Indian Defence Review

(Map courtesy: www.scmp.com/)

For the past so many years, the NATO had been making all decisions about war and peace unilaterally but now the situation appears to have changed. The most striking part of the Russian campaign is the sophistication, speed and precision, something that has irked the West. Today, the US government, having been taken by complete surprise, is talking of coordinating with its allies in the region over what the next step might be. While the West is contemplating a response, the Russians are moving forward with their plans of vapourising Syrian rebels and ensuring the continuation of the AL-Assad control over the whole of Syria.

The Russian intervention in Syria on September 30, 2015, is a milestone that marks a change in the chapter of international relations. Russia’s Ministry of Defence confirmed that missile ships Dagestan, Grad Sviyazhsk, Uglich, and Veliky Ustyug had launched a series of missiles from the Caspian Sea against the ISIS infrastructure in Syria last week. “The firing was conducted by high-precision ship missile systems Kalibr NK, the cruise missiles of which engaged all the assigned targets successfully and with high accuracy,” said the Ministry. Dagestan served as the flagship of the strike group.

Russia proved that she, too, can use cruise missiles to assist in her ongoing military operations thus confirming that she has achieved the battlefield-tested experience to practice what had hitherto been the exclusive strategic domain of the United States. This puts Russia in the same elite league as the US when it comes to this capability prompting the Pentagon to nervously wonder whether the Kremlin has in fact finally reached a certain level of parity when it comes to conventional force projection.

Vladimir Putin has finally challenged the uni-polar world order as it appears. The jostling between the Superpowers through their proxies has been part of the Arab landscape for more than seventy years now. Since the end of WW II, the Middle East has always been a battleground for supremacy between the Americans and the Russians.

After a gap of 25 years post the disintegration of the Soviet Union, political developments have come full circle. The Russians began flexing their muscles by bombing targets in Syria which has brought them back on the world stage. Despite Russia’s claims of only bombing ISIS strongholds, the West has alleged that they were actually targeting opposition groups which are fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime; groups that are funded and supported by the Western powers and their Arab allies.

The war in Syria has been raging since 2011 and has been the centre of global attention due to the strife created by the refugee crisis being faced by many European countries. This war has resulted in a humanitarian crisis of four million refugees and its tragic consequences are now being symbolised by images of the Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi, whose body washed up on the shores of Turkey in early September after his family attempted to make their way to Europe.

However, the roots of the Syrian civil war go back years before fighting began in 2011. Since it broke out, it has gone through several dramatic changes, each of which has made the geopolitics around the conflict frightening. While the world powers sat and mulled over it and calculated their moves, the civilian population in Syria has suffered the most. As soon as the Russians launched the first strike in Syria, the Americans mistook it as a business as usual. But the speed and the scale at which Putin moved has shaken up the Americans and the NATO. Secretary of State John Kerry has called for military coordination that would keep the US coalition flying and in the game. Business, therefore, is definitely not as usual.

America is desperately trying to regain control of the political initiative. Initially, the parameter set for Assad was his complete removal. Amidst all the rhetoric and skirmishing, the US has carefully re-positioned its political agenda. During his Europe tour, John Kerry modified the initial objections and now he says, Assad might remain in office for a transitional phase. The clarity on the duration of this transitional phase was not defined.

To clearly understand the Russian move, we need to rewind the events and track them from 2011 onwards. In August 2011, AQI leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s top deputy, Abu Mohammad al-Joulani was sent to Syria to set up a new branch of the extremist organisation. Joulani raised Jabhat al-Nusra. Years later, this AQ franchise split in two after AQI changed its name to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and asserted total control over Nusra. Some fighters pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda’s central leadership, while others defected to the ISIS.

The world was taken by complete surprise, more so the West, by the power and terror demonstrated by the ISIS. This brought about the fact that the ISIS had operatives in Iraq as early as August 2011. The lightening victories illustrate how quickly it recognised that Syria was an opportunity and just how deep its roots in the country go.

On the other side, Assad’s crackdown worsened and international condemnation grew louder. In October, the UN Security Council considered a draft resolution condemning Assad’s crimes – neither intervening nor calling for a referral to the International Criminal Court, just condemning. Russia and China vetoed it. When a second draft resolution was proposed in February 2012, they vetoed that one too. This was mainly a Russian initiative and the general Western perception was that Beijing toed the line out of solidarity with Moscow rather than commitment to Damascus.

However, this was part of Russia’s long-running policy of providing Assad diplomatic cover from the world’s outrage, no matter what Assad did. Moscow had been backing Assad in his war essentially since protests began. In 2011 alone, Russia sold nearly $1 billion in arms to the regime.

Ties between the two countries go all the way back to the Cold War. According to one scholar, the Soviets have “essentially built” the modern Syrian military in the 1960s. Continued support for the Assad government yielded the USSR its most reliable ally and proxy in the Middle East.

Today, Syria remains one of Russia’s few reliable allies outside of the former Soviet republics, a vestige of Moscow’s former superpower status and a final military toehold in the Middle East. Russia maintains a valuable naval base today at Tartus on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, and has sold a number of surplus weapons to Assad. Between 2006 and 2010, 48 per cent of Syrian arms imports came from Russia. Hence Russia’s defence of its ally.

But the military intervention by Russia to protect Assad shows there’s far more at stake than is visible. To understand this, one must understand the lessons learnt by Russian President Vladimir Putin from another Arab Spring uprising that manifested into a war – Libya.

In March 2011, Syria was calm and Russia had Putin, as Prime Minister who was all powerful. Libya’s uprising looked to be on the verge of terrible violence, and Western countries sought a UN Security Council resolution authorising the NATO to intervene against government forces. Though Russia typically opposes such interventions, they abstained on the resolution, allowing it to go through. Russia and particularly Putin then watched with mounting horror as the intervention became a war to topple Qaddafi.

For Putin, what happened in Libya was the sum of many of his greatest fears – popular uprisings, collapsing authoritarian regimes, Western interventions and extremism and all such forces that he fears, probably in another context, could perhaps one day come to Moscow.

When protests spread to Syria, an actual Russian ally, Putin was determined not to allow a repeat of the events in Libya. He leveraged Russia’s military and diplomatic might to aid Assad in his war against his own people, including a few months after the Libya intervention, by vetoing the UN Security Council resolution to condemn Assad. And Russia stayed right alongside Assad every step of the way.

Some observers feel that Putin has probably erred by exercising the military option; for them, he would have no other option but to seek a US ladder to get down the tree to recover from this strategic blunder. But the fact of matter is that Putin is well aware of the differences between traditional the Sunni Islam of Syria and Iraq. It is at complete odds with the Wahhabism of the ISIS practiced in peninsular Arabia. Therefore, it is unlikely that the Sunnis of the Levant would turn against the Russians.

There is no doubt that the Russians will leave no stone unturned in targeting the Jihadist forces. They could be the ISIS or the groups supported by the West who are referred to as “liberal jihadists”. The term liberal Jihadist is itself an oxymoron; often coined to serve vested interests. This has been seen in context of Pakistan and Afghanistan in form of good and bad Taliban (terrorists).

The Russians seem to have done their homework well. They exploited the Hizbollah intelligence network alongside the Syrian and the Iranian network in preparing an intelligence mosaic. They would target the terrorists infrastructure followed by a ground offensive by the Syrian army supported by the Russian air and ground assets. The advantage to the Syrian army would be the benefit of all-terrain, all-weather air support with real time imagery and surveillance overlay. And the Russians will not be involved in ground combat but would assist in securing strategic areas. Basically, the Russians initiated the work for a ground sweep by Syrian army, something the West has realised.

For the past so many years, the NATO had been making all decisions about war and peace unilaterally but now the situation appears to have changed. The most striking part of the Russian campaign is the sophistication, speed and precision, something that has irked the West. Today, the US government, having been taken by complete surprise, is talking of coordinating with its allies in the region over what the next step might be. While the West is contemplating a response, the Russians are moving forward with their plans of vapourising Syrian rebels and ensuring the continuation of the AL-Assad control over the whole of Syria.

Russia’s geopolitical calculations were already being predicted by strategists across that they will mainly be carried out through Syria and Iran. Russia’s military venture in Syria is the manifestation of this and she has justified her actions in getting rid of the ISIS thus providing it welcome global legitimacy as the only force in the world that will rid the Middle East of this sadistic menace. But the real motive is to maintain a stronghold in the Middle East through Al-Assad in power. Since the developments post Spring uprising, this region has been a free run for the US and its allies. Russia’s geo-political strategy is further strengthened through its friends in Iran. This assumes significance, especially since the nuclear deal has been reached with powers in the West and the lifting of economic sanctions is a foregone conclusion.

In short, Russia is back. Putin understands that it is now or never for Russia in reasserting itself on the global stage through the Middle East. His goal – to secure political influence backed by a strong military presence and it will be difficult for leaders in Washington to minimise the role Russia is fast assuming in the region.

Consider the military hardware Russia has brought to Syria; Yakhont, a 6.7 metre-long missile with a range of 290 kilometres and carrying a high-explosive or armour-piercing warhead, and 34 warplanes that match or exceed the performance of our F-22s and F-18s. And why does Russia need all these sophisticated weapons to target ISIS, which, apart from whatever else, has no warplanes? The answer lies in Putin’s long-term strategic and geo-political vision.

As per the former International Security Analyst in Washington, Mr David Oualaalu, Russia needs to get rid of rebels trained by the United States thus clearing the way for the AL-Assad regime to reclaim lost territories and allow Russia to work out a deal or even a possible truce with ISIS. Putin fully understands the impact of such moves.

As per him, Russia embarked on a similar tactic at the dawn of World War II. It would be worthwhile to recall the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact named after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop? The non-aggression treaty allowed Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany to divide Poland. David Oualaalusees Putin has embarked on a similar strategy given that it will benefit both parties (Russia and ISIS) to stay clear of each other.

These recent developments confirm a major shift in the balance of power in the Middle East. Russia appears to be dictating the pace of events raising the question of whether Syria is becoming a proxy war between the United States and Russia. At least Putin gets the credit for having a strategy in the first place; whether it is the right one is the subject of another discussion. For now, Washington must admit its inability to influence events on the ground as Russia takes the lead.

The Washington foreign policy establishment is already in a huddle as concerned voices question themselves as to how Russia has outsmarted the United States; what is beyond doubt is that they have been outsmarted. Russia’s assertive foreign policy in the region suggests the inevitable decline of the United States. This shift in power in the Middle East is a result of ambiguous and a reluctant US foreign policy. In the times that lie ahead, a New World Order in the Middle East, in which the United States has far less influence will, in all likelihood, be the scenario.

Thus Russia’s assertive foreign policy in the Middle East has already convinced key players in the region to reconsider their priorities. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq are cases in point. The world now witnesses what an unpredictable, impulsive Russia can do in a world already marked by instability, political chaos, shifting priorities and titanic geopolitical shifts.

Click to buy

The buzz in the strategic community is far greater now that this Russian initiative could mark the coming into existence of something more serious. These fears stem out of a probability of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as a punitive military alliance and this organisation could have its allies in the Middle East as Syria, Iraq, Iran and the Hezbollah.

Will the world see the superpower rivalry divide the Middle East into two? The Russian Chinese hold over the Shia Corridor having Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah to their side. And the Arabian Peninsula dominated by the Americans. If not literally so, there is a high probability of Iran and Saudi Arabia working as the points men to the superpowers in this new geo-political struggle for dominance.