Another Syria Failure
Signs that Russia may deploy its military to save Assad.
It’s hard to believe, but the debacle that is the Obama Administration’s Syria policy could get worse. U.S. sources have been leaking that Russia may be preparing for a major military deployment to keep Bashar Assad in power in Damascus.
By some reports quoting Western diplomats, a Russian expeditionary force is already in Syria preparing for the arrival of jets and attack helicopters to carry out strikes against Islamic State. The State Department said in a weekend statement that Secretary of State John Kerry warned his Russian counterpart against such an intervention in a phone call.
No doubt that warning will work about as well as Mr. Kerry’s demands that the Kremlin stop promoting separatist forces against Ukraine. The Kremlin denied the reports of Russian deployments in Syria as “premature,” which is hardly reassuring. The implication is that Russia will do whatever it wants in Syria, and the U.S. can do nothing about it.
Mr. Assad is a Russian ally, and Vladimir Putin isn’t about to let the Syrian government fall without a bigger fight. Like so much else in the Middle East, President Obama has created an opening for this Russian intervention by minimizing U.S. interests in the outcome of Syria’s civil war. He has refused to offer more than token help to pro-Western Syrians, thus ceding the battleground to radical Islamists or the Assad-Russia-Iran-Hezbollah axis.
Don’t expect a decline in the flow of refugees anytime soon.
