“Cry ‘Havoc!’ said he who fought chaos with chaos, and let slip the dogs of war,” said an exasperated Frank Underwood looking straight into the camera from the TV series, House of Cards, in one of its most dramatic moments. The quote itself, though lifted and modified from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, fits like a glove for what’s happening in Syria today. You really couldn’t make this up.
The US administration, through a unique concoction of propaganda, terribly miscalculated and naive series of intentional geopolitical moves, decided to topple one of its last eye sores in the Middle East buoyed in some preposterous way by the “surge of democracy” it claims to have instigated in the region, apparently for its own good by having supported the Arab spring when it did.
This policy in Syria despite fresh history of similar escapades in the region being expensive in terms of finance and dead bodies on all sides and the counter-productive nature of it in the long term has enabled the letting loose of more than hundreds of different grouped breeds of those mutated rabid canines that comprises various terrorist outfits that operate within Syria and Iraq today.
This has, amongst other things, resulted in a complex chess game of loyalty, allied anti-Assad fighters and terrorist rebel warlords combined, the equations related to which, change constantly, not only putting US interests at harm in the long term, but keeping it blindsided as to who the imminent threat is at any given point. In constantly calculating and recalibrating it’s alliance, the US is slow to react to changes on the ground. This is to not even consider the threat these groups pose to world security at large, if they migrate their goals to that direction.
The Obama administration’s persistent fondness of the Bush doctrine notwithstanding; its inaction, on and off apathetic attitude, propensity to make up information, confusion and inconsistency in the region has led to a considerable decline in its ability to influence and control outcomes in the Middle East.
The lack of a clear direction in combating ISIS as the number one present threat to peace and civilisation including the US financing, munition, arms and intelligence support to “moderate Syrian rebels” some of whom openly work in nexus with other at terrorist rebel groups in the region has led to criticism and confusion around the world. By pursuing a “distant” combat and control policy, the US and its allies have yielded space enough for Putin to gain significant control of the future of the region’s foreign policy by virtue of a more simple and direct agenda in Syria, but more on that later.
It’s undeniable that Syria continues to experience a brutal civil war but US policy in my opinion, has made it bloodier, more ghastly, messy, and complicated. While the approach to peace should have been a balanced one, the West found in all its interventionist wisdom, very much in the spirit of Reagan contras era policy, the need to pick sides and assist its own insatiable appetite to bring down dictators as a priority instead of defeating ISIS, regardless of the cost to its own citizens, the people of the country they purport to help, and world peace at large. The rhetoric should have been: “Violence must cease immediately from all parties or else” instead of “The Assad regime must cease to exist.” This was a strategic mistake.
The US policy of arming, training, and financing of “moderate rebels” in Syria too has faced major blows over the last few years and more recently because of defections to the notorious Al-Nusra from Division 30, a US favoured rebel group trained in Turkey to take on ISIS that included munitions, intelligence; not to mention the disbanding of Harakat Hazm, one of the most well known and effective moderate rebel groups in Syria that now no longer exists because Nusra decimated it.
US delay in formalising a strategy in Syria has allowed for al-Nusra, a monstrous al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that targets US, Russian, ISIS and any other forces that threaten its sphere of influence to consolidate their hold in parts of Syria quite strongly. They have successfully recruited large numbers of demoralised elements from most of the major moderate rebel groups due to US inaction.
The numbers of moderate Syrian rebels have continued to decline and with the recent US decision, which I think is a late but prudent one, to cut the funding to many rebel groups. It is likely that more defections will happen, bringing the US strategy in Syria to a very narrow approach limited to air strikes only, that is no longer about winning the fight but to keep its stakes going in this region and the fight against ISIS.
For Putin, now an active player in shaping the Syrian future, a different more simple approach is afoot, as the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov asks: “Well, if it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist -- it’s a terrorist, right?”
Russia’s actions, while primarily in /support of Assad’s strategy in Syria, is according to reports from the media making great progress in decimating the capabilities of al-Nusra, the Syrian rebels and ISIS. So perhaps, despite US warnings to the contrary, maybe this is a good strategy in Syria to help bring about some notion of a pause in the growth of the influence of these terrorist groups. Simply because nothing else worked.
Unlike the US-UK and allied intervention in Syria, one which has no UN mandate or official Syrian plea for help, making it illegal, Russia didn’t barge in uninvited. In a reference to possible expansion of Russia’s actions in Syria to Iraqi territories, Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister taunted: “We are polite people, we don’t come if not invited.”
It remains to be seen how effective, consistent, and committed the Russians are in Syria. One would hope it doesn’t take this move in stabilising Syria lightly, as recent terrorism attempts in Moscow demonstrates the resolve of ISIS in harming Russia also. The world is watching what Russia is doing, and perhaps hopes are, it will succeed in becoming an alternative solution to the now tired, declining, and re-adjusting US strategy in Syria and the Middle East at large.
Having seized control of the agenda in Syria, Russia has successfully diverted attention away from problems such as Ukraine, strengthened its close ally Assad, gained stronger relations with Iraq and Iran, and ensured a strong approach to combating ISIS, which is being reluctantly welcomed by observers.
This was all enabled by the failure of the US strategy in Syria, and in my opinion, it is not an entirely bad outcome if the US doesn’t, in all its wisdom, either directly or indirectly fight the Russians on this. The goals are the same if you take away the US obsession with toppling Assad -- a decision for the people of Syria to make.