Why Putin Wants Syria by Jiri Valenta and Leni Friedman Valenta
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Why Putin Wants Syria by Jiri Valenta and Leni Friedman Valenta ussia’s military intervention in Syria that began on September 30, 2015, is its first major intrusion into the Levant since June 1772 when “Russian forces Rbombarded, stormed, and captured Beirut, a fortress on the coast of Ottoman Syria.”1 Then as now, the Russians backed a ruthless local client; then as now, they found themselves in “a boiling cauldron of factional-ethnic strife, which they tried to simplify with cannonades and gunpowder.”2 But why? Why did President Vladimir Putin intervene in a faraway country, hundreds of miles away from Russia proper Ukraine while in the midst of his temporarily frozen proxy war with Ukraine? So far there has been no serious effort to probe the un- derlying causes of the Kremlin’s surprise move, let alone in conjunction with Putin’s three other military Russia has been largely landlocked for most of its history, and interventions along Russia’s Moscow has always valued the Crimean peninsula for its periphery: Georgia in 2008, coastline (see above). Catherine the Great took the Crimea, founding the port of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea Crimea in 2014, and fleet, and established a commercial port in Odessa. But, the southeastern Ukraine in 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in an independent 2014-15. Yet it is only by Ukraine, and Moscow lost not only the port of Odessa but its filling in these connecting prized naval port of Sevastopol. dots that the key questions 1 Simon Sebag Montefiore, “Putin’s Imperial Adventure in Syria,” The New York Times, Oct. 9, 2015. 2 Ibid. MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Spring 2016 Valenta: Putin and Syria / 1 concerning the intervention will withdraw and can be addressed: Did Putin repeatedly invokes invite you to dine Moscow seek confron- Russia’s “strategic interests” genially that same tation with a view to in the Crimea. evening.4 dismembering NATO and Both Kissinger’s so- weakening Europe, or did phisticated discourse and Churchill’s ana- it pursue the much narrower goals of regaining logue, however, need an important qualifier. the great power status lost during the Russia’s expansion has also been the result Gorbachev-Yeltsin eras and protecting national of a major geopolitical handicap. Except for security and commercial interests? And can the Baltic coast, conquered by Peter the the West engage Russia in Syria in a limited Great in the eighteenth century, Russia has partnership against radical Islam as it did in been largely landlocked for most of history. World War II against Nazi Germany, or is In the north, its Arctic Ocean was frozen. In any collaboration with the wily Putin simply the east, the Pacific was also ice-covered for out of the question? most of the year. In the south, its Caspian Sea was closed. The Black Sea was open but only through those tiniest of bottlenecks, the Landlocked Heartland and Straits of Bosporus and the Dardanelles (or Strategic Interests in Crimea the Turkish Straits), jealously guarded by its Henry Kissinger has eloquently Ottoman masters. Small wonder that Russia posited Russia’s historical expansion as continually lusted to possess both them and pursuance of a the Crimean peninsula. As early as the seventeenth century, Peter the Great tried to special rhythm of its own over the conquer the Crimea, then an Ottoman vassal, centuries, expanding over land 5 mass … interrupted occasionally but failed. over time … only to return again, Only in the late eighteenth century like a tide crossing the beach. From did the Empress Catherine the Great and her Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin paramour, Count Grigory Potemkin, succeed circumstances have changed, but in taking the Crimea, founding the port of the rhythm has remained Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea extraordinarily consistent.3 fleet, and a commercial port in Odessa. Yet Winston Churchill had a different despite continual wars with the Ottomans, explanation: the Turkish Straits remained beyond Russia’s grasp as Britain—and to a lesser extent The Russians will try all the rooms France and the Kingdom of Sardinia in the house, enter those that are not (Italy)—repeatedly came to Turkey’s rescue. locked, and when they come to one that cannot be broken into, they This culminated in the 1853-56 Crimean war 4 Walter Issacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 364. 5 For a similar geopolitical interpretation, see Efraim Karsh, The Tail Wags the Dog: International 3 Henry Kissinger, World Order (New York: Penguin Politics and the Middle East (London and New Publishing Group, 2015), p. 52. York: Bloomsbury, 2015), chap. 5. MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Spring 2016 Valenta: Putin and Syria / 2 and the attendant Treaty of Paris that kept The economic collapse that followed Russia caged in the Black Sea. It is hardly to only made things worse. Lack of resources be surprised that Putin, an avid student of and two bloody wars in Chechnya brought history, repeatedly invokes Russia’s “stra- government cuts to the Black Sea fleet. tegic interests” in the Crimea. Russian ships only rarely appeared in the Today, Russia is not as militarily Mediterranean. Then in 2004, Ukraine and dependent on the Turkish Straits as in the Georgia underwent their color revolutions, past. But throughout the twentieth century to bringing to their helms two pro-Western the present day, and despite the technological leaders—Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine and revolution and Moscow’s formidable air Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia—who hoped forces, the Turkish Straits have remained a that their nascent states would join, not only factor for the Russian navy. the European Union, but eventually the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Worse yet for Russia, Yushchenko wanted The Fall of the USSR the Russian fleet out of Sevastopol at the The 1991 collapse of the Soviet expiration of the lease in 2017. Union was an even larger setback than the Catherine the Great, Putin’s most Crimean war. Analysts have long focused on admired Romanov ruler, was shaking in her the loss to the empire of vast pieces of real grave. One need not speculate about Putin. In estate with the newly-won freedom of the 2005, who could be sure that NATO ships non-Russian republics in the Baltics and the would not be eventually deployed in Russia’s Caucasus as well as the second largest formerly principal, if not sacred, Black Sea republic, Ukraine. Yet they have not given port? If Russia lost Sevastopol, where could it due consideration to what else Russia lost: waterways, coastlines, and ports, in short—the power of the Russian navy. In Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Moscow lost cold water ports acquired by Peter the Great in the eighteenth century for its Baltic fleet. In Ukraine, it lost not only its ownership of the coastline but also the com- mercial port of Odessa. Most of all, the Russians lost their prized warm water naval port of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet for Hafez Assad, Bashar’s father, signed an agreement permitting Moscow to use the port of Tartus (pictured above) in return for more than two centuries. advanced weapons for Syria, thus turning the port into a facility for Moscow was now forced to maintenance of smaller ships in the Black Sea fleet. Then in 2005, rent it from the newly inde- Bashar succeeded in having Russia write off three-fourths of Syria’s pendent Ukraine. debt for arms sales. Increased Russia-Syrian military cooperation followed with upgrading of the Tartus port for larger ships. MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Spring 2016 Valenta: Putin and Syria / 3 go? Another port was recorded in his diary on needed, but where? The concept of military deception July 15, 1972: Novorossiysk on the Black is a permanent feature of Sea Coast could be of help, Russian interventionism. This [Sadat’s de- but it is principally a mand for Soviet commercial port. advisors withdrawal] began a turmoil. Egypt’s premier Sidki was persuaded to come to Moscow, and, I think, they have Masters of Military Deception settled it … they must have given Flashback to 1971, when President much to him, if not all he wanted. Hafez Assad, father of the present Syrian President of Syria Assad, too, a dictator, signed an agreement permitting week ago … has forced us to Moscow to use Tartus in return for selling practically approve the “military advanced weapons to Syria, thus turning the solution” and received a lot from quiet fishing port into a logistical facility for us.7 materiel and technical maintenance of smaller ships in Russia’s Black Sea fleet. This version was reaffirmed on the first Two years later, Hafez, a Soviet-trained pilot, anniversary of the war by the Egyptian joined Egypt in preparing an attack on U.S. government-controlled Ruz al-Yusuf magazine: ally Israel with the help of Russian advisors The various government agen- and arms. cies spread rumors and stories What happened next explodes a that were exaggerated, to say the decades’ long interpretation that the July least, about deficiencies, both 1972 expulsion of Soviet advisors from quantitative and qualitative, Egypt by Anwar Sadat due to Moscow’s regarding the weapons required refusal to provide the necessary arms for his to begin the battle against Israel, planned war against Israel generated an at the very time that … the two unbridgeable schism between the two states.6 parties—Egypt and the USSR— As revealed in the declassified diary of had reached agreement [on Gorbachev’s foreign policy advisor Anatoly weapons that] in fact, were 8 Chernyaev, unbeknown to the outside world, beginning to arrive.