The civil war in Syria had been going for four years when in September 2015 Russian war planes were dispatched to support the tottering Assad administration in Damascus. The action took the world by surprise just as the Crimean annexation had done a year and a half earlier.
Until then President Obama had been giving diplomatic and some financial support to the rebels while holding back from full-scale intervention, and President Assad appeared on the edge of defeat. Putin’s move began to change the entire military picture. It also meant Russia was challenging the line of American foreign policy in the Middle East, which shocked foreign observers, coming so soon after the Russians had worked in agreement with America, the European Union and China between April and July to get Iran to abandon research that might be used to develop nuclear weaponry. In return the Iranians received a promise about the lifting of economic sanctions. Two years earlier, moreover, the Russians and Americans had agreed on measures to ensure the definitive destruction of Syria’s stocks of chemical weapons. But Putin had made no secret of his opinion that America had taken the wrong side in Syria’s civil war, and the orders he gave to his air force translated words into action.
The Americans received no advance alert from Moscow. When Secretary of State Kerry brought up the matter with Foreign Affairs Minister Lavrov – ‘Sergei, you guys are now bombing in Syria and moving troops? What’s up?’ – Lavrov appeared taken aback, blanching and hurrying off to talk on his mobile phone. He had persistently said that military intervention in the Syrian civil war was a violation of the rules and policy of the United Nations Security Council.1 Unless Lavrov was putting on a show of ignorance, Kerry concluded, the probability was that Putin had not chosen to inform him.2 As with Crimea, the Russian Foreign Ministry counted for little in Moscow when decisions of strategic consequence were made.
Putin and his confidants assumed that the risks were minimal. It had never been easier for Russian armed forces to make an impact in the Middle East: they had equipment no fighting force in Syria could match, and Putin was keen to test out the General Staff’s improvements in planning and training. As important as anything else was that Obama, shivering at the record of military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, was reluctant to extend American power any further in the region. His predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush, had left him with the task of managing the Iraqi situation where American troops were garrisoned in numbers, which he had dealt with by rushing through preparations for the Baghdad government to take full responsibility for the country and the withdrawal of United States personnel, tanks and aircraft. Chaos and sectarian disputes ensued, probably an inevitable consequence of Saddam Hussein’s overthrow: as democratic elections proceeded, the long-persecuted Shia majority visited vengeance on the Sunni regions, and Iraq collapsed into vicious civil war.
At the start of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Tunisia in December 2010, Obama had reacted with a mixture of delight and trepidation. Country after country in the Middle East subsided into political tumult. In Libya, unlike Tunisia, the government reacted with brutality, and the media around the world, including Russia, stirred up opinion in favour of intervention against Muammar Gaddafi, whom nobody could deny was a corrupt dictator who for decades had suppressed dissent with unflinching cruelty. The French president Nicolas Sarkozy, followed by British Prime Minister David Cameron, opted to send in air power against government and police facilities, and Obama found himself pushed into supplying military assistance in the form of signals intelligence. Gaddafi and his sons made bloodthirsty threats against the Libyan rebels, and the Western powers, after the international recriminations that had ensued from the Iraq emergency in 2002–3, sought endorsement from the United Nations.
As America, France and Britain stood together, in May 2011 President Medvedev indicated that his administration agreed with them, though unlike them Moscow declined to break diplomatic relations with Tripoli. But it also established links with some of the diverse and fractious forces of rebellion, and Medvedev went along with the conclusion reached at the G8 summit in Deauville that ‘Gaddafi had lost legitimacy and had to go’.3 The French and British bombing continued, disabling the Libyan government’s capacity to operate, and in Benghazi and elsewhere the rebels grew in strength. Libya was breaking up; Gaddafi was pressed into a small Tripoli enclave. As the fighting in Tripoli descended into street warfare, the government fell apart and the Gaddafi family went into hiding. What followed was not an agreement on a new Libyan government but civil war. Regional divisions widened, and Gaddafi was trapped and lynched in the capital’s streets before he could be put on trial. Western diplomatic and financial support was provided, but the mayhem continued.
The first sign that the troubles had spread to Syria came in January 2011. The protests in Damascus against the al-Assad administration were instantly suppressed, but they spread to the regions. In cities like Deraa, Aleppo and Homs, discontent intensified. As had taken place in Libya, there was a cycle of protest and repression. The Ba’ath administration had been in power since 1963, and its dictatorship was founded on the Alawite religious group, which was only a tiny minority of the Syrian population.
The American administration was nervous about pursuing a ‘regime change’ policy in Syria, but Obama, swayed by evidence of Assad’s grievous assaults on civilians in the rebel-held cities, indicated that America would enter the conflict if the Syrian government were to cross specific ‘red lines’ of misconduct: any act of biological or chemical warfare, he warned, would constitute a casus belli. Yet in 2013 he moved away from his own ‘red lines’ for fear of bringing down the Ba’ath administration, seeing that Assad’s removal would in all probability lead to a strengthening of the regional power of Sunni extremist factions, inspired and supported by Islamic State or Al-Qaida. Islamic State, having sprouted in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, had spread like knotweed across the border in eastern Syria. In 2014 Obama ordered the bombing of Islamic State and Al-Qaida strongholds as well as some other anti-Assad rebel groups. But though he sent weapons to anti-Assad groups, he held back from supplying them in sufficient quantity to bring down Assad in Damascus, and even authorized the payment of compensation for a bombing raid that mistakenly hit Syria’s government forces.
Throughout the Syrian civil war there was an opportunity for Obama to enforce a no-fly zone over the country. But he was scorched by the outcome of such decisions in Libya, where two of his NATO allies had pushed him into a more active policy than his instincts recommended. His goal for America was to end its role as the world’s policeman. The undesired result was that Assad sent his bombers over rebel-held cities to carry out raids that caused thousands of civilian deaths. The world’s broadcast and print media covered the devastation. But Obama held to his judgement that full-scale American intervention would have the effect of intensifying the civil war and creating ideal conditions for jihadi extremism. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Cameron was in favour of armed action but a majority of the House of Commons rejected it, mindful of how the chaotic military intervention in Iraq had given rise to Islamic State. NATO was still routinely condemned in the Kremlin as a bloodthirsty and rapacious war machine, but the truth was that America and its most powerful military allies were nervous about letting loose the dogs of war again.
Evidence grew about Assad’s use of chemical weapons. For Obama, this was intolerable; Russia, though, was reluctant to give credence to the reports. Syrian official spokesmen said rebel forces had cynically carried out the attacks in order to besmirch the air force’s reputation. After weeks of altercation, the Russians accepted the Americans’ case and put pressure on Assad to renounce such methods of warfare. In return, Obama desisted from an all-out assault on Damascus. (In fact, as everyone knew, Obama had been reluctant to increase America’s direct armed engagement anyway.)
In September 2015, after Bashar al-Assad lost several cities to the Syrian rebels, the Kremlin decided on direct armed intervention to prop up Syria’s government and armed forces. Obama stayed out of Syria and confined American efforts to supplying the Kurdish armed units against Islamic State in Iraq. Increasingly reliant on Russian help, Assad agreed to Putin’s proposal to develop Russia’s naval facility at Tartus on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, and also allowed the expansion of Russian signals intelligence capacity further north at Latakia. But Assad needed more than this to survive the civil war. Talks were held with Russia about increasing the scope of military assistance. Putin gave his consent, and from September 2015 the Russian air force began bombing rebel-held Syrian cities. As footage of mass carnage reached Western TV stations there was an international outcry, which Putin brushed aside. ‘Our task’, he publicly explained on the Rossia-1 television channel on 11 October, ‘is to stabilize the legitimate government and establish conditions for the pursuit of political compromise.’4
The American administration replied that Russian bombs were falling on Syrian forces committed to democratizing the country and removing the Assad dictatorship, but Russia’s answer was that four years of civil war had spawned the growth of jihadi groups associated with Al-Qaida and Islamic State, which also had a contempt for democracy and Syrian democrats. Putin’s case was that the Arab Spring and the America-led reaction had fomented a disruption the jihadis were gratefully exploiting.
While refusing to be pessimistic about the prospects of peace in the Middle East, Putin guards against overconfidence, recalling that on one of his visits to Israel he had received the following advice from its prime minister Ariel Sharon: ‘Mr President, right now you are in a region where no one can be trusted on any matter.’5 What Putin wants for the Middle East is stability, and he is not worried about principles of human rights:
On your question about whether Assad is or is not our ally and about what we want in Syria. You know, I’ll tell you straight what we don’t want: we don’t want the situation in Syria to develop as it developed in Libya or Iraq.
Putin went on to endorse the military coup against President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The essential requirement was to eradicate all forms of religious fanaticism:
Due credit should go to President el-Sisi in Egypt, as I’ve already said to him, because if he hadn’t assumed the responsibility, shown courage and taken control of the country into his hand, then the same could have happened in Egypt as Libya. In my view, the need is to spare no effort in strengthening legitimate state power in the countries of the region.
Over the entire Middle East, as well as several other Muslim countries, there hung the terrible possibility of government by fanatics, unless foreign powers were willing to act:
This applies to Syria. The need is to restore and strengthen the emerging structures of power in a country like Iraq or a country like Libya. To achieve stabilization in a country like Somalia, for example, and in other countries. To strengthen state power in Afghanistan. But this doesn’t mean leaving everything as it is. Naturally it’s necessary to carry through political reforms on the basis of this stabilization.6
About Assad himself, Putin was never effusive, telling NBC reporter Megyn Kelly at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum plenary session on 2 June 2017 that Russian foreign policy is aimed at preserving Syria’s statehood rather than keeping Assad personally in power.7 Putin also aimed to lever the United States out of the region and regain for Russia the presence and influence that the USSR had once enjoyed. His actions in Syria were part of his effort to confirm his country’s status as a great power.
Around the world the talk was of Russian self-confidence and assertiveness, permitting Putin himself to express a note of caution. While ambitious to play an active role in Middle Eastern affairs, he was aware that Russia alone would be unable to bring the Syrian civil war to a halt. Ultimately the Russians would need partners, and Putin had some hope of enlisting support from the American, Saudi and Jordanian leaderships.8 He did not mention the Turks and Iranians, even though he had both of them in his sights as possible diplomatic and military partners, and he repudiated the suggestion that he was aiming to complete the job solely through his alliance with Assad. He had told Assad, he revealed, that he intended to work with those Sunni tribes who were fighting against Islamic State – and this despite Assad’s coalition of support inclining towards the Shia side.9
The Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier caused a sensation on its long passage across the Mediterranean to the Syrian coast in summer 2017, but it looked less impressive on its return voyage, churning out thick smoke from its dilapidated fuel system. The British Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, mocked the Russians by inviting the world to compare it with the UK’s new carrier Queen Elizabeth. Such was Russian sensitivity that the London embassy then instantly and none too convincingly tweeted that the Defence Ministry in Moscow already had plans for the introduction by 2025 of a superb rival to the United States’ gigantic vessels.10 What was beyond doubt was Russia’s return as a great power on land and in the air.
Russia’s engagement with Turkey resulted from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s search for new friends after seeing off the attempted military coup against him in 2016. But though the Turkish leader embraced Putin in Moscow, he still pursued goals that caused discomfort in the Kremlin. Ankara has specific national interests in the Syrian civil war that were disturbing for Russian policy: it was hostile to territorial concessions to the Kurds of Iraq and Syria, for fear of reanimating the Kurdish struggle for independence from Turkey. The Turks also had a horror of the kind of victory for Assad that might drive millions more Syrian refugees across the border onto Turkish soil. Turkey’s foreign policy had also clashed for years with Russia over Karabagh, the Armenian-inhabited enclave of Azerbaijan, where the Turks consistently championed the Azerbaijani side against Armenia. More recently, in 2014, Turkey had espoused the cause of the Crimean Tatars and expressed displeasure about Crimea’s annexation. Erdoğan had to bear in mind that public opinion in Turkey could turn hostile to Russia. His rapprochement with Putin had its potential pitfalls.11
Another problem, at least for Putin, was that Turkey and Iran have conflicting interests in the Middle East, which meant he could not be sure of holding his international coalition together. He learned quite soon not to take Iran’s support for granted when, in autumn 2016, the Russian air force launched attacks on Syrian cities from Hamedan airport. Tehran lodged a protest, and Russia lost permission for military operations from the area. Leading a coalition is not the same thing as dominating it. The Iranians were a crucial component of the Assad regime, doing much of the fighting on the ground near to Damascus and financing the extension into Syria of Hezbollah’s militia, a Shia religious and paramilitary organization based originally in Lebanon, with an insatiable zeal to help in suppressing Sunni jihadis and other rebels who confronted Assad.
A further complication was that Saudi Arabia was subsidizing Sunni jihadism, meaning Iran and the Saudis were locked in a proxy war on Syrian soil. The danger of widening their strategic duel was realized in their interventions in the Yemeni civil war on the Arabian peninsula which erupted in 2015, with the Saudis organizing bombing raids on cities held by the Houthi rebels. Russia stood apart from the conflict, seeking to avoid dispute with Saudi Arabia, which had enabled it to achieve observer status at the World Islamic Conference. Indeed, Russia’s foreign policy was aimed at showing it to be the friend of Islam around the globe.
Moscow also wanted to preserve the good relations with Israel that had existed since the Gorbachëv period, even though Israeli policy was pugnaciously hostile to Iran, Hezbollah and – to a lesser degree – the Assad administration. The potential for a clash between Damascus and Tel Aviv caused regional disquiet. In 2010 Israeli scientists had released the Stuxnet computer virus to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment infrastructure, and in February 2018, anxious about Iran’s rising influence in Syria and angered by an Iranian-produced drone flying into Israeli air space, Israel’s air force attacked and destroyed weapons storage depots at a base near Damascus. The Russians had to sit back and hope this would be the end of the conflict.
On 7 December 2017 Russia declared that the defeat of Islamic State in Syria was complete. But the trouble was only starting. In January 2018 Russia’s entente with Turkey enabled Erdoğan to begin a full military assault on Kurdish rebel forces occupying the borderlands of northern Syria. Before the Russian involvement these Kurds, supplied and trained by the Americans, had been a crucial fighting force against Islamic State. For Erdoğan, however, they were an enemy who could threaten to establish a state of Kurdistan on his frontiers.
Russian forces were steadily withdrawn, but not to the point of leaving Assad exposed to any serious threat of rebel attack, and Russia’s military installations and facilities were kept in place. Syrian aeroplanes, assisted by Russia-supplied technology, continued their bombing campaign. All the country’s main cities except for Idlib in the north were reoccupied by the government. Aleppo, whose ancient centre had become a moonscape, was once again a stronghold for Assad. Putin was exultant, but understood he had to be cautious. The bulk of the foreign pro-Assad ground forces came from Tehran, whose interests had never fully coincided with those of Russia, and without the Iranians Assad would quickly find himself beleaguered again. The Kremlin, however, remembered the lesson learned by the Soviet army in Afghanistan: that once the body bags of dead Russian soldiers were flown back to the USSR, their mothers were capable of making their distress into a matter of public import. This was one of the reasons why the Russian authorities had been trying, albeit without complete success, to disguise the military occupations of men killed in the fighting of eastern Ukraine from 2014. The concern was that bereaved mothers might earn public sympathy by making a public fuss about why Russia’s young servicemen were having to risk their lives in unnecessary wars.
From the standpoint of the Defence Ministry, however, the Syrian operations provided the scope to test the mettle of its forces after the weaknesses exposed in the 2008 Georgian war. Flight personnel in the Russian air force gained combat experience.12 Putin knew his administration’s prestige in Russia and abroad depended on success in the Middle East. In February 2018 Assad’s forces discredited themselves again when, according to credible sources, they reverted to using chemical weapons on rebel-held cities, but Russia rejected the recriminations at the United Nations Security Council. In the continued absence of American intervention – President Trump was implicitly following the line of the Obama administration – Putin and Shoigu felt they had carte blanche in Syria.
Trump had come to power arguing that American troops and resources were to be reserved for other purposes, and he broke with this only occasionally. When evidence emerged in April 2018 of Syria’s renewed use of chemical weapons, and the excruciating deaths of children, a scandalized Trump authorized retaliatory action by the US Air Force. But this was exceptional, and generally the Americans stood aside as Russian and Syrian warplanes pummelled rebel-held cities into rubble. At the end of the year Trump announced the intention of withdrawing the small number of American forces that were stationed in northern Syria, where they had been supporting the Kurds against Islamic State, reasoning that Islamic State was close to total defeat and America’s objective had been achieved. Putin was delighted: this freed Russia to help the Assad administration bring more cities and territory under its control. Though the Syrian civil war was a long way from being ended, thoughts began to switch to the task of economic reconstruction and a political settlement. Russia by its own lights had worked to bring the bloodshed to an end. In the process it had confirmed its resurgence as a great power. But the Russian authorities were in no position to supply the external finance that the Syrians would need. Assad’s expected victory was only the beginning of the end of war, and the entire Middle East crackled with fear and uncertainty.