Successful strategy of Russia and geopolitical fiasco of the West
In the past not only that weeks, but already months, in the Western press began to write a lot about the geostrategic successes of Russia. Like, everything that the Kremlin does, with him, the Kremlin, passes brilliantly and consistently brought to life. On this festive background, the West itself looks unusually faded: analysts assign it the role of someone who, if not lost in geopolitics, has faded into the background. The frantic opponents of Russia have already begun to criticize the West.Parisian Francois Hisbur in the fresh material posted on the pages of the column "Opinion" in "New York Times" (translation source - Mixednews.ru), writes bluntly that "Russian policy is accompanied by success, but the calculations and actions of the West have not justified themselves." The publicist is referring to the Syrian question. By the way, Hisbour cannot be attributed to the fans of Bashar Assad. In his article, he refers to the Syrian president as a “dictator”, his manner of government as “regime”, and his methods as “repression”.
The author believes that thanks to the military, political and diplomatic support provided by Russia to Syria, this very “regime of the Syrian dictator” did not fall, but the “repressions” continued. The author calls the United Nations Security Council "paralyzed." This is where the criticism of the West begins. The West, according to a French publicist, was unable to shape events on the ground.
The opposition in Syria is fragmented militarily and politically. The tone in it is set by the "ferocious jihadist elements." European jihad warriors, now operating there, may return home armed and trained - and new terrorist attacks will take place in the West.
Noting the success of the Russian geopolitical strategy (this is a taboo topic in the West), Francois Hisbour quickly declares it “short-lived”.
"President Vladimir Putin has forced to reckon with his opinion, and now in the interests of Russia he will cooperate with the West and help create the conditions for completing the bloodshed in Syria."
Very strange premise and completely absurd conclusion. It seems that the winner must begin to cooperate with the loser, but it will not be bad for him.
Why can Russia be bad?
Hisbur thinks that Russia will have to “deal with extremely grave consequences.”
It is impossible to understand this, until you come across the following statement in the material:
"The Kremlin, interested in preserving its long-term investment, seemed to make sense to stay on the right side of those in power in Syria."
Everything becomes clear. In Syria, there is the right side, and there is the wrong one. Russia now supports the wrong. But when she begins to cooperate with the West, despite his geopolitical blunders, she will make the right decision. After all, the West is famous for its ability to distinguish the right from the wrong. Actually, the West has a monopoly on the difference between bad and good.
The Frenchman lists those included in the world history the rulers with whom Assad wanted him in one row: Tunisian leader Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, Libyan Muammar Gaddafi, Yemeni Ali Abdullah Saleh. Making a list, he notes that “in similar societies, the same reasons, as a rule, give the same consequences”.
The hint is clear: Russia was against Muammar, so we must be against Asad. And this is not a hint ...
“Russia has a significant — and perhaps overwhelming — degree driven by a desire to punish the Western powers for having abused, in her eyes, the powers given to them by the Security Council in order to overthrow Gaddafi.”
As a result, the West was created obstacles in the UN.
However, the author believes that Moscow wins little here. After all, the civil war in Syria means that Russia's interests in this country are losing their value. In Assad, in splitting Syria, he is holding himself not as the head of a functioning state, but as a field commander who is stronger than others. Presumably, the journalist concludes, Russia's ultimate interest is not to become a side victim of the spinning flywheel of jihadism.
All this French material, published in the American newspaper, consists of logically little connected fragments. But suddenly, in the very end of the article, the author’s head clears up - and he gives out a gem of elegant journalism:
"Now it is in the interests of the West to refrain from arming the jihadists and to support a political decision, preferably without Assad, but probably not without the ruling Baath Party and the bureaucracy."
David Goldman, author of “How civilization will die (and why Islam will die too),” published in 2011, the author of an essay on culture, religion and economics, junior researcher at the Middle East Forum, in a new article in Asia Times (translation source - Mixednews.ru) notes that Russia sticks sticks in the West, promising to supply the government of Bashar al-Assad with the C-300 anti-aircraft missile systems. This Goldman sees humiliation for the West.
“For the West, this is humiliating - to stumble over Russian technology changing the rules of the game almost a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall. An even more disgraceful fact is that the West has no countermeasures against the Russian system, and this is the result of wrong priorities in defense over the past dozen years. If the United States spent at least a portion of the resources that they had invested in state-building in Iraq and Afghanistan on anti-missile technologies, Russia would not have had enough trump cards in the negotiations from the start. However, what has been done is done, and now the next question is already relevant: what should the West do now? ”
Before giving advice, the author believes that it is necessary to give answers to urgent questions. The main issues are two. Is the game rational in Russia? Suppose so, but what then leads her behavior?
In order to correctly answer these purely American questions, which already contain, if not answers, then hints at them, the author designates those axioms on which the US policy throughout the world has been based for several decades.
For the most dull, he clarifies that Russia's intervention in the affairs of the Middle East is "unprincipled." Alas, however much the West dislikes the way in which the Russians conduct their business, it is not in the power of the West to change the “character of the Russian regime”. Therefore, in Russia there is also a “regime”.
He further writes that Russia has become friends with Hezbollah terrorists. This is proved by Jean-Aziz’s message from Al-Monitor, which claims that the April 28 meeting in Lebanon, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, with Hezbollah head Nasrallah marks a turning point in Russia's relations with this organization. So, Russia has built an alliance with a Lebanese terrorist organization.
But with Iran, Russia, something does not add up. At the moment, Iran is pursuing Russia in court for its refusal to supply the C-300 system - in the meantime, Russia claims that it is sending the same system to Syria.
"Russia's refusal to fulfill its obligations under the contract with Tehran is a signal that Putin’s regime will not grieve strongly if someone destroys Iran’s nuclear weapons. Russia is not interested in helping a fanatical regime deploy nuclear weapons on its southern flank. ”
How to explain Russia's support for the “Assad regime”? The journalist admits that Moscow "gets satisfaction from the paralysis of the West in the region and is trying to put the United States and its allies in an awkward position ..." True, this is "a secondary matter." Well, what else?
The Kremlin may well want to "demonstrate to the world that it is not abandoning its allies in the way the United States did to the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak." But this is also a minor issue.
The author stresses that the Russian Federation has a road for the Navy’s material supply point in Tartus, which expands the scope of the presence of the naval fleet Russia in the Eastern Mediterranean.
And, more importantly, Russia is afraid of Sunni jihadists who dominate among the insurgent opposition.
A publicist recalls that Russia 20 has waged a fierce war against jihadists in the North Caucasus for years. The Caucasus terrorism has spread to the United States at the Boston Marathon bombings, the author claims.
The number of the Russian population in Russia is decreasing, the journalist reminds, and by the middle of the century a Muslim majority may well form in the country. It is worth the chaos to cover the Muslim world on the southern border, and through the North Caucasus it will spread to Russia.
Further, David Goldman notes that during the Cold War, the United States supported jihadists in Afghanistan and other places to complicate the life of the Soviet empire. It was right, he writes, without doubting in the least, the publicist, "because the Soviet threat to American security outweighed all the inconveniences that the United States could incur at the hands of jihadists."
And now Russia is convinced, he notes, that America still intends to encourage jihad in order to destabilize its former adversary in the cold war.
So - what to do? The author poses this Russian question to the West. More precisely, before the United States.
Mr Goldman proposed a whole plan for resolving the Syrian crisis.
The first thing the great democratic America should support is the split of Syria. It should be split into a state with a Sunni majority and the Alawite "stump" in the north-western sector of the country. Kurds need to be given autonomy - just like in Iraq. There will be a protest by the Turkish authorities, but Erdogan will have to “lose”.
To divide Syria into pieces, the author believes, is the only way to stop the civil war, because otherwise, the complete victory of one of the parties will inevitably be followed by a massacre.
The most humane decision author sees "a divorce after the example of the former Yugoslavia."
Assad may rule the stump country. Alawites there will be safe from Sunni massacres, while the Russians will retain their filling base.
It is strange that the “Washington party” has not yet considered this option, the analyst notes.
The second point of the plan is as follows. The United States should use its influence on Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to cleanse the Sunni insurgents in Syria from “frostbitten jihadist elements”.
Following the implementation of the first two points, it is necessary to move on to the third - the attack of Iran. It is necessary “to destroy its nuclear weapons production facilities and the main bases of the Revolutionary Guards ...”
What happens next?
The Alawite army of Assad will be clogged and will cease to be a source of strategic threat, and the Sunni regime with the Kurdish autonomous zone will be susceptible to pressure from the West.
Further, the journalist accuses Obama of lack of common sense. The essence of the problem, he writes, is the Obama administration’s ideological rejection of the use of force against Iran. Putin’s position, according to the journalist, is more susceptible to America’s strategic demands than Obama’s “counterintuitive” position.
Obama, the author hints, is unable to draw a clear line between the zones of the world, where the US has unshakable interests, and the zones where bargaining is possible. The refusal to deploy antimissile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic was an “act of supreme idiocy” by the Obama administration. The demonstration of weakness in front of the Russians, writes a publicist, evokes disrespect in response.
"The United States must make it clear that there are cultural threads and a blood connection between the Poles and the Czechs on the one hand, and the American people on the other, and we will stand for them at all costs."
But Ukraine America to anything. America "has no strategic interests in Ukraine." The pro-Moscow Party of Regions, the author notes, firmly holds on to power. Next, Goldman writes:
"The opposition has become infected with a dangerous strain of anti-Semitism, as Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, told 30 in May."
He continues:
“What we have learned from the ten years of our clumsy movements is that Russia can take Ukraine if it wants to, and we don’t really need it at all. With the exception of Hungary, Ukraine has the lowest birth rate from all European countries. Its strategic importance will fall along with its demographics. ”
In addition to denoting the true geopolitical priorities, the White House administration “needs to do exactly what Ronald Reagan and his team formulated in 1981 year: convincing the Russians that America will surpass them in military technology.” The United States should “aggressively” fund basic research under the old DARPA scenarios (Agency for Advanced Defense Research). The publicist thinks that if "forcing Putin to believe that his residual advantage in anti-aircraft missile technologies has reached its" shelf life ", he will be much more flexible over the whole range of issues under discussion."
And the author immediately states that "the political situation is not conducive to this approach." And stubbornly states that "this does not change the fact that this is exactly what should be done."
Thus, paranoid analysts (who have long found their niche in the United States and in the West in general), while continuing to yelp at Russia, through “I don’t want” recognize that there is little that favors American approaches, but the Kremlin is doing business on the world stage with success. Publicists, one after another, believe that the West should continue to yelp - about the same way as it yelled during the Cold War (which the authors clearly recall with nostalgia), although less money and political opportunities remain for yelping. Even the UN Security Council was already in the hands of the Russians.
The only way Mr. Goldman saw was to try to trick the inflexible Putin by instilling in him the idea of US military-technological superiority.
Goldman forgets that Reagan was an actor, and the Soviet secretary general, Brezhnev, a deep, marasmic old man, and in 1981, such a performance was held on “bravo” and gathered a full house. Now is another time. Moreover, Obama promised to be flexible, and not Putin at all.
Observed and commented on Oleg Chuvakin
- especially for topwar.ru
- especially for topwar.ru
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