This past week, Russia announced that it would begin bombing Islamic State positions in Syria, bolstering an existing bombing campaign by the United States and its coalition allies that had been targeting ISIS for a year. Hours after the announcement, Russia, surprisingly, began bombing positions held by opposition forces in addition to those held by ISIS. Within hours of the opening shots that signaled Russia’s entrance into the conflict, it was clear what President Vladimir Putin’s goal was: defend Bashar al-Assad and his regime at any cost. “If it looks like a terrorist … it’s a terrorist, right?” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Now, there are many possible explanations and motives for Russia’s sudden entrance into the Syrian civil war. Most likely, Vladimir Putin reacted as he did in Ukraine; he saw the inevitable collapse of another one of his last allies, and acted to save his last source of influence in a region that is slowly slipping from his control. Putin’s foreign policy has been one of projecting power at all costs, never being able for a moment to appear weak, even if it ultimately leaves Russia in a weaker position, as the annexation of Crimea did. Putin relies on the support of his allies in Russia, especially those who don’t quite like seeing Russian power wane under the mandate of their patron.
Once one considers Putin’s past decisions and his reliance on support at home, this decision seems to be less about genius on the part of Putin, and more about the inevitability of certain policy decisions in a particular political climate, specifically the need for continual projection of Russian power. Instead of viewing Putin’s move as a calculated maneuver years in the making, it seems more fitting to see it within its proper context; Putin is trying to regain positions he has lost, as he tried to do after the ouster of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych with his seizure and annexation of Crimea. As Assad was continually pushed back to only 30 percent of Syria’s territory and the rest fell to opposition groups and ISIS, Putin knew he had to support one of his two major clients in the region. Dealing a blow to ISIS is also undoubtedly an important policy goal for Putin.
Ultimately, though, Putin’s decision to enter the conflict, whether it is rational or desperate or both, will accomplish nothing for Russia; Syria is a lost cause, and if the Russians succeed in bolstering Assad to the point where he can retake the country, or, more likely, to a point where his ouster seems impossible without outside military intervention, he will rule over a wasteland of ruins and dead bodies, and his Russian proprietors will be responsible for the death and displacement of millions more Syrians. Save for an unlikely agreement between the competing parties in Syria, and perhaps even with one, Assad will have to conquer at least a majority of Syrian territory in order to retain any sort of legitimacy, and that will entail a brutal, ugly, criminal campaign, in which the Russians will be complicit. Putin will lose any support he had among those in the Sunni camp, and he will push Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni states further into the American coalition.
Putin’s intervention in this conflict has made Russia, and, by extension, Assad, a necessary component of future “peace” negotiations. However, it seems unlikely to the author that the moderate opposition would ever sign an agreement with Assad, the Butcher of Syria, to say nothing of the Islamist Army of Conquest or ISIS. The Lebanese civil war took 15 years to end, and by the end of it, a fifth of Lebanese citizens had been displaced and over 100,000 had been killed. In four years of fighting, 11 million Syrians — half of the entire population — are currently displaced; seven million within the country, four million outside of it. Already between 200,000 and 300,000 Syrians have died as a result of the conflict.
With Russia’s support of Assad, Putin will extend Assad’s brutal reign to no foreseeable end, and it will result in more suffering in a conflict that has been defined by sectarian violence and intractability. With Russian intervention, and without it, too, the future for Syria looks bleak; a murderous regime supported and armed by Russia on the coast, the Islamic State to the east, the moderate opposition and people of Syria caught somewhere in between, and no end in sight.