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| Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu |
Unexpected but not surprising.
This is indeed how I would describe the decision by Putin to withdraw his
troops from Syria at this stage. The timing of the decision was surprising to
most, including myself, but its nature is not really surprising. It has been
never Vladimir Putin’s intention to help Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad
regain control of all territory lost to rebel groups, or even to the Islamic
State. His desire, from the very beginning, was to secure the Russian base on
the Mediterranean and to expand it. He has, indeed, accomplished that. The
agreement signed with Assad gives Russia the right to come and go as it
pleases, to post as many troops as Putin wants, and to conduct whatever
operations Russia sees fit, with little regard to what the Syrian government
thinks. Russia will expect any future plan on political transition in Syria to
honor this agreement.
The timing of the decision,
however, might reflect certain fiscal constraints with which Putin has to deal
at this stage. After all, he just had to slash his defense budget for 2016 by 5
percent, marking the first time he has done so since coming to power. The
timing also seems designed to send a message to Assad that his political fate
is not of paramount importance to the Russians, and that he’d better focus more
on his personal survival and that of his family members and coterie of close
advisers, rather than his political survival. Whatever vacuum is created on the
ground as a result of this sudden withdrawal might lead to quick reversal of
some of the territorial gains recently made with Russian help, but it is
unlikely to pose an immediate existential threat to the regime, as Iran remains
bound to safeguard the regime. But Iran, too, seems to have lost interest in
Assad’s political survival at this stage.
You know the expression about
rats and sinking ships.
All of this makes for rather
interesting talks in Geneva, where the Syrian opposition now has a
psychological advantage, but one which it will need to use carefully. For while
neither Russia or Iran seems to be interested in the political survival of
Assad per se, they both remain quite committed to maintaining certain vestiges
of the regime which can later help them exert control over future political
processes in the country to ensure the protection of their long-term interests
there. As such, a federal arrangement, and an electoral process in which Assad
can participate at the sure cost of losing, seem to be the likely ingredients
in any proposed transitional arrangements.
The opposition is likely to
accept such an arrangement, albeit under protest. It’s Mr. Assad himself who is
bound to prove uncooperative, thus ensuring that the only way out for him is
through assassination or military defeat.
Meanwhile, and despite the
dismissive and arrogant stance towards the Syrian conflict assumed by President
Barack Obama during his legacy-sealing interview in The Atlantic—in which he
admitted to being quite “proud” of the moment in which he walked away from his
red line and left the Syrian people to their fate—he seems to be quite serious
about pursuing a political solution to the Syrian Tragedy before he leaves
office. He seems to want to do this, without making any public declarations and
promises in this regard which might cause public embarrassment or pressures.
Obama cannot be blind to the fact that a great many members of the
international community blame him to one degree or another for what’s happening
in Syria. Mr. Obama must know that when it comes to legacies, it is not what he
thinks and what he is proud of that matter: it’s what others think and are
proud of that matters. When it comes to foreign policy, the fate of Syria and
the fate of Mr. Obama’s legacy seem to be intimately intertwined, whether he
likes it or not.
The result is a window of
political opportunities—a window in which Putin has made clear to Assad that
with Putin’s objectives met, Assad’s don’t matter, and in which Obama wants
low-cost progress. The opposition forces in Geneva have no friends. But they face
today a better constellation of cynics than they would have faced a few weeks
ago.
