Either way, Putin wins
Viewpoint: Washington Post (excerpted) The latest partial truce in Syria got off to a bad start Monday, with the regime of Bashar Assad reported to be bombing and shelling the very areas the deal is supposed to cover. Whether the truce will ever get off the ground will likely depend on whether Moscow can restrain its client dictator, who hours before the ceasefire began repeated his vow to recapture all of Syria by force. But Vladimir Putin’s regime at least has a motive to succeed: If it does, it will have realized Putin’s aspiration of imposing his will on the United States.
When Russia launched its direct military intervention in Syria a year ago, U.S. President Barack Obama predicted its only result would be a quagmire. Instead, the agreement struck by Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday with his Russian counterpart offers Putin everything he sought. The Assad regime, which was tottering a year ago, will be entrenched and its opposition dealt a powerful blow. The United States will meanwhile grant Putin’s long-standing demand that it join with Russia in targeting groups deemed to be terrorists. If serious political negotiations on Syria’s future ever take place, the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers will hold a commanding position.
In exchange for these sweeping concessions, which essentially abandon Obama’s one-time goal of freeing Syria from Assad and make the United States a junior partner of Russia in the Middle East’s most important ongoing conflict, Kerry promises that humanitarian lifelines will be opened into the besieged city of Aleppo and other areas subjected to surrender-or-starve tactics.
Putin and Assad have agreed to multiple previous truces, in Syria and, in Putin’s case, Ukraine — and violated all of them. Their reward has been to gain territory and strengthen their strategic positions, while receiving from the United States not sanction but more concessions and proposals for new deals. If the regimes observe their promises in this case, it may be because the time to exploit this U.S. administration — which has retreated from its red lines, allowed Russia to restore itself as a Middle East power and betrayed those Syrians who hoped to rid themselves of a blooddrenched dictator — is finally running out.