Mon Dieu! Does #USNORTHCOM know about this?
But Russian military activities appear more geared toward securing Assad’s Alawi enclave and pushing rebel groups away from its edges. Russia would have to make major additional contributions in order to help Assad retake the areas currently under Daesh control, and what of the PYD-SDF areas or the TAF-FSA areas? Is Assad willing to give the Kurds independence? Is Russia prepared to kill Turkish and American soldiers?
Putin was a guarantor, but it is doubtful that Russia could entirely account for all of Assad’s stockpiles. Moreover, Obama was fully aware of the limitations of the agreement and made it anyway. The vanishing of Syria from the American news cycle as Assad resorted instead to chlorine was a cynical American establishment suppressing inconvenient truth.
I would hold Khamenei more responsible than Putin. There is no way that Assad used CWs without explicit approval or instructions from Teheran. The Iranians and their mercenaries riddle Assad’s remaining institutions, and certainly under Obama, Teheran knew that it would never be blamed or even acknowledged because of the importance of the JCPOA, and the MSM also colluded to bury this other inconvenient truth. Obama, Putin and Khamenei were all pleased for various reasons to have the Syrian Civil War framed as a contest between the U.S. and Russia. Not so now…
The fact that you want mission creep and that you feel the strike was not enough, are quite frankly irrelevant. You do realize that the isolationist crowd considers the Sarin attack in the same light as Iraqi WMDs or the Gulf of Tonkin, and believes that a few dozen TLAMs are Operation Iraqi Freedom redux, don’t you?
Put you on the NSC and the U.S. would be engaged in great power conflicts in Ukraine and Syria at the least, if not more places… The issue with SWJ/SWC is that experts in tactics and insurgencies often assume that they are equally adept when it comes to grand strategy and great power clashes. For instance, Wavell was a far abler operational and tactical commander than Churchill, who hamstrung the Western Desert Force in North Africa in 1941, but Churchill was the strategic genius of the war.
I think that Putin is in less of a vice than you claim. Note that these claims have been made by you and others, including the U.S. government, since 2014. Of course, the latter made them in order to justify denying Ukraine arms and relying solely upon diplomatic and economic punishment of Russia.
I completely agree with you that there is a toll being taken. It is impossible to know whether these bouts of unrest will fizzle out, worsen gradually over time or explode into violent revolution. Unfortunately, the history of revolutions give us little to go on in the way of indicators that can predict them with any accuracy. For instance, not only Ceausescu but the international community, was taken by surprise at the pace of events.
There is increasing disgruntlement and Russian economic growth has backslid from its levels prior to 2014. However, Putin is still far ahead of the catastrophic Yeltsin era and well above the Soviet experience of the late 1980s:
- GDP PPP Per Capita has doubled since 1999, and is still 17% higher than in 1990 (RSFSR)
- Corruption is still a major problem in Russia, however, it the CPI has improved substantially since Putin was elected (20-29)
- GDP from manufacturing has consistently grown (doubled since 2003)
- GDP (constant prices) has almost tripled since 2003
- Russian FOREX reserves have fallen 1/3 since 2009, but were non-existent during Yeltsin’s tenure
- Russia’s government debt-to-GDP ratio fell 10X from 1999 to 2007, and remains below 20% of 1999 levels
So like it as not, Putin does have room for both, although he seems to be cautious about over-spending on foreign policy stunts. In all probability, Putin will leave the economy to its own devices and seek to regain prestige on the world stage.
To Outlaw 09 RE: Syria
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
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