Is Putin the New King of the Middle East?
"Russia Assumes Mantle of Supreme Power Broker in the Middle East,"
proclaimed
Britain’s Telegraph. The article began:
"Russia’s status as the undisputed power-broker in the Middle East
was cemented as Vladimir Putin continued a triumphant tour of capitals traditionally
allied to the US."
"Donald Trump Has Handed Putin the Middle East on a Plate" was the
title of a
Telegraph column. "Putin Seizes on Trump’s Syria Retreat to
Cement Middle East Role," said
the Financial Times.
The U.S. press parroted the British: Putin is now the new master of the Mideast.
And woe is us.
Before concluding that Trump’s pullout of the last 1,000 US troops in Syria
is America’s Dunkirk, some reflection is needed.
Yes, Putin has played his hand skillfully. Diplomatically, as the Brits say,
the Russian president is "punching above his weight."
He gets on with everyone. He is welcomed in Iran by the Ayatollah, meets regularly
with Bibi Netanyahu, is a cherished ally of Syria’s Bashar Assad, and this week
was being hosted by the King of Saudi Arabia and the royal rulers of the UAE.
October 2019 has been a triumphal month.
Yet, consider what Putin has inherited and what his capabilities are for playing
power broker of the Middle East.
He has a single naval base on the Med, Tartus, in Syria, which dates to the
1970s, and a new air base, Khmeimim, also in Syria.
The US has seven NATO allies on the Med – Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Albania,
Greece and Turkey, and two on the Black Sea, Romania and Bulgaria. We have US
forces and bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and
Djibouti. Russia has no such panoply of bases in the Middle East or Persian
Gulf.
We have the world’s largest economy. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s,
and not a tenth the size of ours.
And now that we are out of Syria’s civil war and the Kurds have cut their deal
with Damascus, consider what we have just dumped into Vladimir Putin’s lap.
He is now the man in the middle between Turkey and Syria.
He must bring together dictators who detest each other. There is first President
Erdogan, who is demanding a 20-mile deep strip of Syrian borderland to keep
the Syrian Kurds from uniting with the Turkish Kurds of the PKK. Erdogan wants
the corridor to extend 280 miles, from Manbij, east of the Euphrates, all across
Syria, to Iraq.
Then there is Bashar Assad, victorious in his horrific eight-year civil war,
who is unlikely to cede 5,000 square miles of Syrian territory to a permanent
occupation by Turkish troops.
Reconciling these seemingly irreconcilable Syrian and Turkish demands is now
Putin’s problem. If he can work this out, he ought to get the Nobel Prize.
"Putin is the New King of Syria," ran the op-ed
headline in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.
The Syria of which Putin is now supposedly king contains Hezbollah, al-Qaida,
ISIS, Iranians, Kurds, Turks on its northern border and Israelis on its Golan
Heights. Five hundred thousand Syrians are dead from the civil war. Half the
pre-war population has been uprooted, and millions are in exile in Turkey, Lebanon,
Jordan and Europe.
If Putin wants to be king of this, and it is OK with Assad, how does that imperil
the United States of America, 6,000 miles away?
Wednesday, two-thirds of the House Republicans joined Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats
to denounce Trump’s decision to pull US troops out of Syria and dissolve our
alliance with the Kurds. And Republican rage over the sudden abandonment of
the Kurds is understandable.
But how long does the GOP believe we should keep troops in Syria and control
the northeastern quadrant of that country? If the Syrian army sought to push
us out, under what authority would we wage war against a Syrian army inside
Syria?
And if the Turks are determined to secure their border, should we wage war
on that NATO ally to stop them? Would US planes fly out of Turkey’s Incirlik
air base to attack Turkish soldiers fighting in Syria?
If Congress believes we have interests in Syria so vital we should be willing
to go to war for them – against Syria, Turkey, Russia or Iran – why does Congress
not declare those interests and authorize war to secure them?
Our foreign policy elites have used Trump’s decision to bash him and parade
their Churchillian credentials. But those same elites appear to lack the confidence
to rally the nation to vote for a war to defend what they contend are vital
American interests and defining American values.
If Putin is king of Syria, it is because he was willing to pay the price in
blood and treasure to keep his Russia’s toehold on the Med and save his ally
Bashar Assad, who would have gone under without him.
Who dares wins. Now let’s see how Putin likes his prize.
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