What is Putin doing in Syria?

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f you’ve been living under a rock or living on a university campus in the middle of nowhere, then it may be news that Putin is doing things again and everyone is freaking out. He took a couple of chunks of Georgia in 2008, he took a couple of chunks of Ukraine in 2014 and now he’s in Syria. Whilst a literal reading of that would be a much more exciting world, topless and mounted on a bear, I of course mean Putin’s ‘little green men’ as they are affectionately termed by the world media, are in Syria.

Resplendent with tanks, decent equipment and a new efficient army structure (things weren’t quite as easy in Georgia as he’d hoped). His plan is to end the conflict soonish with a political solution and keep Assad, his ally, in power. Right.

How has all this been received in the West? For the most part media were very impressed with old
Vlad’s decisiveness. The West is a bit war-weary, having made a few big mistakes over the last few years, America’s relative power declining and with Europe having an increasingly long list of woes – they are understandably for the most part being quite hesitant about what to do and when nowadays.

His plan is to end the conflict soonish with a political solution and keep Assad, his ally, in power. Right.

‘Should we ever get involved? If so when and how much? What will the public think?’ Such things mighty Putin cares not for. It is here we see a difference in the immediate connotations of the word. On the whole we tend think of decisive = good, and hesitant = bad. More elaborated: decisive = get things done, strong leadership; brave and hesitant = dilly dally, unsure, cowardly.

a.anis/Flickr

This obviously does apply for a bunch of situations. In the case of a child drowning in a pond (how do they fall in a pond anyway?) one would hope relatively little hesitation would be made before doing something. Act fast. Save the day.

However, the Middle East is not like this. The Middle East has now got quite messy (yes we have a large chunk of the blame for that). Indeed one struggles to think of a situation that has an easy solution or an intervention that has helped. The Afghanistan and Iraq interventions? Not so good. Turkey and the Kurds…. Israel and Palestine… touchy issues. Even lovely little Lebanon is now facing trouble considering one fifth of its population are Syrian refugees (it had a nice balance of different groups before which stopped anything kicking off).

On the whole we tend think of decisive = good, and hesitant = bad.

The only good news to come out in a long time is the Iran nuclear deal, recently made between the West and Iran to allow it civil nuclear reactors and lifting a forest of sanctions in exchange for measures to stop it enriching uranium to nuclear weapon level (read ‘win-win’). But now I informatively digress.

Why has Putin gone in and is it worth the risk? Well, Russia is in trouble. The Donbas regions it took from Ukraine are now quiet and relatively unpopular. Its economy has shrunk from 2 trillion to 1.2 trillion USD from all the sanctions and low oil prices (over 50% of their economy is reliant on oil and gas). It used to be okay with Turkey and now it’s not okay with Turkey (violation of airspace does that). Assad’s Syria represents one of his last allies in the Middle East and the only warm water port outside the former Soviet Union they still have access to.

The crux is that it’s a big gamble and so far, decisiveness may be confused with desperation.

So they’ve gone in. So far there are even some signs it isn’t going very well. He’s bombing lots of rebel targets but the rebels are still gaining ground (so far). What happens from here? He doesn’t have that much time (read -4.6% growth). A decisive victory would involve beating the rebels, and doing something about the Kurds and ISIS. Right. And what if he loses? He’s lost his Syrian ally, lost a lot of blood and treasure, peeved off the West, and yes, well.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens. The crux is that it’s a big gamble and so far, decisiveness may be confused with desperation. On the plus side, if it goes badly for Putin we might get the lovable computer geek Medvedev back for a bit or something. The downsides are continued humanitarian disaster in the Middle East. It’s becoming cliché to point out, but all talk of geopolitics and strategy can take the focus away from the tragedy for the Syrian people. Whatever happens, at the moment there is no ‘nice’ solution in sight.