Putin: Friend or Foe in Syria?, by Patrick Buchanan

From Patrick Buchanan, at antiwar.com:

What Vladimir Putin is up to in Syria makes far more sense than what Barack Obama and John Kerry appear to be up to in Syria.

The Russians are flying transports bringing tanks and troops to an air base near the coastal city of Latakia to create a supply chain to provide a steady flow of weapons and munitions to the Syrian army.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, an ally of Russia, has lost half his country to ISIS and the Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaida.

Putin fears that if Assad falls, Russia’s toehold in Syria and the Mediterranean will be lost, ISIS and al-Qaida will be in Damascus, and Islamic terrorism will have achieved its greatest victory.

Is he wrong?

Winston Churchill famously said in 1939: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

Exactly. Putin is looking out for Russian national interests.

And who do we Americans think will wind up in Damascus if Assad falls? A collapse of that regime, not out of the question, would result in a terrorist takeover, the massacre of thousands of Alawite Shiites and Syrian Christians, and the flight of millions more refugees into Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey – and thence on to Europe.

Putin wants to prevent that. Don’t we?

Why then are we spurning his offer to work with us?

Are we still so miffed that when we helped to dump over the pro-Russian regime in Kiev, Putin countered by annexing Crimea?

Get over it.

Understandably, there is going to be friction between the two greatest military powers. Yet both of us have a vital interest in avoiding war with each other and a critical interest in seeing ISIS degraded and defeated.

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