Why Russia Needs Syria
Amy Knight
NYR Daily, The New York Review of Books, October 8, 2015
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/10/08/why-russia-syria/
Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict has fundamentally changed the
dynamic of the four-and-a-half-year-old war there. With a bombing campaign
that now includes launching cruise missiles into Syria from Russian warships
in the Caspian Sea, the Kremlin is gambling that it can preserve the
weakened Assad regime. The move brings Russia into a costly and intractable
civil war, raises the threat of terrorism by Islamist groups in Russia, and
puts Russian forces in direct confrontation with the US-led coalition that
is arming moderate Syrian rebels and fighting ISIS.
So the question arises: Why is Russia doing this now? According to a
high-level source in the Kremlin, the decision to intervene in Syria was
urged on Putin this summer by three senior members of his team: Sergei
Ivanov, head of the Russian Presidential Administration, Minister of Defense
Sergei Shoigu and Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the FSB and now the
leader of the Russian Security Council. Assad’s regime was increasingly in
danger, facing not only ISIS, but al-Nusra, and holding, by some estimates,
less than 17 percent of Syria’s territory. Even members of Syria’s Alawite
minority, to which the Assad family belongs and which are a crucial base of
his support, had begun fleeing the country. With the conflict in Ukraine
still unresolved and Putin increasingly isolated by the West, intervention
in the Middle East was intended to reassert Russia as a major world power
and act as a counterforce to Western support for the Ukrainian government in
Ukraine.
It was no surprise that the principal targets of Russian bombing raids in
Syria have not been ISIS, but rather other rebel groups that the US and its
Western allies support. (Though Russian cruise missiles have now also been
directed at ISIS targets.) Putin, in his appearance at the UN in late
September, stated unequivocally that Russia was committed to keeping the
Assad regime in power, and from the Kremlin’s point of view, this makes
sense. Russia fears the total collapse of the Syrian state, which would end
a decades-old alliance and threaten its strategic position in the Middle
East. And it views Islamic insurgents as not only a threat to Assad, but
also a potential threat at home.
It is important to note that Russia has a long history with Syria, dating
back to the immediate post-World War II period. The Soviet Union signed a
secret pact with Syria in 1946, promising political and military support to
Syria’s national army, followed four years later by a non-aggression treaty.
The 1955 Baghdad Pact, an agreement among Britain, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and
Pakistan to prevent Soviet expansion in the Middle East, led to further
rapprochement between Syria and the Soviet Union. The alliance was
strengthened during the Suez crisis of 1956, which brought the two countries
together in backing Egypt.
Syria, at this time, had the largest Communist Party in the Arab world and
significant oil and gas reserves, which offered the Soviets an opportunity
to provide technological support to its energy ventures. The geo-strategic
position of Syria became even more important to the Soviets in 1971, when
they leased a naval base at Tartus, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. Tartus
hosts the fleet of ten Russian warships and auxiliary vessels in the area.
Given that Russia’s Mediterranean fleet is so distant from home, this base
is crucial to Russian military interests.
This is not to mention the income Russia has received from selling arms to
Syria. Russia has been Syria’s major arms supplier for decades, accounting
now for over three quarters of Syria’s arms purchases, including in August,
a package of YAK-130 attack jets and MiG-29 fighters. Since Damascus is now
essentially bankrupt, Moscow has had to write off much of the debt from the
Soviet era, but that has not stopped the continuation of arms contracts with
Russian firms.
All of which has provided a strong incentive for Russia to prevent the
collapse of the Assad regime. Kremlin decision-making is always an enigma,
but the comments of Dmitry Rogozin, deputy Russian prime minister in charge
of the defense industry and one of the architects of the Crimean invasion,
who is on the EU sanctions list, suggest that Putin’s close advisors are in
unison on Syria. Rogozin directs an economic cooperation committee between
Russia and Syria established this year by Putin. After Russia began bombing
in Syria last week, he posted this on Facebook: "Our guys in Syria are
suppressing a war against Russia on distant plains. Anyone who does not
understand is a fool or an enemy." This is as clear a statement yet of
Russian motivations, however irrational and short-sighted they may seem to
the West.
A more important question is how Russia’s new military involvement in Syria
will play out with the Russian population. The chairman of the Russian State
Duma Committee for International Affairs, Alexei Pushkov, has said that
Russia’s air campaign in Syria would continue for two to three months, but
he could not exclude the possibility that it would last longer. Meanwhile,
Russia has said it plans to send ground troops, claiming of course that they
are "volunteers," as it has done with Ukraine. As yet, there is no
confirmation of any major deployment in Syria. But if the Kremlin does carry
out such a plan, what happens when body bags start to arrive home? 75
percent of over 50,000 responders to a recent poll by the independent radio
station Ekho Moskvy were against Russia deploying ground forces in Syria.
This audience represents a select group that reaches beyond state-controlled
television for its news, but a poll by the authoritative Levada Center in
Moscow showed that 69 percent of respondents opposed Russia introducing
troops to support Assad. Russian journalist Gamid Gamidov, predicting that
Russia will be mired in the Syrian conflict for a long time, observed that
"a war on foreign territory, at a time of deepening financial crisis, means
increasing the likelihood of more dissatisfaction...on the side of [Russia’s]
population. The idea that ‘we have nothing to eat here and they are throwing
all the money on a war in Syria’ will gain momentum and discontent with the
[Kremlin] regime could bring it to an end."
Putin has justified the Russian incursion in Syria as a fight against global
terrorism, warning that Russian militants fighting against Assad could come
back home and carry out terrorist attacks. But it seems far more likely that
Russia’s own involvement in Syria will encourage, rather than contain, such
threats. Russia has a population of over 15 million Muslims, most of them
Sunnis. And there are millions more in the neighboring republics of the
former Soviet Union. While Russia has a history of militant and terrorist
attacks, until now, there have not been incidents tied to ISIS or the war in
Syria. However, the Kremlin’s attacks on Sunni strongholds in Syria could
well produce a backlash and radicalize these Muslim populations,
particularly in the North Caucasus.
Putin may hope that Russians will come to view the Kremlin’s Syrian venture
as they have its involvement in Ukraine. In contrast to Syria, the Ukraine
intervention continues to have broad public support. A Levada poll in June
revealed that a majority of Russians backed the annexation of Crimea and saw
the war in Ukraine as a result of the US and its allies’ efforts to
undermine Russia. According to Russian sociologist Denis Volkov, "Russian
television’s portrayal of Ukraine as a failed and disintegrating state
overrun by nationalist forces has mostly had the desired effect."
While the Western press has been preoccupied with Syria, Russia has
continued its activities in Ukraine. In early October, Putin had talks with
the leaders of Ukraine, France, and Germany in Paris, the first meeting
since a peace deal was signed in Minsk in February. Russia agreed to
persuade Ukrainian separatists in Eastern Ukraine to postpone their plans to
hold their own elections this month, which Kiev and its Western allies have
opposed. But a disturbing report by the OSCE (Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe) last week about a new and highly destructive Russian
weapons system--the so-called Buratino multiple rocket launcher--appearing
in Eastern Ukraine raises doubt about Russian intentions.
A larger question, however, is whether the serious decline in the Russian
economy could erode support for these military ventures. The plunge in oil
prices, together with Western economic sanctions, have caused real incomes
in Russia to fall significantly, with inflation reaching more than 15
percent. According to the independent Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta,
Russian expenditures on the Syrian military effort are so far within the
bounds of the country’s budget, and much less than the estimated $9.9
million a day that the US and its allies are spending there in bombing
attacks. The Russians are using airplanes and ammunition that have long been
paid for. But the price will rise significantly if Russia introduces ground
troops into Syria or its bases are attacked by militants. According to
Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, "Serious spending will begin
when losses have to be replenished--damaged ammunition, motor vehicles and
maybe aircraft." All this will add to Russia’s budget deficit, which is
projected to be 3 percent this year and next. It may be only a matter of
time until Russians begin questioning Russia’s involvement in Ukraine along
with Syria.
The Kremlin’s involvement in Ukraine and Syria seems to be motivated partly
by its aversion to democratic regimes, in particular the so-called color
revolutions that have sprung up in the Middle East and in Georgia and
Ukraine. The Arab Spring came only half-heartedly to Syria, with the
democratic uprising soon overtaken by armed conflict. But this does not rule
out, from the Kremlin’s point of view, the possibility of insurgent groups
unfriendly to Russia eventually taking over the country. The breakup of
Syria, or the replacement of the Assad regime by a government more aligned
with the Sunni Arab world, would leave Russia without a client state in the
Middle East.
As for Ukraine, it is dangerously close both to Russia and to countries
belonging to the European Union and NATO. At the UN in late September, Putin
mentioned how difficult it has been for Russia, after the fall of the Soviet
Union, to contend with the expansion of NATO to countries along its border.
This may explain why Russia has been increasingly aggressive in violating
NATO airspace in the Baltics, just as it has recently violated the airspace
of Turkey, a NATO member.
In both the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts, the Kremlin is trying to provide
a counterweight to NATO. Yet while Russia has managed thus far to hold its
own in Ukraine, the Syrian gambit is far riskier. In the words of the
prominent Russian journalist Yulia Latynina: "The Islamists, including ISIL,
are operating in this war with much longer experience and more successfully
than the Kremlin...The scandals over Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib will seem
like kindergarten in comparison to what in a month the western media will be
saying about Russian involvement in Syria."
