EDITORIAL Russia or the United States: who should resolve the Syrian conflict?

Nov 13, 2015

Currently the Syrian conflict has been making the headlines with everything from the displaced refugees to political disagreements between world powers on how to handle the ongoing crisis.

One of the two major players in the current conflict is the United States, who has struggled to decide upon what the least terrible faction in Syria will receive its support. In 2014, the Obama administration publicly backed a small group of anti-Assad, anti-ISIS rebel forces by supplying small arms, air support, and "military advisors;" the US's reluctant support has proven largely ineffective. On the other hand, the Russian Federation headed by President Vladimir Putin, has been more aggressive in both its diplomatic interactions and military operations. Beginning this fall, Russia has already deployed more than 50 combat aircraft to Syria, along with over 4,000 troops--half of which are ground forces.

Formerly as the Soviet Union, Russia was closely allied with her southwestern neighbor the Arab country of Syria (previously under the control of President Hafez Assad). Because the Assad regime stands as one of Russia's longest and most dependable allies in the Middle East, the Russian stance has been supportive of the current Syrian President Bashar Assad. Russia insists President Assad is part of the solution, while the US charges he is the core problem and opts instead to support certain rebels. While Russia is interested in taking out terroristic extremists, the US goal is to instigate a democratic revolution by ousting the current leader. One has to wonder--especially considering the past failures of this strategy in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan--how this would help the Syrian nation and not completely crumble it.


President Bashar Assad (left) and President Vladimir Putin (right),
October 21, 2015

In his speech to the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly in late September 2015, Putin contended, "Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention rashly destroyed government institutions and the local way of life...The only way to solve this problem for good is to restore statehood where it has been destroyed."

Fiona Hill, the leading "Putinologist" at Brookings Institute, reported to Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times, "There shouldn't be so much mystification about what the Russians are doing. They've been very consistent and very direct. They've been asking: If not Assad, who? They want to see a strongman in place who can keep order."

While several theories have sprouted in the last couple months on Russia's involvement, one only has to look at a map to understand why Russia, a state re-emerging as a major player in international policy, is interested in resolving the Syrian conflict. Russia has been fighting Islamic extremists for decades, and unstable states on her southern border have been hotbeds for extremist activity. Propping up friendly regimes in the region is a proactive form of self-defense, and is more practical than trying to police the entire southern Russia border. For example, the Kazakhstan border with Russia alone extends longer than the distance from New York City to London by almost 1,000 miles. The US can hardly handle its own border with Mexico that stands at a whopping 1,954 miles in length. As well as losing over an estimated 2,000 citizens within the past year to Islamic terrorists groups, the problem has become a domestic one for Russia.

It should not come as a surprise that President Putin's goals for Syria are practical and even defensive, not merely a power play. If there is any country best suited for handling the Syrian conflict, it would seem to be Russia.