In a blunt admission of the effectiveness of Russia’s intervention in the Syria civil war, America’s top general said that Moscow’s action put President Bashar Assad’s government “in much better shape.”
Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech that the Russian air strikes “certainly were effective in propping up the Assad regime,” opposed by the United States.
Dunford was laying out the challenges to NATO and the Pentagon, and put Russia at the top. He noted that they have integrated their government and military into a joint threat to the West and their own satellites.
Speaking at CSIS, he was asked by a Russian reporter about the Russian mission, supposedly to help the West crush ISIS, or ISIL.
Dunford said:
Let me be honest. I think the Syrian regime was reeling last July or August and is stabilized right now and Assad and the regime is certainly in much better shape than they were before the Russian intervention.
Which calls into question of course what the Russians were going in to do in the first place. The stated intent was to go after ISIL and now announced a withdrawal, from my perspective, there is still some work to be done against ISIL. So I’m not sure what their stated intent was.
But they certainly were effective in propping up the Assad regime.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
