Russian President Vladimir Putin hit multiple birds with one stone in Syria. By directly intervening in the war-torn nation, Putin strengthened Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime against ISIS and the country’s numerous armed opposition groups. He also disabused Turkey and the United States of the notion that they could establish a “no-fly zone” or a “safe haven” to protect the rebels in northwest Syria.
Putin might even have his eyes on forcing Washington and its regional allies into a negotiated settlement to keep Assad in power. Overall, Putin has scored a propaganda win in showing the world that, unlike the United States, Russia takes care of its friends.
But even if Russia does accomplish some of its objectives in Syria, the Kremlin's intervention and the US decision to arm rebel groups directly will only exacerbate the country’s destructive civil war. The conflict has already gone through multiple phases of escalation and counter-escalation. The current situation is yet another "Groundhog Day"-like repetition of this overall pattern.
Syria’s civil war began in March 2011, when sporadic protests turned into mass demonstrations against the Assad regime. The regime tried to suppress the uprising with extreme brutality. By 2014, the civil war had turned into a four-way conflict fought between the Assad regime, the secular-nationalist Free Syrian Army and various Islamist anti-regime militants, Kurdish armed factions, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham, better known as ISIS. So far, an estimated 250,000 people have been killed in the conflict, while nearly 12 million Syrians have fled their homes, leading to one of the worst refugee crises in modern history.
The Russian intervention is unlikely to end the Syrian war. Yury Barmin, a Middle East expert at the Russian International Affairs Council in Moscow, explained that “the Russian intervention seeks to separate extremist forces from those who are willing to negotiate with Assad.”
But as Barmin told me, “it is questionable whether this strategy works.”
Much will depend on whether Moscow can convince the conflict’s various stakeholders, including the governments of the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, of the wisdom of a negotiated settlement.
Paul Saunders, a Russian affairs expert and executive director at the Center for the National Interest, is skeptical about Russia’s diplomatic persuasiveness, as well as Washington’s and its allies’ receptiveness to Moscow’s message. For Saunders, “It is not clear how effective or sustainable the Russian role [in Syria] will be.”
“Moscow is launching far fewer attacks [in Syria] than the US and its allies,” he pointed out, warning that “the Russian public is decidedly uninterested in bearing the human or financial costs of a real war in the Middle East.”
Saunders argues that the Russian move exposes how untenable the US’s overall position on the conflict in Syria has become. “Russia’s actions have highlighted the ineffectiveness of an approach by the US and others that simultaneously rejects a decisive role in combat and also rejects any dialogue with Assad,” he says.
Russia’s policies have been aided by a lack of unity among anti-Assad governments. The United States has significant differences with its nominal allies: While Washington is pursuing an “ISIS first” strategy and providing arms only to moderate Arab and Kurdish factions so that they can fight ISIS, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have armed all rebel groups (except ISIS) fighting the Assad regime, including jihadist organizations.
Complicating matters further, the Turks are becoming more vocal in their displeasure with US support for Syria’s anti-ISIS Kurdish, armed groups that are also allied with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an insurgent group which has been fighting Ankara for the past 31 years.
Even if Washington could iron out these disagreements, it will have to build more leverage with Syrian opposition groups if it wants to convince them to reach a negotiated settlement with the Assad regime with Russian and Iranian help.
According to Nicholas A. Heras, a Middle East researcher at the Center for a New American Security and an Associate Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, “only a negotiated political solution that results in Assad's departure and involves all of the key players in Syria can end the civil war.”
But to get to that point, Heras says, “the United States and its partners will need to reset the situation on the ground and create the conditions necessary for an agreement.” This will “require building leverage in the Syrian armed opposition, while raising the costs for both Russia and Iran.”
Raising the costs for the other side – by dispatching additional arms and funding along with better-trained fighters – has become a familiar theme in Syria. For much of 2011, 2012 and early 2013, the armed opposition put the Assad regime on the defensive. From spring 2013 onward, the regime regained some ground with the help of Iranian special forces and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah. In response, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar increased aid to jihadist rebels, which indirectly led to the rise of ISIS in 2014.
Today, trying to undermine Russia and Iran interests in Syria is more likely to lead the two countries to raise the costs for the United States and other powers that back anti-Assad groups. Both Russia and Iran could dedicated added weapons and troops to the fight to aid Assad, just as the United States and its allies have.
Unless there is a diplomatic breakthrough or significant shift on the ground in Syria, It seems that Syria will probably repeat many of the same events as the past four and a half years before the distant prospect of peace becomes a reality.
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