What Syria means for Russia

At the peak of its vainglorious Cold War pomp, the USA reckoned to maintain forces sufficient to fight two major wars and one minor war – simultaneously.  Well, it was never put to the test.  But perhaps there’s the measure of a true global superpower.  Putin, of course, fancies his Russia as a superpower …

I wonder how he’d assess his standing the day after Damascus fell.  To describe this as humiliating for him is an understatement: if you can’t see it, you obviously don’t read much from the teeming world of fiercely patriotic Russian ‘milblogs’.  He must own to an intelligence failure on a par with Israel’s, pre October 2023; the loss of a client regime in under a fortnight; in material terms, the loss of his logistical springboard to Africa, where he aspires to a buccaneering, influential and lucrative interventionist positioning; and in political terms, the loss of prestige.

Ah, prestige.  Who uses that term these days?  In my earliest soldiering, I found myself briefly under the tuition of a Chief Instructor who’d fought in the closing 12 months of WW2 and in many a campaign through the ’50s and 60′s.   He told us that everything he’d done, all across the globe, was for the sake of upholding and extending British prestige.  If, today, we are too post-imperial to care about such things well, across most of the world and most definitely including Russia, prestige matters immensely.

Putin and his Russia just aren’t up to it.  How much does he look forward to his next meeting with Xi?  With Kim?  With Erdogan?  The man who can’t prosecute a mid-sized war in his own back yard, nor prop up a single strategically vital client on whose territory he maintains sizeable naval, army and air assets.  The man who, for all his much vaunted experience of decades and supposed statecraft, even now doesn’t realise that the enemy gets a vote?  Even after Ukraine indeed turned out, as predicted, to be Finland rather than Georgia. 

See, Volodya, superpowers need to be cognisant of how, when they extend themselves in foreign lands, it’s necessary to do a great deal more than plonk down some forces, kick a little ass, and then assume everything’s bought and paid for.  Check out Rome in its prime, Britain, the USA – and note just what an all-enveloping, wrap-around approach needs to be taken to hold what you think you’ve got.   How many snipers and opportunistic hit-and-runners you need to be prepared for.  What all those other carping, jealous powers can do, with so little effort and just a little hostile intent, to incommode you and your positions on your faraway clients’ turf.  How (in the military idiom) if you want to hold the line at a river, you must hold both banks.  Oh, how much all-round capability it all requires!  Capability you just don’t have.

If you ask me, this humiliation will result in Putin lashing out, and bodes worse for Ukraine than anything else so far.  Which other cat can he kick?  But even there … the enemy has a vote.

ND