By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Guess who just popped up in the Kremlin? Bashar al-Assad,
Syrian dictator and destroyer, now Vladimir Putin’s newest pet. After four
years holed up in Damascus, Assad was summoned to Russia to bend a knee to
Putin, show the world that today Middle East questions get settled not in
Washington but in Moscow, and officially bless the Russian-led four-nation
takeover of Syria now underway.
Does the bewildered Obama administration finally
understand what Russia is up to?
President Obama says Russia is doomed to fail in the
Syrian quagmire. But Russia is not trying to reconquer the country for Assad.
It’s consolidating a rump Syrian state on the roughly 20 percent of the country
he now controls, the Alawite areas stretching north and west from Damascus
through Latakia and encompassing the Russian naval base at Tartus.
It’s a partition. It will leave the Islamic State in
control in the interior north and east. Why is this doomed to failure?
Putin’s larger strategy is also obvious. He is not
reconstructing the old Soviet empire. That’s too large a task. But he is
rebuilding and reasserting Russia’s ability to project power beyond its
borders. Annexing Crimea restores to the motherland full control of the warm
water Black Sea port that Russia has coveted since Peter the Great. Shoring up
a rump Alawite state secures Russia’s naval and air bases in the eastern
Mediterranean. Add to that Russia’s launching advanced cruise missiles from
warships in the Caspian Sea to strike Syrian rebels 900 miles away and you have
the most impressive display of Russian military reach since the Cold War.
For Obama, of course, these things don’t matter. “In
today’s world,” he told the U.N. last month, “the measure of strength is no
longer defined by the control of territory.” That he clearly believes this
fantasy was demonstrated by his total abandonment of Iraq, forfeiting U.S.
bases from which we could have projected power in the region (most notably
preventing, through control of Iraqi airspace, the Iranian rearming and
reinforcement of Assad’s weakening regime).
While Obama counts on the arc of the moral universe
bending toward justice, Putin acts. As soon as the ink was dry on the Iran
nuclear deal, Iran’s Qasem Soleimani flew to Moscow (a sanctions violation that
we blithely ignored) to plan the multinational Syria campaign he is now
directing. His Shiite expeditionary force is comprised of Iranian Revolutionary
Guards, Iraqi Shiite militias and Lebanese Hezbollah fighting under the cover
of Russian airpower.
They are pounding non-Islamic State rebels, many equipped,
trained and allegedly supported by the U.S. and Obama’s vaunted 60-nation
coalition. What a comfort to be pulverized by 60 to 90 Russian airstrikes each
day but to know that Belgium is with you.
The immediate Russian objective is to retake Aleppo, the
eastern part of which is the rebels’ last remaining urban stronghold.
Russia is not fighting the Islamic State. On the
contrary. Its attacks on the anti-government, anti-Islamic State rebels have
allowed the Islamic State to expand, capturing rebel-held villages north of
Aleppo, even as the Shiite expeditionary force approaches from the south.
Apart from the wreckage to Obama’s dreams of a “reset”
with Russia, think of how these advances mock Obama’s dreams for Iran, namely
that the nuclear deal would moderate Iranian behavior.
What has happened since the signing of the deal in July?
Iran convicts an American journalist of espionage, contemptuously refusing to
offer even the most minimal humanitarian gesture. Iran brazenly tests a
nuclear-capable ballistic missile that our own U.N. ambassador said violates
Security Council resolutions. And now Iran’s most notorious Revolutionary Guard
commander takes control of a pan-Shiite army trying to decimate our remaining
allies in the Syrian civil war.
Obama’s response to all this? Nothing. He has washed his
hands of the region, still the center of world oil production and trade, and
still the world’s most volatile region, seething with virulent jihadism ready
for export. When you call something a quagmire you have told the world that
you’re out and staying out. Russia and Iran will have their way.
60 Minutes
asked Obama: Are you concerned about yielding leadership to Russia? Obama
responded dismissively: Propping up a weak ally is not leadership. I’m leading
the world on climate change.
Upon hearing that, anyone in any conflict anywhere who
has put his trust in the United States should start packing his bags for Germany.
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