The Syrian War and Russia’s Weltpolitik

The military interventions led by the United States and its allies in Iraq (2008), Libya (2011), and Syria (indirectly since 2011), despite their promised purposes, produced failed states and nurseries of jihadism. This dismantled the moral legitimacy of the unipolar world. Bitter lessons procured from the Libyan crisis made Russia and China veto any resolution authorizing the West’s and Gulf States’ possible military intervention in Syria at the UN Security Council. In 2012-2014, Russia’s police and security organs intentionally allowed domestic Islamists to emigrate to Syria to become jihadist fighters for the sake of domestic security on the eve of the Sochi Olympic Games. Fearing their return to Russia and the former Soviet territories after the expected seizure of Damascus by the radical Islamists, President Vladimir Putin decided (perhaps in early August 2015) to conduct air strikes on their military facilities in Syria. The essay critically examines widespread interpretations attributing Russia’s participation in the Syrian War to Putin’s domestic populism, Russian leaders’ desire to protect the Bashar Assad regime, and their attempts to overcome Russia’s diplomatic isolation after its annexation of Crimea. The main purpose of Russia’s military intervention was to change the decision making procedure of the unipolar world. Russia’s Middle East policy was benefited from its developed Middle Eastern studies inherited from the Soviet Union, whereas in the United States “Arabists” have traditionally been alienated from policy-making vis-à-vis the Near East and North Africa. Based on area specialists’ expertise, Russian policy-makers do not primordialize confessional confrontations in the Middle East, which facilitated Russia’s brokering roles between conflicting local parties. Michael Kofman calls Russia’s decision-makings on the Syrian and Middle Eastern problems a lean strategy, which, in my view, well echoed the “hedging diplomacy” pursued by Middle Eastern countries. The collaboration between Russia and the US since the beginning of Russia’s military intervention in Syria in September 2015 could not continue due to US domestic politics in 2016. Instead, the radical Islamists’ evacuation from Aleppo to Idlib was implemented by the collaboration of Russia, Turkey, and Iran. In 2017, this tri-polar collaboration developed into the Astana Process managing de-escalation zones in Idlib, East Ghouta, and North Homs, while the collaboration of the US, Russia, and Jordan in Southern Syria generated the Amman Process to control the South de-escalation zone. In 2018, three de-escalation zones, except for that of Idlib, practically functioned as mechanisms to allow radical Islamists to evacuate from there to Idlib, as a result of which these territories returned to government control. The Russian MFA is skeptical of the Astana Process and is concerned about the practical shelving of Syria’s political transition, determined by the UN Security Council Resolution No. 2254 (December 2015). For the MFA, a “multi-central dualism” privileging the participants in the Yalta-Potsdam Declarations, not just a multipolar world, should follow the declining unipolar world. Thus, dual diplomacies between the Russian MFA and military emerged, which has barely been coordinated by the hyper centralizing presidential authorities