The Bear on the prowl

HE NOTICED. As secretary of state, John Kerry has been so busy presiding over the disintegration of American foreign policy— as in Iran and eastern Europe, to begin with—that it’s front-page news when he notices still another advance by Tsar Vladimir’s resurgent Russian empire.

This time the Russians are leapfrogging across the Mediterranean to establish a base in Syria. (“Russian jets, missiles in Syria trouble U.S.”—Page 1A, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 20, 2015.) And our secretary of state warns that Moscow may be using the threat posed by the Islamic State to advance its own aggressive designs in Syria. Gosh, ya think? To quote the wire story out of the

New York Times: “LONDON — Russia’s military buildup in Syria now includes surface-to-air missiles as well as combat aircraft with air-to-air capability, deployments that raise ‘serious questions’ about Moscow’s role in the region, Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday. Russian officials have said that the purpose of the buildup at a base in Syria’s coastal Latakia province is to combat Islamic State militants. But the deployment of air defense systems and fighter aircraft—weapons that can be used against a conventionally armed foe but that have little utility against extremist fighters—has spurred concerns that Moscow’s goal is also to establish a military outpost in the Middle East.”

It sounds just like the bad old days, when the Soviets armed both Egypt’s charismatic dictator, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the Assad of the moment in Syria with all the weapons they needed to threaten the peace of the Mideast.

And now John Kerry sounds shocked—shocked—when he realizes the Russians are replaying that same old game. If he really is surprised, he may be the only one. The Bear never stops prowling in his search for an opening.

Ronald Reagan once compared Russian strategy to that of a hotel burglar who tries room after room till he finds one that’s been left unlocked. And this feckless administration has left doors unlocked all over Europe and the Middle East.