Vladimir Putin’s proposed deal on Syria’s chemical weapons unveiled this week is Russia’s strongest bid yet to reemerge as a power broker in Middle East politics — ironically on the fortieth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the last US-Russia confrontation in the Middle East.

But however suspicious to Western eyes, this bid reflects far more than just Russian imperial impulses going back to the czars. Nor does it spring from any desire to uphold any standards of international law that Putin mentioned in his recent op-ed in the New York Times — standards the Russian president has flaunted many times himself.