Category Archives: Russia

Obama, Putin, Satire, and Signals

07 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Politics, Russia

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“Look, I’m not just talking about Snowden and Syria,” Mr. Obama said. “What about Pussy Riot? What about your anti-gay laws? Total jackass moves, my friend.”

G20 Ends Abruptly as Obama Calls Putin a Jackass : The New Yorker

That there above: satire gone viral!

* * *

Who else in St Petersburg publicly declared, as he did, that Syria’s “so-called chemical weapons attack” was in fact “a provocation staged by rebels, in hope of winning extra backing from their foreign backers”?

In making that categorical claim, the Russian leader left little room for compromise and ended up looking, perhaps, somewhat isolated.

BBC News – Syria crisis: No clear winner in Russia-US G20 duel

* * *

For real, Bridget Kendall writing for the BBC reports that eleven countries endorsed a statement agreeing that evidence associated with Syria’s most recent chemical weapons attack “pointed to Syrian government culpability.”

As suggested here, also recently, the world is witness to a war about integrity and power.

Indeed, it is one thing for Putin to go about the business of restoring Russian grandeur and might and adjusting his state in a Russian way to the new day — and let Russians respond to that as they may: it is another thing to abet the state-driven barbarism on display daily in both Iran and Syria and to become identified with it.

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Syria – Obama Moves Spotlight Toward Putin – Live on Fox

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Regions, Russia, Syria

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This morning’s live feed from Fox featuring President Obama and Prime Minister Reinfeldt stunned me, really, as being the most open, most candid, most off-the-cuff press conference I’ve been aware of since the inauguration. 

In it, Obama talked about Syria every which way — either he couldn’t get away from the subject or the reporters could not — including asserting that a transition from the Assad regime seemed impossible given the tens of thousands of civilian lives taken by the regime.  Obama then noted that President Putin seemed to disagree with that logic, thereby throwing the policy-on-Syria hot potato to Putin who may look increasingly disingenuous and transparent clinging to his lines on behalf of Bashar and Maher al Assad.

Select Additional and Updated Reference

France 24.  “Russia to act ‘decisively’ if Syria chemical attack claims are proven.”  September 4, 2013.

* * *

If the “center will not hold” will there be a center?

When I started receiving the CTC Sentinel (from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point) I don’t believe I was vetted in any way but, so my impression was, on a controlled list for a publication neither secret nor to be redistributed.

Again, that was some years ago, and here I may be merely befuddled, paranoid, whatever.

Over the years, I’ve kept reference to CTC to myself and partially for the effects of its “granularity” — the detail in reported relationships — involved in combat arenas from Afghanistan to Somalia.  Such material, I thought, wouldn’t tell anyone involved on any side of “field operations” what they didn’t already know, but it would suggest how deeply American defense intelligence and analysis gets into societies of interest, and that may have promoted some resentments in my social networks.

A few weeks ago I had cause to ask CTC (Facebook) about distribution and got back this answer: “We publish all of our research in the open source (on our website and in social media), and from there, we don’t have any control over its distribution.”

So there.

Short of subscribing to Jane’s, taking lonely walks (in the rain) around Foggy Bottom, and hanging out in Georgetown (now that I’m 90 minutes northwest of all of that — way out of town!), I think the following two links to Combating Terrorism Center and Foreign Policy (Magazine) reports are pretty good — and granular.

Lund, Aron.  “The Non-State Militant Landscape in Syria.” CTC Sentinel, August 27, 2013.  Excerpt:

Rebels have been told by these states that they must endorse the SMC and its politics to gain access to future arms shipments.[5] Recently, the United States, the United Kingdom and France have all indicated that they will channel money and possibly weapons via the SMC.[6]

The SMC has provided wildly varying estimates of the total number of fighters in its member groups. In June 2013, Idris claimed to control 80,000 fighters, but days later an SMC representative insisted that the true figure is 320,000.[7] In practice, a meaningful headcount of rebels is almost impossible to make, both due to the scarcity of reliable information and to myriad problems of definition.[8] There is no disputing, however, that most of Syria’s large rebel factions have chosen to publicly align themselves with the SMC, recognizing it as the best way to tap into Gulf, Western and other support.

Sowell, Kirk H.  “The fragmenting FSA”.  Foreign Policy, September 3, 2013.

* * *

Russia President Putin: If Syria Fighters Use Mass Destruction Weapon, What Will the U.S. Do

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Syria – A Bloody Long Goodbye to Yesterday

13 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Russian President Vladimir Putin may yet turn out the bad boy who knows more about good than so many goody two shoes arching up on their hind legs over the seemingly endless tragedy in Syria.

What Putin knows, I am sure, is from where has come from, the ingredients of his own frame, from poverty to KGB, from Soviet Russia to the post-Soviet FSB of his own making, from Russian heroic sports culture to the more measured testing of waters to, perhaps, restore Russian pride in empire.

Take the Tale of the Pocketed Superbowl Ring and a fast denial plus offer of complete restitution as signal of a different kind of explorer, albeit a shrewd autocrat on the make for a good deal, cash to swell out a country, a new energy industry with clout, and a little respect even from his critics.

This month’s imbroglio over anti-Gay legislation hasn’t helped Putin with either western or progressive audiences — I am certain of that — but it too may symbolize the difficulty of parting with yesterday’s story.

And Syria is all about the entire host of interests parting with yesterday’s story.

Putin first.

* * *

Throughout the Cold War, third world actors could and did manipulate Eastern and Western patrons to further their own parochial objectives or regional ambitions, and Baathist Iraq was no different in this respect.

Hughes, Geraint.  “Who used whom?  Baathist Iraq and the Cold War, 1968-1990.” The Cold War, History in Focus.  Spring, 2006.

Currently, the Syrian Communist Party officially supports the Baathist regime, although it follows the Soviet line on certain key political issues.  The party, for example, recently urged Arab terrorists to be “more responsible” in their political activities, and its delegation to the recent  international Communist conference went along in supporting the Security Council resolution of 1967 for a political solution to the Arab-Israeli crisis.  The party’s 3,000 members make it the third largest Communist Party in the Arab world, and a Communist now holds a cabinet post as minister of communications and foreign trade.

CIA Directorate of Intelligence.  “Soviet Relations with the Baathists in Iraq and Syria.”  Special Report, Weekly Review, June 27, 1969.  Approved for Release: May 2002.

1969!

What a yesteryear.

Call it a reunion: “You haven’t changed a bit” one always says, but with these –Russia and Syria, Great Britain and Saudi Arabia, Israel and God (maybe) — time has changed them some or altered their surrounds, and the bulwarks in power and sustained relationships have been eroded, and no more so than in long neglected Syria where forty-four years of competition, cultural evolution, and diplomacy on its flanks have turned a family’s military dictatorship into a merely and deeply selfish anachronism.

While RT screams bloody murder over Islamists murdering Kurds (recently) and CNN continues hammering on Syrian jets crushing targets of uncertain military validity, few, it seems, wish to take this step away from the traps laid so many decades ago (or fourteen centuries ago for Shiite and Sunni fighters motivated by what they believe about their respective labels).

* * *

I’ve no friends for whom the end of a marriage or other long-lived relationship has been not only traumatic but life changing.

Such events are not about the one thing.

Everything comes under review, and while most don’t beat themselves up with “should have done this” and “should have done that” — and they shouldn’t — they may change some principles in what I’ve come to call “social grammar”, i.e., inevitably frozen in language, the most deeply ingrained ideas and rules by which they have maintained their own program.

Even so civil a split — cloaked in mystery and, beneath the Al Jazeera clip on YouTube, accompanied by a relatively gentle public humor — would seem to support this view.

Something has changed and done so in some unalterable way.

One floats free of the past after a while, but perhaps it takes a while to do that.

* * *

Syria’s civil war, already irreversible in its effects — more than 106,000 Syrians dead because of it; more than 1.7 million refugee in surrounding states; add some more millions for displaced and homeless; cities like Aleppo and Homs ravaged or razed — should close a chapter that in retrospect may be seen as having been about several forms of intellectual poison, an aspect of conflict I suspect Putin recognizes, being himself so public, so accustomed to the development of information and the projection of image.

This too comes from the 1969 CIA report released in 2002:

“Moscow has never had much political influence in Syria, a xenophobic country that has known little other than periodic power struggles over the past 20 years.  Moscow’s virtual inability to moderate Damascus’ hard-line posture has been, in fact, the only constant factor in the shifting Soviet-Syrian relationship” (page 7).

Fourty-four years of that same old same old.

Time for a change?

* * *

No longer completely opposite the Russian course and sensibility, Cameron and Obama may have to tell Qatar that it may not always get what it wants.  That too would depart from yesterday, but as much Qatar may already know, having rushed an heir to the throne.

That too may depart from yesterday’s story, one of several that have been run to ground and drowned in blood and suffering for years to come.

The World Wide Web has changed how the world experiences its one separable experiences: now we can see what we are doing in light of what we have done, and we cannot but help see all of that laid out in the sun together.

Reference – Odds and Ends

Curry, Ann.  “Putin’s marriage to end after nearly 30 years.” NBC Nightly News, June 6, 2013.

Malpas, Anna.  “First Gagarin film turns Soviet idol into new Russian hero.”  The Daily Star, June 19, 2013.

RT.  “Russia won’t supply outstanding S-300s to Syria until mid-2014 – report.”  August 9, 2013.

RT.  “Syrian split a real danger due to wars within war.”  Interview with Phyllis Bennis.  August 9, 2013.

RT Russiapedia.  “Prominent Russians: Vasily Zaitsev”.

Sargsyan, Irena L.  “How to End the War in Syria.”  The Daily Beast, August 13, 2013.

Wikipedia.  “Heroic realism”.

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Each Name Opens To A Universe

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Free Speech, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, North America, Politics, Qatar, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Hours before his arrest, Abdelke had signed a petition that averred (here’s where Chrome’s translate option comes in handy) “support to the forces of the revolution who advocate the establishment of a pluralistic democracy” and “desire for a peaceful solution to stop the bloodshed and to preserve national unity and territorial integrity, which involves the departure of Bashar al-Assad and pillars of his regime.

http://artfcity.com/2013/08/01/the-web-petitions-to-free-syrian-artist-youssef-abdelke/

Youssef Abdelke — never hard of him before two minutes ago — but as one who has learned the ways of the World Wide Web, the third minute opens on eternity.

(Reuters) – Syrian government forces have detained a dissident left-wing painter in a new wave of arrests of non-violent critics of President Bashar al-Assad, opposition groups said on Friday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/19/us-syria-crisis-arrests-idUSBRE96I0LP20130719

“A place to share art, uninhibited without a bunch of stupid ass rules. A place to help your fellow page owners grow and succeed. A group to have fun with no dictator shoving shit down your throat and bowing down. A group to be FREE to help as you see fit. A group to rock the fuck on!”

https://www.facebook.com/groups/639798962716250/

It’s a closed Facebook group, one to which I would apply if I were shooting the local downtrodden as opposed, say, to the leisured, business, and community development classes.

Nonetheless, “Art and FREEDOM”, my soul is with you and your author, Youssef Abdelke.

* * *

I really don’t know why Putin darkens his role in history by keeping in his hand with  the Ayatollah’s Iran and the Assad’s Syria.

* * *

Novelist Daniel Silva has a great deal of fun with the “Russian President” — in fiction, merely a character, never named, nothing more than coincidental with anything or anyone in reality, in his latest best seller The English Girl.

As a fiction writer, Silva’s actually, probably, one of the very best political analysts on the international stage, and while playing that role through his characters and plots, the Russian President looms large and rightly so for the behind-the-curtain strategy pursued by the post-Soviet oligarchs  of the Latest and Greatest in Russian States.

As we know about narcissists and narcissistic hunger and supply, they are ultimately about themselves, and whatever their charms, political and social, may be.  Not that Bashir Assad has enjoyed abundance in dimension, but it’s the Russian President who has been most quiet on the obscenity of a state that deploys jets to suppress, at first, a small challenge to its authority.

While the Syria of 2010 has been destroyed, culturally, socially, structurally, one might note that Russia, in her defense, has ferried both the larger part of its civilian and military presence out of the country — not exactly a show of confidence, that, but not exactly either a show of humanist resolve.

The world wonders at the conundrum that has pit a brutal dictatorship against partially but deeply virulent Islamist forces.  There is in that aspect of Syria’s agony the “no good dog in the fight” and the “black hole” of the Islamic Small Wars constructed of a contempt, hatred, and self-contempt in the inhumanity that draws in military energy and burns without end.

Nearly one hundred thousand dead and four million displaced in Syria’s furnace and neither of two of the most powerful statesmen of our era either cares to or knows how to shut it down.

Instead of the kumbaya “reset” between the states and the federation (how young is Obama?), Putin appears to be draining the former plus NATO by keeping the oven hot while avoiding, rightly, the imposition of another Chechnya in its sphere of influence.  And yet . . . the Assad regime was the Soviet’s monster, and one would think that after 1991 the state would have been concerned with other than filling its pockets in collusion with it for another 22 years.

But that perhaps would have been too caring, too ethical.

Too English.

* * *

While the superpowers dick around with trivial issues like Snowden, Syria, in part, draws to it the “worst of the worst” — or just the most spirited — of fighters representing Shiite and Sunni Islam, those two angry wasps someone left in a bell jar separating their concerns from the much, much greater world surrounding.

On a portion of that, I would blame the west.

We’ve done business, haven’t we, for how many years?

And barely a word, most certainly few, if any, of outrage in regard to humanity and human rights in the contained but also dark medieval quarters of the globe.

So why not leave them — today in Syria, tomorrow perhaps in Egypt or somewhere else — in their own mess?

Whether the President of the Free World or that of the Russian Empire, is it incumbent on either to reorganize a middle east state as a pet humanitarian project?

There are, of course, other ambitions in the mix, much including Iran’s and Qatar’s, but one may one wonder between them whether either will wake up from their dream or with history pass away into it.

* * *

Prestige matters.

As a Jew, I may wonder how global memory will treat of today’s powerful in the days beyond their reclamation by the earth.

Additional Reference

Kasparov, Garry.  “Putin Toys with Obama as Syria Burns and Snowden Runs Free.” The Daily Beast.  July 2, 2013.

Official Site of the Bureau International des Expositions.

RT.  “At least 600 Russians and Europeans fighting alongside Syrian opposition – Putin.”  June 21, 2013.

World Bulletin News Desk.  “Erdogan, Putin discuss Syria and Egypt.”  August 5, 2013.

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Bloody Syria May Turn Out Putin’s Problem After All

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Displaced: six million.

You know I didn’t want to see that number.

Dead: 93,000 estimated

Not that I’m happy with that one either.

For the time being, Obama and NATO may be taking the heat in relation to the assembly of Syria’s civil war and its mix of ends, including the neutralization of Iran, and interests, including expansion of Sunni influence in the middle east.

However, the old Soviet relationship with the Assad regime and whatever updates or transformations have attended Vladimir Putin’s time at the helm of the Russian Ship of State will most certainly haul Putin back to the hot lights on the world stage.

At this time, he has gotten the Russian Navy out of Tartus and enabled Russian civilian citizens in Syria to leave en masse over time.

If Putin wishes to promote Russian influence with the Syria to come, if he wishes to one day leave a good record of his accomplishments for Russia (that as opposed to having the phantoms of his enemies emerge to steal that light from him), he’s going to have to intercede soon on behalf of the humanity affected, and this especially in light of measures taken to equip the Assad regime to remain at war to this point.

This is not to ascribe to Putin responsibility for Assad excesses or rebel barbarism, which latter he has used well to embarrass Obama; it is to suggest he take some measures in concert with others to damp the Syrian furnace or, alternatively, involve Russia immediately in broad humanitarian amelioration of the effects of the war.

This next I’ve copied from “The Embassy of the Russian Federation to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”:

15.07.2013

On supply of Russian humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees in the territory of Syria

 On July 11, two aircrafts of the Emergencies Ministry of Russia delivered 70 tons of urgent humanitarian aid to Latakia for Palestinian refugees in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, including food and other essentials.

The government of Palestine, as well as the Palestinian refugees with deep gratitude perceived this Russian humanitarian action effected with proper level of security on behalf of Syrian authorities.

The Russian Federation will continue providing required humanitarian aid to the friendly Palestinian people both in the bilateral format and in the line of specialised international organisation.

Has this movie not been shown before?

I thought it had ended about 21 years and seven months ago even though to some it would seem like only last week — or as if it didn’t happen at all.

Be that as it may, while the world, much less “the government of Palestine” (which one?) most certainly appreciates the shipment to Syria of other than shore-to-ship missiles, one might expect a little more effort on general terms from the modern Putin-guided (one way to put it) democracy.

Reference

AP.  “Activists: 75 Syria rebels dead in Damascus.”  USA Today, July 22, 2013.

BBC.  “Syrian conflict: ‘Troops kills [STET] 13 family members’.”  July 21, 2013.

Bright, Arthur.  “Syria death toll climbs as West label civil war a stalemate.”  The Christian Science Monitor, July 22, 2013.

Solomon, Erika.  “Syrian opposition forces fighting each other.”  World News / Reuters, July 21, 2013.

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ISW – Comment on Saudi Arabia’s Heightened Profile in the Syrian Theater

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Qatar, Regions, Religion, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey

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(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia, a staunch opponent of President Bashar al-Assad since early in Syria’s conflict, began supplying anti-aircraft missiles to rebels “on a small scale” about two months ago, a Gulf source said on Monday.

Bakr, Amena.  “Saudi supplying missiles to Syria rebels: Gulf source.”  Reuters, June 17, 2013.

For those who value stability in the middle east, the least honest and most ruthless appear to be winning.

As the above quote suggests, Big Sunni Money plus the cultivation across many years of strategic and trade relationships in Great Britain, Europe, and the United States have put King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia not only into the fight in Syria but remarkably behind the NATO wheel.

Of course, this recent news (surfacing in the news) isn’t news at all to the businesses and states involved in Syria’s civil war, and it should be apparent to all onlookers that this double-track, double-story business of telling the public one story while facilitating another in private has brought us to the brink of a NATO vs. Russia confrontation in which Russia may now present a devilish gambit: better Assad and the continuing misery to be imposed by the dictatorship than the expansion of either Al Qaeda or Wahhabi Islam and the certain diminishing of nascent democracy, human dignity, and secular values in Syria accompanied by the heightening of tensions in Lebanon and,somewhere in the future, with Israel and the Jewish People.

To offset that impression, King Abdullah may have to back up the money with some combination of reassuring mouth and evidence of cultural and social evolution toward the contemporary in the Kingdom, certain injunctions of the Quran either notwithstanding or interpreted or aligned with a more free and liberal and greater western world.

Outlook

For the moment, if Iran’s nuclear program and global ambitions are the true target of the conflict in Syria, then the conflict and the human suffering plus political confusion driven by it, have yet some months to years to go.

In fact, the focusing of issues in the Syrian theater of a great portion of the drivers of the Islamic Small Wars  — i.e., rivalries of various sort: Al Qaeda and Wahhabi Islam; Sunni and Shiite Islam; democracy, secular dictatorship and theocracy; Iranian and Saudi Arabian competition for greater spheres of influence; even Putin’s possible issues with aggrandizement, control, and wealth on one hand and his own humanity, moderation, and strength in restraint on the other– bodes ill for constituents — worldwide — whose concerns may be more with family, security, and employment scaled down to a common denominator in the common humanity than with the triumph of a king or an ayatollah.  

It has been said that with the onset of war, nobody wins, and nowhere else across the killing fields of the Islamic Small Wars does that cynical sentiment seem more likely to be proven true than in Syria this day.

Reference

Al Arabiya.  “Saudi King Abdullah cuts holiday short due to ‘events in the region’.”  June 15, 2013.

Chulov, Martin.  “Threat of sectarian war grows in Syria as jihadists get anti-aircraft missiles.”  The Guardian, June 15, 2013.

Deasy, Kristin.  “Al Qaeda in Iraq defies global leader over relationship with Syria’s Al Nusra: Reports.” Global Post, June 15, 2013.

Henderson, Simon.  “Bahrain Rounds Up Organizers of Antigovernment Violence.”  Policy Alert, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, June 14, 2013:

Initially emulating uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world, the protests quickly divided along sectarian lines, pitting members of the majority Shiite population against the Sunni ruling family’s security forces. Since then, February 14 members have apparently engaged in near-nightly clashes with police, resulting in more than 100 dead and 2,000 injured among civilians and security personnel.

Osborn, Andrew and Amena Bakr.  “Putin, Obama face off over Syria; rebels get Saudi missiles.”  Reuters, June 17, 2013.

Reuters.  “Russia says it will not allow Syria no-fly zones.”  June 17, 2013.

Starr, Barbara, Holly Yan, Chelsea J. Carter.  “Analyst: Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria now best-equipped of the group.”  CNN, June 17, 2013.

Wintour, Patrick.  “Syria: Putin backs Assad and berates west over proposal to arm rebels.”  The Guardian, June 16, 2013.

Putin – The Charming Colonel President King

22 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Middle East, Psychology, Regions, Russia, Syria

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I like him.

At least compared to Robert Mugabe, among others of that sort, I like him.

When one invents a term like “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” or trots out another like “Malignant Narcissism” one might caution — or run for cover as social psychologists tend to do — with the phrase “complex, multi-dimensional”: how much of arrogance, demanding egocentric behavior, grandiose delusion, lack of empathy, messianic passion, paranoia, and resistance to criticism might there be in the mix?

Putin, unlike, say, old Qaddafi, knows containment and restraint.

While the critical wonks will follow the Khodorkovsky story and the world in which old friends are friends indeed, Russia’s charming colonel President (king) Putin runs a modern state, and if imperfectly democratic, still a force of its own and one with which to be reckoned — this as Obama — see previous post — may have by now figured out, not that such a challenge to authority as Masha Gessen failed to warn him (reading recommended: The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin).

The destabilization of Syria has brought untold suffering to Syrians, and while that suffering and its related economic and political costs might serve to compel an average western politician to action, the same may not have the same impact on a post-Soviet autocrat-become-president who may be more interested in the reflection reflection that conveys control and mastery of a situation and further reflects well in terms of practical character, judgment, and statesmanship.

* * *

Obama’s setting out to transform the middle east may be perceived as having backfired: instead of democracy, such as Egypt, for example, have been handed over, even if by election, to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the methods, in part, of another dictator, albeit one with perhaps a new political environment for navigation.

Putin cannot be blamed for the chill President Mursi has injected into Egypt’s “Arab Spring.”

Furthermore, in relation to NATO, Putin cannot be blamed for Erdogan’s rise and subsequent neutralizing of Kamalist rivals and unfriendly press.

So in Syria, while the 92,000 dead and 3.4 million homeless may help drag his name into it, he didn’t arm — or allow the arming — of rebels against the regime, did he?

As I type, this header is just about one hour old: “Syria’s rebels blame Russia’s Putin for prolonged fight” (Michel Stors, YNet News, May 21, 2013).  Toward the end, Stors’ notes:

“Russians have never been very popular with Syrians. During an Islamist rebellion in the 1980s they were targeted by the insurgents for supporting the regime. Pale Americans often complained that Syrians, mistaking them for Russians, jeered at them in the streets.”

In the United States, Obama’s America is emphatically not at war with Islam (nor need it be – my own position is very moderate on this and the related complexity in how the Islamic Small Wars work); in Syria, Obama’s America and some rickety fixing between Saudi (Qatari) and Turkish interests have made the United States an enabler, at least, in the effort to expand Sunni Islam and — eye on the ball, please — isolate the Shiite Ayatollah’s Iran.

Putin, who has made his position clear in Chechnya has similarly made it clear in Syria even while aligning Russia toward Israel and away from playing paddy-cake with Islam.

So far, with the recent deliveries of anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles, he’s given the Assad regime (and Maher Al-Assad) breathing space, reduced Iranian capital (in some measure), and playing defense, held Russia’s position; to continue on to “solving Syria” — and this now that he’s more representative of the polyglot desires of the west than the west! — he may have to alter the character of the regime by bringing to it an improved set of contemporary Russian values, the same as to which he responds in his political life today (specifically: the same that keeps Masha Gessen out of prison and eventually turn the Pussy Riot crew back out the streets, presumably toward the end of their two-year term), while sweeping away the terrors of the old Soviet machinery (the development of the FSB and its purposes notwithstanding).

Whether by way of President Putin or not, Russia has come far from what it was in the Soviet Era, but it’s continuing influence wants for reason, and for that oligarchy and money may not suffice; moreover, if Gessen’s portrait of Putin prevails within Putin, that won’t work for history; add this: if he wants to do what he may behind the curtain — back stage, finally – he may have to do it in a way that alters the atmosphere of the conflict even without visible intercession.

Tall order, that.

I think President Putin bright and clever (quiet and strong), and he will find a way to keep Syria in Russia’s sphere as well as make it more democratic, egalitarian, free and tolerant.

* * *

Perhaps I am dreaming.

We shall see.

Rose-colored summary: Putin may not be moved toward western-style intervention, but he may wish to be remembered well, and for that he may engage the Assad family, seek modification of the demands of the challengers, and set Syria on a progressive track.

On that too, we shall see.

—–

Additional Reference

I placed reference inline on this post, which I think adds to the on-the-fly blogging experience (even that which hails from the second row seat to history).  However, I opened other tabs on this too, and list them here.

Masyuk, Elena.  “Gleb Pavlovskiy: “What Putin is most afraid of is to be left out”.  Novayagazeta.ru, June 11, 2012: Excerpt from the interview: “A leader is the one chosen by others, and a master is a master regardless of whether you choose him or not.”

Wagele, Elizabeth.  “What is Putin’s Personality Type?”  Psychology Today, December 19, 2011.

Wikipedia.  “Narcissistic personality disorder”.  Reference provided neither to condemn nor diagnose, but rather to refer to several of the dimensions involved (in relation to this “complex, multidimensional” topic) in suggesting best political policy courses that must prove psychologically satisfying to the leaders who choose, engage, and promote them.

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FTAC – Post-Cold War Post-Soviet Syria Challenges Putin

15 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, Middle East, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Through the Cold War / Soviet Era, the boundaries and mischief provided by Soviet –> Syrian –> Iranian bonds and similar arrangements produced both enmity with the west and a bulwark against it even though the basis for, say, Soviet and Iranian existence would be wildly different (but not so different with the Soviet : Baathist relationship elsewhere). The ghosts of the Soviet Era have play in Syria’s disaster today: in essence, post-Soviet, post-KGB Russia seems to have maintained its business and military relationships with Syria without influencing or updating the political and social arrangements of the earlier state of affairs, except to better enable the capital interests of a ruling class. Enter Colonel President King and Stakeholder Putin today: how would you have him now address the Assad family (keep in mind he has his own “kleptocratic” track record within key Russian industries), Maher Al-Assad (who has launched jets against the innocents of whole communities and rather only haphazardly found the armed elements arrayed against the family), and fend off the de facto acquisition of another Chechnya?

I happen to think, perhaps alone in this, that Obama has been trying to goad Putin into intervening in Russia’s client state, but neither Obama or the U.S. have “true interest” in Syria: the focus of activity in Syria is (Shiite) Iran, and into that space KSA, with ample investment in U.S. capitalism (with Big Defense contracts, it’s we who are working for them), has handily played its rivalry with Iran for regional influence.

From both humanist and political perspectives, no one knows how to “sort” the collection of civil and religious interests engaged in conflict within Syria, and no one from outside, including bordering state armies like Suleiman’s wishes to step into the furnace (not the best analogy coming from a Jew, but it seems to work). Instead, we would rather have UNHCR beg for $1 billion through the end of the year to address the civilian tragedy attending Syria’s civil war and unresolved hatreds and threats attending western identity and interests.

Syria is Putin’s problem, and while he can and has, I think, embarrassed Obama with it, he hasn’t rolled out a good strategy yet for his modern, post-Soviet state.

One more thing: Putin may have himself for a problem as regards his own narcissistic universe and the at least partial detachment of that from human suffering within his reach. Syria is a hard problem for him, and it’s important the unfolding story of the state’s themes do not serve to dishonor or embarrass him in history.

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Some interests are known: Obama’s mom-and-apple-pie bid for a new Syrian secular democracy; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s interest in establishing greater autocratic Sunni-based influence in the region; Israeli reduction in Iranian-backed capability and hostility in general.

What we do not know are post-Soviet Russian interests in Syria today beyond continuing the archaic economic system chaining funding from Iran –> Syria –> Russia.

That system is up and running.

The old motivations are down and the current set are plainly absurd.

Russia, wary of its experience with Chechnya, has zero interest in otherwise supporting or strengthening Ayatollah Khamenei.  In essence, President Putin and the Russians have come to a crossroads in Syria, and they can’t go back, unless perhaps to the age of the czars minus the validation of religion for doing so (but mountains of cold hard cash may suffice for validation these days), and going forward, they’re a bit uncomfortable with us Yanks and perhaps lots of others on the Continent.

The longer Putin peers down the new routes available to him without stepping forward, the more he may contribute to the New World Disorder so signaled by the failure of the Assad family’s Syria to secure their citizens lives (casualties so far: 82,000; combined IDP and refugee figures: 3.4 million homeless).

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