The Soviet Union had strategic interests in Syria ever since the mid-1960s. So does modern Russia. It is the largest advance base that Russia still has in the Middle East, and someone like Russian President Vladimir Putin would never give it up, certainly not for “humanitarian reasons,” and even more certainly when the Russians see a certain symmetry there, and believe that Israel is the most important US advance base in the region.

Eldar, Shlomi.  Al-Monitor, May 19, 2013.

Any still wearing rose-colored glasses will have taken them off after reading Shlomi Eldar‘s piece in Al-Monitor, which approaches the conflict in Syria with grim insight and fortitude.

The Christian Science Monitor heads its latest, “Why US must stop Russian missiles for Syria” with the after-the-colon remark, “Putin’s decision to send S-300 missiles to Syria shows an amoral strategic move by Russia.  It also shows up a lack of Western moral concern for the slaughter in Syria” (May 28, 2013).

I don’t agree with that last note — it’s not the lack of “Western moral concern” underscored by Putin’s decision to strengthen Assad’s defensive array, but rather the first conclusion spelled by the Monitor’s editorial board, the authors of the piece: “amoral strategic move by Russia.”

Even with that I’m going to niggle, for with Putin, “amoral” may mean also for Putin “asocial” — neither for nor against others but without feeling.  Further along that axis one bumps into another Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) classification — “Antisocial Personality Disorder“, not that I wish to go there on this.

Call them autocrats, dictators, “kleptocrats”, presidents-for-life, appeals to true or genuine ethical and moral concern fall flat, for the sufferers and their suffering may be for the Mugabe types emotionally invisible: the dead, displaced, and injured may have presence, but that presence registers would seem overlooked in policy, the overt aim of which may be to sustain control — the “upper hand” as it were — in a political or social situation while defending the combined emotional and social region in which the personality lives and the supply it obtains from it.

Among the great templates in literature laying out for adults and children the character of the power weilded by a narcissistic personality, I would perhaps place “The Emperor’s New Clothes” first and foremost.  While impressions easily focus on the power of the emperor to inspire pandering and elicit outright lies (about this “clothes” sewn with invisible threads), one might note also the emperor’s need for that level of adulation, attention, and control.

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Wikiversity.  “Dissocial personality disorder”.

Note: the deeper the swimming, the more complex and sophisticated the science, but perhaps also the less applicable to casual discussion in political science.  I’ll take conjecture on this theme a littler further: psychology focuses on mind in the individual experience and life.  That’s enough for scope — and it’s certainly territory rich enough for tens of thousands of lifetimes spent in research and clinical service.

Psychology proper may leave outside its domain the cultural, political, and ramifications of the expression of individual character, condition, and personality.

Here on the World Wide Web, it may be enough to note that being a broadly empowered witness to the destruction of 92,000 lives and the substantial disruption of 3.5 million lives (those internally displaced or made refugee by way of Syria’s conflict) has elicited a very different global response not only from Russia and NATO, which constituent cultures have a great deal in common today, but also a sharp difference in global expectations about each: while Russia attends to the defense of a brutal dictatorship and NATO drags its heels on intervention on behalf of an Islamic culture laced with Al Qaeda types, the world seems to put the onus for Syria’s tragedy on NATO, and that may be because it knows that the NATO states and leadership in general care deeply for the humanity involved, and it does so with less regard for its own interests — so children whine to the parent who might do them some good.

Hidden behind the conflict in Syria is not a Cold War conflict with remnant Soviet totalitarian ideology or even with Russian culture and its zeitgeist except in this one dimension repeated in history, from czars to commisars: the ascendance of permanent authorities with sweeping powers and a minimum of concern for the despairing and subjugated within their constituencies.

Are either callousness or caring within persons and communities “motivated” by biology and evolution, or are they emphasized in culture and through language behavior within families passed from one generation to the next?

Stay tuned.

We’re going to find out because with the Internet full up and a war on, Russians are here too and may be counted on to weigh in with their ethical outlooks, perceptions, and wishes in regard to the unfolding Syrian Civil War.

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Additional Reference

Carbonnel, Alissa de.  “Disputes over arms for Syria cloud Russian peace drive.”  Reuters, May 28, 2013.

Erlanger, Steven.  “Europeans Say Lifting Syria Arms Embargo Puts Pressure on Russia.”  The New York Times, May 28, 2013.

Hausmann, Joanna.  “Israel to Strike Russian Weapon Shipments to Syria: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.”  Heavy, May 28, 2013.

The Voice of Russia.  “Moscow says message exchange between Putin, Obama gave impetus to missile shield consultations.”  May 28, 2013.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees.  “UNHCR Turkey Syrian Refugee Daily Sitrep 20 May 2013.”  Reliefweb, May 20, 2013.