President Putin has raised the Russian profile in Syria. He has sent in new armored vehicles, deployed advisers alongside government troops, and ordered work on a housing compound for several hundred more troops – the latter move setting off speculation about the scope and intent of the deployment.
Putin has doubled down on Syria. His move demonstrates considerable craft, as do most of his actions, at least initially. Of course, any action in world affairs contains risks, and actions in the Middle East have been known to elicit unpleasant responses.
The Kremlin perspective
As is well known, Putin called the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union a geopolitical catastrophe. In the view of the former KGB officer, it opened the door to American global hegemony, and the US went on to attack and even topple governments without fear of strong responses. Moscow was helpless to act for two decades.
Putin sees himself as akin to Mikhail Romanov, who rebuilt the Russian state after ruinous civil war and foreign interventions in the early seventeenth century, and to Lenin and Stalin, who did the same a century ago. Putin has subjugated the new boyari class which held vast private wealth and limited his power. He is now reestablishing Russia as a world power and the central opponent of American hegemony. He undoubtedly sees last year’s annexation of the Crimea, including the naval port at Sebastopol, as a farsighted step that made his Syrian operation less onerous.
Russia is demonstrating its reliability to allies in China, former Soviet satellites in Central Asia, and emerging ones elsewhere. It will aid allies and prevent the West from imposing friendly regimes governed by popular forces.
Further, Putin will be strengthening his autocracy at home. Popular support will maintain its present lofty levels of eighty percent or more; criticism will be more muted than it already is – though only if the Syrian move doesn’t have calamitous results in coming months.
Impact on the war
As much as Syrian generals may wish to see Russian troops help to roll back the rebels and restore Damascus’s control over the country, Putin is unlikely to permit it. He will refrain from major ground operations unless the Syrian army nears collapse. The presidents of both Russia and Syria must know that such operations will lead to greater Islamist recruitment for a cause closely approximating the war most mythologized in the Arab world – the Russian-Afghan War of the 1980s.
Russian troops will act as advisers with Syrian army units and perhaps also with Hisbollah and indigenous Shia militias, through these will more likely be guided by Iranian special forces who have been in Syria for a few years now. Syrian television has shown Russian advisers firing upon rebel positions, but not acting as tactical units engaging rebel forces.
Russian advisers might direct airstrikes from their positions with Syrian units. The absence of such advisers has limited the effectiveness of the US and coalition air campaign against ISIL and al Qaeda, requiring many aircraft to return to their bases without delivering ordnance.
Thus far, Russian pilots have not been used, though they may be soon. As much as the West may protest, Moscow and Damascus will hastily point out, with characteristic truthfulness, that American, British, French, and Australian pilots are already doing the same.
It will be interesting to note against which forces the new Russian assets will be used. If exclusively or chiefly against ISIL and the al Nusrah Front, the West’s complaints will be muted or almost pointless. Those troops, it is widely agreed, are the principal dangers in the war. Indeed, not long after word of the move came, Putin called for unified action against the jihadis.
If Russian forces are used against those of Islamic Front or the Free Syrian Army, two groups deemed less radical in the West, complaints will be louder and accompanied by greater support for those rebel groups, though little else.
Political objective
The principal reason for Russian intervention may be more political than military. Russia wants to demonstrate to rebel forces – and their foreign backers from Washington and London to Riyadh and Doha – that the Syrian government, though having lost ground in the north in recent weeks, will not be allowed to fall.
Disabused of the prospects of victory that might come after their successes in the north, rebel forces and their various backers might recognize that the war is stalemated and that negotiations must proceed in ernest. Putin may be strengthening his position in future negotiations.
Risks
By getting deeper into Syria, Putin risks stoking anti-Russian sentiment in the Sunni world. However, Russia is on reasonably good terms with Saudi Arabia and the smaller principalities aligned with it, who are upset by the US’s support for democracy in the region and its opening to Iran.
More problematic will be the responses below the state-level. Rebel forces may target Russian forces, either where they serve alongside Syrian troops or on their compounds in the rear. Suicide bombing is a well-established tool in the region.
There may be great interest in such operations by the hundreds of Chechens already serving with ISIL and al Nusrah. Their kin back in the Caucasus will also be looking for the proper timing to renew the fight with a traditional foe.
Growing Islamist movements along Russia’s expansive southern periphery, from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan, will be watching. They will also try to send more volunteers into the Middle Eastern conflict, and await their return.
©2015 Brian M Downing