deal for Sunni Arabs—echoing the one which ended the insurgency in Iraq in 2007. It would need the support of the Qataris and Saudis, cooperation from the Turks and Iranian and Russian pressure on the Assad regime. The only country which could conceivably make that happen is the United States.

That won’t happen, so in the meantime Syria bleeds, Europe quails at the seemingly unstoppable influx of migrants, and Mr Putin chuckles.

His second aim is achieved too. For all its military, diplomatic and economic weakness, Russia has re-established itself as an indispensable power, with which the West must deal—and on Russia’s terms.

The chances of real success are slender to negligible. But the West’s blunders in Syria have been so great that Mr. Putin now looks like a responsible statesman, to whom we turn in desperation for help.

The most shocking aspect of this is that the West does not realize what is happening. Experts still believe that Mr. Putin’s adventure in Syria is a dreadful mistake—another Afghanistan. They believe that sanctions are biting, that he has lost the war in Ukraine, and is now looking for a return to normality.

This thinking misunderstands Mr. Putin’s mindset. He does not worry about Russia’s long-term economic health. He sees politics as a ruthless zero-sum game in which victory goes to the player with the strongest nerves and fastest movements. In his terms, he is winning. And on our terms we are losing.

Now he can exact his price. What will it be?

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‘Russia’s presence [in Syria] is a bargaining chip.’

By Alec Luhn, freelance journalist and Politico contributor, Moscow

I think it’s worthwhile to remember that, for the Kremlin, Ukraine remains the number one concern. In the short term, Vladimir Putin’s air offensive in Syria will help Bashar al-Assad retain power. But in the long term, it seems Russia’s presence there is a bargaining chip. Putin has already ended Russia’s diplomatic isolation over Ukraine and scored a meeting with Barack Obama. What’s being discussed behind the scenes? Tacit recognition of Russia’s interests in Ukraine? An end date for sanctions? It’s all suddenly on the table now.

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‘Even the best informed Western intelligence has only limited understanding of who is advising the Russian leader and what is in briefing papers.’

By Ben Judah, contributing writer for Politico Europe and author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin

Anyone who tells you he knows what Vladimir Putin is really thinking is lying. The Kremlin is more cut-off from Western diplomats, journalists and analysts than at any point since Leonid Brezhnev was last in charge. That’s why it’s so scary. Even the best informed Western intelligence has only limited understanding of who is advising the Russian leader and what is in briefing papers.

Here’s the little we know. Vladimir Putin is both isolated, and acting recklessly, taking little heed of the vicious complexities of the Middle East. Crimea, Donbas, Syria—these are all seen as on the same front. Pushback against a weakening West. Kremlin voices suggest Vladimir Putin might be willing to trade his terrain on one front for another: taming his actions on Syria in exchange for concessions on Ukraine and the lifting of Western sanctions on Russia. This hints that this action could be as much one of weakness as of strength—a bold gambit, to release Russian from financial sanctions as the pinch from the falling oil price sets in. The scary thing here is: we just can’t be sure.

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‘The basic message is: You will listen to us, you will not exclude us from the conversation.’

By Masha Gessen, Russian-American journalist and author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.

I think Putin’s primary motive is to assert Russia’s role as a superpower. He is using the old Soviet playbook of muscle and blackmail. The basic message is: You will listen to us, you will not exclude us from the conversation. The message is addressed squarely and solely to the United States. Put even more plainly, it reads, “I came to your country to give you a chance. I was willing to talk nicely. You rejected my premise that Assad must stay in power—well, let’s see what you say now.”

There is a secondary motive, too, which makes Assad more than an abstraction in this conversation. In Putin’s world, the United States cause the current bloodshed in Syria by supporting the protesters—the same way the United States caused the current “civil war” in Ukraine by supporting the protests there. And he is convinced the Americans supported the protests in Russia in 2011-2012 and only Putin’s firm hand averted disaster. So there is a deep identification with Assad at play here, if not personal sympathy.

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‘I doubt very much that Putin is thinking two or three moves ahead.’
By Andrew S. Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs on the National Security Council staff from 1998 to 2001

People around the world give Putin way too much credit as a master strategist. He’s an improviser and an opportunist of the highest order. It’s true that he’s trying to fill some of the vacuum in the Middle East and Syria as the United States scales back our military involvement in the region. At the same time, I doubt very much that Putin is thinking two or three moves ahead. The war in Syria is about to get a lot worse and he’s plunging Russia right into the middle of it. It’s also only a matter of time before we see surge of jihadist activity targeting Russians, both inside Syria and, I fear, on the streets of Moscow. Russia’s move is going to embolden the Assad regime and motivate the forces of global jihadism.

We’ve seen this pattern already: Putin’s aggression against Ukraine has by all accounts been a debacle. The Syria adventure has all the makings of a similar tragedy and tells us a great deal about the impulsive and erratic nature of the Kremlin’s decision-making efforts on national security. I’m also concerned that Putin has plowed ahead and started engaging in so-called kinetic activity in the very complicated battlefield that is Syria without having a serious conversation about de-confliction with the Pentagon or other members of the US-led anti-ISIL coalition. The de-confliction effort is still in its infancy. He’s courting danger and unintended contact between his military and others operating there.

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‘[Putin’s] overriding objective is … to open some cracks in the wall of economic and diplomatic isolation around Russia’
By Mark Galeotti, professor of global affairs at New York University specialist in Russian security and transnational organized crime

Putin has three objectives in Syria, and fighting ISIL is the least important of the three. The very fact that their first, heavy-handed military operation was targeted not against ISIL but the more immediate Free Syrian Army threat to the regime, is gratuitous proof of that. He also wants to shore up the Assad regime, or at least give it a breathing space to regroup, and in the process ensure that Moscow has a say in the country’s future and any potential post-Assad regime. But Syria itself is not that important to him: his overriding objective is a wider one, to open some cracks in the wall of economic and diplomatic isolation around Russia. In a signature Putin move, he stirs up greater chaos and then offers the West a choice: deal with him in the hope he can and will help fix the problem, or watch him stir up even greater chaos.

Of course, in an equally signature way for Putin, this is good tactics but bad strategy. For the moment he has forced Washington to talk to him, softened some of the language on quite how Assad ought to go, and generally enjoyed springing another surprise on the West. But Moscow simply cannot deploy the kind of forces to Syria that could meaningfully change the arithmetic of the war and save the regime. It also means the Russians are now vulnerable: when something goes wrong, as always will in war, they will face the terrible choice of pulling back and looking weak or doubling down and getting sucked deeper and deeper into this bloody vortex of factionalism, repression, jihad and revolution.

***

‘The West is not likely to be kinder to Russia because of its adventurous policy.’
By Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, was an economic adviser to the governments of Russia from 1991 to 1994 and Ukraine from 1994 to 1997

President Putin appears to have multiple objectives with his military offensive in Syria. For the last year he has been looking for a possible short victorious war after his war in Donbas turned out to be neither victorious and nor short. He needed a diversionary maneuver to downplay the failure of the war in eastern Ukraine, so that he can let it slow down. After a lot of trial and error, he seems to have settled for Syria, which has many advantages. The United States has no clear policy, and Europe cannot even think of a policy while being flooded with Syrian refugees. Assad is Russia’s oldest and closest ally. Together with Iran, Russia can shore him up. A Russian Shiite alliance with Iraq and Iran embarrasses the United States. Putin can bomb the at least 2,500 Russian citizens that fight with ISIL. Putin can thus push the United States and Europe to closer interaction with Russia.

But this tactic has serious shortcomings. The West is not likely to be kinder to Russia because of its adventurous policy, which contains the risk of direct military conflict with U.S. forces. The West will certainly not give up its sanctions against Russia because of this adventurism. A war in Syria with modern arms is likely to be quite expensive, and Russia’s GDP is set to fall by at least 4 percent this year, and Crimea and Donbas are very expensive. The price of oil and the ruble have fallen by half in a bit more than a year, and so has Russia’s GDP in current US dollars. Russians do not want to fight in the Middle East. There is no obvious end to this tragedy. Thus, Putin’s new Syria policy looks dangerous and may be outright destabilizing in Russia.

***

‘[Putin] is, as the Russian expression goes, combining the pleasant with the beneficial.’ 

By Keith Gessen, Russian-born novelist, journalist and co-editor of n+1

Putinist Russia is like a bad funhouse mirror for Western politics: many of the same actions, but cruder and without the elaborate justifications. So to answer the not so difficult question of what Putin is up to in Syria it might be worth asking first what we are “up to” in Syria. What are we up to in Syria? In order to bring about peace we are dropping thousands of bombs; in order to help the Syrian people gain freedom we are arming their men to kill. An administration that came to power promising that it would unwind the disastrous wars of the previous regime has found another one for us to join.

As for Putin, he is, as the Russian expression goes, combining the pleasant with the beneficial. It is pleasant to foil the United States’ poorly laid plans; it is beneficial to save one of Russia’s few allies from collapse. Like us, he is bombing from the sky, hoping to murder enough people that his friends can get on with their lives. What is Putin up to in Syria? Nothing good. And nothing new.

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‘Putin’s overarching aim is to boost his public approval ratings’
By Gregory Feifer is author of “Russians: The People Behind the Power”

Russia wants the opposite of resolution in Syria. Its main interest is to complicate the situation on the ground in order to take international center stage. Propping up Assad, Moscow’s sole Middle East ally, forces Western countries to seek to divine the Kremlin’s motives and some even to believe Russia has become indispensable for peace in the Middle East.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Vladimir Putin’s overarching aim is to boost his public approval ratings by sticking it to Washington and its allies, which is what passes for restoring Moscow’s Cold War power these days. That’s crucial for propping up his corrupt authoritarian regime when Russians are suffering isolation and economic recession. Claiming to fight ISIL while actually bombing US-supported rebels and other rivals is classic Putin, whose taunting subterfuge represents a KGB officer’s vision of foreign policy. Although he’s a wily political tactician when it comes to the interests of his kleptocratic regime in the short term, Putin will go down as geostrategic failure because he’s ultimately eroding Russia’s power and prosperity.

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‘Russian television just changed the subject from Ukraine to Syria.’
By Timothy Snyder, Housum professor of History at Yale

(1) President Putin’s popularity depends upon television.
(2) Russian television news is devoted to events beyond Russia.
(3) This means the president’s triumphs against American hegemony etc.
(4) In Ukraine a weak Ukrainian army and limited EU sanctions hindered Russia.
(5) Point #4 must not be noticed inside Russia.
(6) Russian television just changed the subject from Ukraine to Syria.

***

‘Russia wants to be sure that it’s not ignored if and when the West succeeds in implementing a broader, more effective solution to the Syria-Iraq-ISIL problem’
By William Courtney, adjunct senior fellow at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation, a former U.S. ambassador to Georgia and Kazakhstan and special assistant to the president for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia

In deploying its warplanes over northern Syria, Russia may well be pursuing parallel goals of seeking new relevance in the region with a show of power, while at the same time weakening the enemies of the Bashar al-Assad regime. If the attacks can be portrayed as contributions to the U.S.-led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State, all the better.

Russia seeks most of all to buttress central, secular authority in Syria. This is why it struck targets in Homs, a traditional area of opposition to the Assad regime not an Islamic State stronghold. Moscow has signaled for some months that it recognizes that Assad is gradually losing legitimacy and power.

Moscow is leaving it to the United States and its allies to conduct the real fight against the Islamic State, even though in his United Nations General Assembly address earlier this week Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke as if countering ISIL was Moscow’s top priority. Russia lacks the military punch to make much difference in this fight.

Russia wants to be sure that it’s not ignored if and when the West succeeds in implementing a broader, more effective solution to the Syria-Iraq-ISIL problem. This is a task far beyond Russia's capabilities, but one that America, the West, and regional powers may be able to accomplish.

***

‘Military involvement in Syria carries big risks.’
By Steven Pifer, director of the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative, was special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council from 1996 to 1997 and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000

Vladimir Putin’s decision to engage militarily in Syria is driven by a mix of motives. He wants to bolster the Assad regime. Russia has long had a relationship with Damascus, one of Moscow’s few international allies and its main foothold in the Middle East, and he does not want to see the Syrian government collapse. Mr. Putin also wants to show that Russia is a major player on the world stage and can challenge the United States.

Whether or not Washington and Moscow can cooperate on Syria remains to be seen, but given differences over Assad and whom to target, the question may be less one of can they cooperate than can they avoid Syria growing into an even bigger problem on the U.S.-Russia agenda?

Finally, Mr. Putin appears to calculate that the image of a strong Russia taking a leading role on international crises will play well domestically. Perhaps, but military involvement in Syria carries big risks: Russia could get pulled into a quagmire, and a recent Levada poll shows that 69 percent of Russians oppose sending troops to Syria.

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‘This looks more like short-term showmanship than long-term strategy.’ By Thomas de Waal, senior associate, Carnegie Europe Center

Vladimir Putin has as many reasons for wanting to get involved in Syria as Barack Obama does for staying out.

The current Russian regime sees in Assad’s Syria its truest friend in the Middle East and its own reflection, a secular one-party autocracy fighting domestic dissent and Sunni extremism. Active support for Assad reinforces two of Putin’s long-held credos: the need to pursue with extreme force the “war on terror” (an idea he cherished before George W. Bush) and an anathema of regime change. So the operation both recalls Putin’s beginning as Russian president, propelled by the 1999 war in Chechnya, and reveals his fear of an end.

Putin’s Russia is also an “information-based dictatorship,” which draws its legitimacy from the support of the television-watching public. As intervention in Ukraine has deteriorated into a nasty intractable mess, “The War on ISIL” is meant to be a new popular TV series in which Russia again bravely fights terrorists and outwits the West. As ever with Putin, this looks more like short-term showmanship than long-term strategy.

***

‘Where does Mr. Putin go from here? He probably doesn’t know yet.’
By Eugene Rumer, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council from 2010 to 2014

By launching his own bombing campaign in Syria, Mr. Putin has proved that Russia too can do its part to contribute to havoc in the Middle East. Other than that, he is probably pursuing several goals, none of them mutually exclusive: support for Assad by destroying his enemies—various oppositon groups and maybe even ISIL; some of these groups reportedly include fighters from Russia, which provides Mr. Putin with a collateral benefit. He has successfully redirected the conversation from his aggression in Ukraine—another side benefit of involvement in Syria. He has positioned himself as a power broker in the Syrian war—he can’t deliver a solution there, but nobody can do it now without him either. He has asserted himself at the expense of the United States, as U.S. officals complain, but the United States can do little about Russian airstikes targeting U.S.-backed militias opposed to Assad.

He has once again proven the pundits wrong when they said he was crippled by Western sanctions and falling oil prices. Where does Mr. Putin go from here? He probably doesn’t know yet. He’ll adapt his tactics to the situation as it changes. It is not clear there is a strategy behind it. To paraphrase the late Yogi Berra, if he doesn’t know where he is going, he’ll end up someplace else.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/russia-putin-syria-invasion-experts-strategy-213213#ixzz3nQacFfIS