Syria in 2017 (January-April)

[Azor]

Yes, and I remain at that standpoint. There is no way the Russians would 'merely ignore a blockade: they would never do that.

It is stubborn and wishful thinking. A unilateral blockade against a client state of theirs?

Russian aircraft and vessels already engage in dangerous maneuvers in international airspace and on the high seas, and ignore NATO air defense identification zones and even sovereign airspace. Yet there has not been so much as a radar lock-on in response.

Moreover, the blockade would be largely unenforced as it would take time for the U.S. to assemble and deploy the assets necessary to enforce it, giving Russia lead time to ignore it.

These challenges are of course separate from any Iranian resistance, which would probably be kinetic and deniable, with various Shia militias operating anti-aircraft weaponry.

Such a NFZ would have about as much teeth as China’s ADIZ in the East China Sea.

Remember how the West dealt with Stalin's blockade of West Berlin in 1948-1949[/URL]? Who won that round? Remember the Cuban Crisis? Even then the U.S. was not settled on how to deal with Soviet blockade runners, despite the much higher stakes and the fact that the crisis was Soviet-instigated.

More recently:

• The NFZ in northern Iraq required the addition of a No-Drive Zone
• Operation Allied Force nearly failed to coerce Serb forces to retreat from Kosovo, and a ground invasion was being considered before Belgrade backed down
• The NFZ in Libya was enhanced with airstrikes on ground targets, arms to the rebels and the deployment of Qatari special forces

Point is: Putler is not seeking a military confrontation. He's seeking to avoid one.

He took action in Georgia and Ukraine, despite anxieties over NATO’s response, and intervened in Syria despite the fact that the U.S. was already operating there.

But that's it. Putin needs no war. War is bad for business. Moreover, bribing East European demagogues and various chauvinists in the EU, forging elections in the USA, France, Germany etc. works so far better - and is a lot cheaper too.

Putin doesn’t want another humiliation either, and I do believe that Putin would sacrifice Russian servicemen to U.S. air-to-air missiles if it would tarnish the U.S. as a rogue aggressor in the eyes of its NATO and EU allies. How he dealt with the Su-24 shootdown is instructive here, although that occurred in sovereign Turkish airspace, not a unilaterally imposed no-fly zone in airspace to which Russia was invited to fly.

In Putin’s mind, his use of soft power in Western elections is a response to the Color Revolutions in the former Soviet republics and Serbia, as well as unrest in Russia, all of which he believes is orchestrated by the West. Nor is he far off the mark, as there was an element in the Washington during the Clinton and Bush administrations that coveted Ukraine and Central Asia, and Brussels has more recently been seeking to include Ukraine, Moldova and even Belarus, which would shatter the Moscow-led CIS/CSTO/EAEU integration project.

In addition, to the south and east, Beijing is slowly encroaching on the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, and in particular Kazakhstan, the jewel in the crown. Russia has always been an integration project, and Putin believes that it is being both contained and rolled back by rival projects to the west and the east. Such is the back and forth of the steppes.

...they threw themelves harum scarum into an adventure in Syria precisely because they were sure the USA wouldn't go there under any conditions - and now, they have no clue how to get out of there...

Putin wanted the adventure for the sake of prestige, to spoil U.S. intentions and to provide his ramshackle military with combat experience. His objectives have largely been achieved, and Khamenei was content to allow Putin to showboat in order to avoid sparking opposition to the JCPOA; Obama colluded with Khamenei in this regard. Why would Putin want out? What he doesn’t want is to commit major ground forces and face a hostile population and guerrilla warfare.

Meh...Turkey can, and very much indeed.

So you are supporting the Russian and Syrian narrative that Turkey deliberately allowed Daesh fighters and supporters to criss-cross its border with Syria?

Please Azor, get serious: a 'military base' of one power on some foreign soil is de-facto a colony of sort. A place where there are serious and active military facilities, where there is a military activity, where there is military and civilian housing, military police etc. Hell, every decent US military base abroad has got its own McDonald's or Burger King too. Tartous was no Russian base until September 2015. The Russians had some storage depot and quasi 'their own' 200-300 metres of the docks, plus four guards for that. Even today, it's no serious facility: many of Russian ships hauling supplies for Hmmemm and elsewhere are unloading in Lattakia instead: it's closer to the airbase, and can do its business much quicker.

So what happens during a U.S. naval blockade when the Syrian express sails for Tartus? The USN assets in the Eastern Mediterranean would probably be busy with swarms of Iranian “civilian” craft running the blockade.

Like it or not, U.S. grand strategy does not revolve around the Free Syrian Army. By the way, while the PYD works to gradually and quietly to establish a one-party homogeneous Kurdish state in northern Syria, I wonder what the AKP is up to within the FSA, now that it is the FSA's main benefactor. Is Erdogan supporting the democrats, moderates and secularists in the FSA, while suppressing them at home?