In March 2014, President Obama called Russia a mere “regional power,” much as he had earlier described the Islamic State as the “JV team.” But Russian President Vladimir Putin is proving him wrong, exploiting Obama’s timidity in another region of the world to bolster his standing in Europe and undermine NATO.
Putin has played a deft hand in Syria. While Russia’s intervention has renewed prospects for the regime of Bashar al-Assad and strengthened Moscow’s hand in any political settlement, it has also shifted the European landscape. Those European powers, particularly France, eyeing the immediate challenges of Islamic State terrorism, the Syrian civil war and the refugee crisis, have warmed toward Russia.
Putin’s intervention in Syria reflected a textbook integration of force and diplomacy, executed with a bold swiftness that left the U.S. playing catch-up. In late August, Russia began quietly moving men and equipment into Syria. The U.S. issued perfunctory warnings against supporting Assad’s regime and Moscow’s build-up culminated in late September, as Russian fighter jets snuck into Syria with their transponders off, flying in the shadow of transport planes that had active transponders.
With his forces in place, Putin addressed the opening of the U.N. Generally Assembly — the first time he had done so in a decade. Putin lambasted the U.S. for aggressively promoting democracy, equating that with the Soviet export of Communism: an intolerant insistence on one system for all. “Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress,” Putin stated, “we got violence, poverty and a social disaster.” A “power vacuum” led to “areas of anarchy,” which were quickly filled with “extremists and terrorists,” he claimed. Two days later, Russian airstrikes in Syria began.
Syria’s prolonged civil war has created an enormous problem for Europe: its biggest refugee crisis since World War II. On Oct. 2, when French, German, Russian and Ukrainian leaders met in Paris to review the Minsk accords, Syria overshadowed all else. As the editors of The American Interest suggested, “One effect of, if not a rationale for, Putin’s Syria intervention is to distract from Ukraine.” The Paris summit went very well for Putin, they concluded.
Two further events — successive terrorist attacks — gave even greater impetus to Putin’s rehabilitation in Europe. On October 31, the Islamic State bombed a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai, killing all 224 people on board. Britain and other countries, including the U.S., quickly concluded that it was a terrorist bombing. Only after the horrific attack in Paris did Russian intelligence make its well-timed formal announcement that a bomb had indeed downed the Russian plane.
On Nov. 17, after speaking with French President Francois Hollande, Putin ostentatiously ordered the Russian Navy to coordinate with French forces in the Eastern Mediterranean “as allies.” Hollande, for his part, became an energetic advocate of bringing Russia in from the cold in a “Grand Coalition” against the Islamic State. Thus, The Wall Street Journal reported, “Putin is riding high amid Western efforts to improve ties in the aftermath of the Paris attacks,” adding that this raises “alarms in Kiev, where officials fear any rapprochement will come at their expense.”
When Hollande addressed the French people in the wake of the terrorist attacks, he did not invoke Article Five of the NATO Treaty. Instead, he invoked what a Bush-era Pentagon official described to me as “the mushy mutual assistance provision of the EU Treaty.” Why? Because Hollande had little confidence in a strong NATO response, given Obama’s lame leadership?
Earlier this month, Britain, too, began bombing the Islamic State in Syria, and Prime Minister David Cameron has agreed to “work together” with Putin there. Germany, for the first time in Angela Merkel’s decade-long tenure as chancellor, is dispatching forces to support a foreign war.
Thus, the stakes for Europe are high — probably higher than for the U.S. By exploiting Obama’s weak response to these Middle East crises, Putin is attempting to weaken NATO.
This venture enjoys broad support domestically, as Russians still smart from the humiliation and loss of great power status that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. A RIWI Corporation survey conducted last month found that 64 percent of more than 2,800 randomly sampled Russians said that they believed that Russia’s strong response to Islamic State terrorism will increase world respect for their country.
Likewise, Levada, a Russian polling and research organization that has managed to maintain its independence from the Kremlin, found that 70 percent of Russians support the intervention in Syria.
In 1999, when Levada began asking, “In your opinion, is the Russia of today a superpower?” only 33 percent of Russians said “yes.” Last month, that number was 65 percent.
In contrast, Americans view Obama’s policy in terms of its failure to dislodge the Islamic State in the region or on as a threat at home. But don’t forget that there is a crucial European dimension to this issue, which Putin is quite capable of manipulating and exploiting.
Laurie Ann Mylroie, Ph.D. taught at Harvard University and the U.S. Naval War College. She is currently RIWI Corporation’s national security analyst. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
