Rajan Menon
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has killed some 80,000 of his citizens and driven another 1.7 million into
neighboring countries. Unsurprisingly, he has few foreign friends these
days. But two have played a pivotal part in his survival: Iran and
Russia.
Iran
is bound to Assad by religious and strategic ties. The Alawites, the
minority Muslim sect that dominates Assad’s regime, are an offshoot of
Shi’a Islam, Iran’s state religion. Syria has a Sunni majority, but Iran
sees an Alawite-run Syria as a counterbalance to the Sunni Persian Gulf
monarchies. Assad’s Syria is also Iran’s conduit for supplying
Hezbollah, the Shiite political-party-cum-paramilitary organization that
is powerhouse in Lebanese politics. Hezbollah, Iran’s ally and Israel’s
enemy, is now fighting alongside Assad’s forces.
The
role of Russia, Assad’s second savior, can’t be explained by religious
or ideological kinship. Yet Russian backing has been essential to
Assad’s survival. (Though the support he retains among Syria’s other
non-Sunni minorities, fearful about their future should the radical
Sunni Islamists in the anti-Assad insurgency prevail, is sometimes
obscured in press reports.) Moscow (along with China) has nixed Security
Council resolution aimed at condemning Assad or imposing sanctions on
his regime.
Russia
has insisted that the Gulf monarchies and other states aiding the
anti-Assad insurgents are intervening in a civil war in violation of
Syria’s sovereign rights. This may be a minority opinion, but Moscow has
made the case consistently and forcefully, insisting that the only hope
for peace in Syria is a political settlement.
So
long as the United States believed that Assad was doomed and would soon
fall, it didn’t pay much heed to the Russian line. But now, the Obama
administration, having witnessed Assad’s staying power and the divisions
within the Syrian opposition, is working with Russia to convene a peace
conference later this summer. The goal is to achieve a negotiated
settlement between Assad and his enemies.
Even
if this conclave gathers, it’s unlikely to produce a deal that ends the
carnage in Syria. But what’s significant is that the Russian position,
once marginalized, has gained ground.
That’s not all. Russia has armed Assad. And recent reports indicate that Russian MiG-29 fighter jets and S-300 air defense missiles may
be headed to Syria. This is a big step by Moscow. Both armaments will
make it more hazardous for NATO, assuming it acts without U.N.
authorization, to impose a no-flight zone over Syria. Israel, which has
already struck Syria to stem the flow of Iranian arms to Hezbollah, will
also have to reckon with a new reality.
The Russians haven’t yet delivered the S-300s, or more MiG-29s to add to the 40-64 Syria already has.
Still, Vladimir Putin has been unmoved by Israeli, American and
European efforts to persuade him not to send the S-300s, which Syria has
never had. Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon says it will “know what to
do” if the missiles arrive. Russia has warned that it won’t tolerate
the loss of Russian lives resulting from efforts to stop its arms
deliveries to Syria. There’s a crisis in the making.
So
why is Russia bent on backing back a blood-soaked, isolated regime? The
usual explanations are that Syria buys lots of Russian arms and that
the Syrian port of Tartus is an important “base” for Russia’s
Mediterranean Fleet.
Both theories are simplistic.
Yes, Russia does sell lot of arms – $15 billion worth in 2012. But Syria hasn’t been among its big customers;
China, India, Algeria and Vietnam have. Indeed, Moscow had to
reschedule the debt Syria amassed because of arms purchases extending
back to the Soviet years.
Current
Russian arms deliveries to Assad are hardly massive and are likely
bankrolled by Iran or Russian credit. Moreover, because Syria will be an
economic ruin no matter which side wins the war, it won’t be signing
huge arms deals with Russia any time soon — indeed none at all if
Assad’s opponents prevail.
Tartus
does provide the small contingent of vessels constituting Russia
Mediterranean “fleet” facilities for resupplying, conducting repairs and
showing the flag. Well, maybe some surveillance, too, but that’s about
it. Tartus is scarcely comparable to the naval bases America has in,
say, Bahrain or Japan. Besides, the Russian Navy is a shell of its
Soviet counterpart.
Is Tartus part of the equation for Russia? Yes. Is it a key element? No.
So what does explain Russian’s tenacity in Syria?
So what does explain Russian’s tenacity in Syria?
For
openers, Russia has never liked American-led humanitarian interventions
— not just under Putin, but also under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin,
whom American leaders embraced as a fellow democrat and reformer. Recall
Yeltsin’s angry reactions to NATO’s airstrikes in the former
Yugoslavia.
Moscow
has consistently condemned such missions as a cover for America’s bid
to use its unrivaled power to reshape the world through a selective
morality that overlooks its allies’ and friends’ misdeeds, as well as
its own.
Russia
(and China) insists that humanitarian interventions should rightly be
authorized by the U.N. Security Council (where Russia wields a veto).
But the U.N.-sanctioned, NATO-led war against Mu’ammar Qaddafi’s Libya
demonstrated to Russia that even such operations could prove beyond its
control.
Moscow’s
take on the Libya war is that a Security Council resolution crafted to
protect civilians ended up enabling regime change, which was never the
original intent. Russia is determined that Syria not be Libya redux.
Two other considerations shape Russian conduct in Syria.
One
is the quest for prestige. Russia has lost the clout and standing the
Soviet Union had in world politics. The nationalist in Vladimir Putin
wants to re-establish his country’s status as a great power. Putin is
hardly alone in Russia when it comes to such nationalist nostalgia. The
Syrian war is an opportunity to show that Russia does matter and must be
taken seriously and accorded respect.
Another
motive that moves Moscow’s Syria policy is preventing the rise of a
radical Islamist regime, which is what the Russia leadership fears will
happen if Assad falls.
Averting
such an outcome in Syria matters to Russia, which faces a long-running,
full-scale Islamist insurgency in its predominantly Muslim North
Caucasus republics (one of which is Dagestan, made infamous by the
Boston Marathon bombings) that the Russian Empire annexed in the latter
half of the 19th century.
Now there are signs of militant Islam in a far more significant Russian republic: Tatarstan.
Conquered by the Russian Tsars in the 16th century, Tatarstan lies some
500 miles east of Moscow in the Volga River region, has a slight Muslim
majority, and about 4 million inhabitants.
There’s an even larger context. Russia has more Muslims (about
16 million) than any other European country, and their proportion in
the Russian population is projected to rise from just below 12 percent
now to 14.3 percent in 2030. Radical Islam has hardly made major inroads
among Russia’s Muslims, but that doesn’t mean that demography doesn’t
influence Russian calculations in Syria.
Weave
all these strands together and here’s what’s apparent: Russia is deep
into the deadly game underway in Syria. Don’t expect Moscow to fold its
cards and leave the table.
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