{"id":13793,"date":"2015-10-12T18:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T09:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/?p=13793"},"modified":"2015-10-14T21:01:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T12:01:59","slug":"russia-passes-the-west-in-race-across-the-syrian-minefield-10102015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/archives\/13793","title":{"rendered":"\u201cRussia passes the West in Race across the Syrian Minefield\u201d (10\/10\/2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u3000In his article contributed to the Japan Times, Professor Ramesh Thakur of the Australian National University postulates that Russian President Vladmir Putin has challenged the notion that the West is the chosen ruler of the world and the US President is one who must be obeyed. Please click here<\/a><\/strong> for the full text of Professor Ramesh Thakur.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
The Japan Times<\/i><\/br>Saturday, Oct. 10, 2015<\/div>\n

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Russia passes the West in race across the Syrian minefield<\/b><\/u><\/div>\n

<\/br><\/br><\/p>\n

BY RAMESH THAKUR<\/a><\/div>\n

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\u3000CANBERRA \u2013 Russian President Vladimir Putin must have missed the memo that the West is the chosen ruler of the world and the U.S. president is He Who Must Not Be Disobeyed. They alone are judge of the legality and legitimacy of their own and everyone else\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n

\u3000The invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein on a trumped-up pretext was not an example of great power aggression in the 21st century because Westerners say it was not. U.S. senators and officials joining street protests to overthrow Ukraine\u2019s elected president is exporting democracy, a fine U.S. tradition. Putin\u2019s opposition to the new leader installed in Kiev by a putsch is proof of Russian revanchism. Reclaiming Crimea \u2014 whatever its people want \u2014 is brutal aggression.<\/p>\n

\u3000Washington\u2019s subordination of American values to U.S. interests is realism; Russian violation of global norms is cynicism. At West Point on May 28, 2014, President Barack Obama insisted: \u201cThe United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it.\u201d In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 24, Obama affirmed: \u201cAll of us \u2014 big nations and small \u2014 must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.\u201d Barely five months apart, the two statements are not compatible \u2014 no country that reserves the right to use military force unilaterally is committed to obeying global norms. Indeed the second criticized Russian actions in Crimea and Ukraine to defend its core interests.<\/p>\n

\u3000Westerners similarly believe that in the Mideast, they decide who are the bad and good guys; which groups can be airstrike targets; and which country can keep an undeclared nuclear arsenal and which must never be permitted to get the bomb. They determine that, in the same week, Russian incursions into Turkish airspace were intentional but U.S. strikes on an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed 21 people were a tragic mistake.<\/p>\n

\u3000If Washington says any leader has to go, the only proper response is: How soon and where to? If chaos, anarchy and mass violence reign as national institutions are destroyed and the country reduced to wasteland, that only proves how ungrateful the natives are for not garlanding the virtuous liberators with flowers and singing \u201cKumbaya\u201d as peace, good governance and prosperity break out. How was Washington to know the extremists would quickly occupy the power vacuum its invasion created just because that has happened every time before?<\/p>\n

\u3000As for the fanciful idea that Russia has any role in the Middle East \u2014 Putin must also have missed the companion memo that Russia was defeated in the Cold War and should fade quietly into history\u2019s night as a once-great power.<\/p>\n

\u3000Unfortunately, in a world that is better educated than ever before and globally interconnected, and one in which power is leaching from the West to key countries among the rest, international double standards are increasingly unsustainable. Russia is not as easily intimidated now as it was in Kosovo in 1999 and Putin refuses to listen any longer to Washington\u2019s fables and London\u2019s fairy tales. Mark Twain said \u201cGod created war so that Americans would learn geography.\u201d A cursory glance at the map shows Syria is much closer to Russia than to the U.S. Russia\u2019s military capacity to protect its interests in the Mideast would be vastly more difficult if Crimea were to be detached from its control.<\/p>\n

\u3000Moscow\u2019s pragmatic calculations include stopping the export of jihadi extremism to Russian regions like Chechnya, arms sales to client regimes, a Russian naval base at Tartus and fears of a loss of international credibility if an ally is abandoned under pressure from abroad. The Saudi Arabia and Turkey-led Sunni crescent is firmly pro-Western and indifferent to Russia. Syria is a key Russian bulwark against U.S. interests in the Middle East. Therefore Moscow has little to lose in regional relations with Shiite regimes by backing Syria.<\/p>\n

\u3000Like Obama in domestic U.S. politics, Putin is vulnerable to internal critics for signs of weakness in dealings with the West and concerns over a possible northeast flow of Islamist instability. He wins popularity by pointing the finger of blame at Western intelligence and special forces for chaos around Russia\u2019s periphery and in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u3000If Western troops had intervened directly during the last four years and left behind a broken Syria to join the Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya wastelands, Moscow would have been free of the taint of having triggered the chaos and bloodbath. Russia\u2019s previous caution was described by a Russian Mideast expert as: \u201cIn a race across a minefield it is wise to let other runners overtake you.\u201d Now Russia has escalated its military involvement and could suffer significant casualties in the Syrian minefield. But if Putin succeeds in killing the Islamic State virus, he will earn the world\u2019s gratitude.<\/p>\n

\u3000This should be a win-win situation for the West: either Moscow cleans up the mess created partly by nonstop Western meddling in affairs it does not understand, or else strategic rival Russia gets trapped in a quagmire.<\/p>\n

\u3000Self-deluding fantasy notwithstanding, hard-line Islamists quickly took over the anti-Assad insurgency that had begun as a genuinely popular and peaceful uprising, and was crushed by brute force. Earlier this year many U.S. intelligence analysts let it be known they were unhappy at facts and analyses being cherry picked to fit the administration\u2019s upbeat narrative regarding Islamic State gains and losses.<\/p>\n

\u3000To recall the pragmatic wisdom of China\u2019s late strongman Deng Xiaoping, a cat\u2019s color does not matter so long as it catches mice. A Xinhua commentary on Sept. 15 noted: \u201cThe main sources of today\u2019s refugees \u2014 Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan \u2014 are targets of U.S. intervention, which led to devastation, chaos, deteriorating domestic security and extensive displacements.\u201d In columnist Hu Yao\u2019s view, the U.S. should be held \u201caccountable for having destabilized these countries\u201d and \u201cleaving them in a hopeless mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u3000Peace will remain elusive in Iraq and Syria until Islamic State is defeated. If the price of Syrian and Mideast stabilization is the survival of Assad as a secular dictator, is that really such a bad outcome compared with the anarchy unleashed in Iraq and Libya by the \u201cdemocracy\u201d and \u201chuman rights\u201d promoting West?<\/p>\n

\u3000Like Yogi Berra, when he comes to a fork in the Middle East road, Obama believes in taking it. Where the West has vacillated between trying to force Assad\u2019s departure and resisting the spread of jihad, Moscow has been clear-eyed and hardheaded: the top goal is to \u201cdefeat, degrade and destroy\u201d (an Obama mantra) the jihadi threat, and for this Assad is a necessary partner. Moscow has urged the West to make common cause on this.<\/p>\n

\u3000Recalling Winston Churchill\u2019s words, the Americans have yet to exhaust all other options before settling on the right course of action. As conservative U.S. politician Patrick Buchanan wrote in his column on Sept. 17, a collapse of the Assad regime \u201cwould 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 \u2014 and thence on to Europe. Putin wants to prevent that. Don\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/br><\/br><\/br>
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<\/p>\n
Ramesh Thakur is a professor at Australian National University.<\/div>\n


\n<\/br><\/br><\/p>\n
(Source: http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/opinion\/2015\/10\/09\/commentary\/world-commentary\/russia-passes-west-race-across-syrian-minefield\/<\/a>)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u3000In his article contributed to the Japan Times, Professor Ramesh Thakur of the Australian National University postulates that Russian President Vladmir Putin has challenged the notion that the West is the chosen ruler of the world and the US President is one who must be obeyed. Please click here<\/a><\/strong> for the full text of Professor Ramesh Thakur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13793"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13802,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13793\/revisions\/13802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shasegawa.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}