Letter #84 to Friends and Familiares: the Proof may be in the Putin...

It is time to listen our country’s leadership and to inform our respective Representatives and Senators of what we – each one of us – really believe to be the appropriate course of action with respect to Syria.  My opinion is plain and remains unchanged, variously categorizing me as smart, stupid or simply self-involved.  http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.mx/2013/08/letter-83-thoughts-on-syria-case-for.html That is not the purpose of this note to my loved ones. 

The best note of skepticism I have come across is that of one politician whom I trust, though his politics differ sharply from mine. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-j-kucinich/syria-war-questions_b_3870763.html  The arguments in favor are being presented capably by Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Hagel. http://www.c-span.org/flvPop.aspx?id=10737441229  My interest lies not in those two but in General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This letter, too, is about Syria. But not about Syria herself. Rather, I want to discuss just why Russia is acting the way she is.  For days, I have scratched my head in puzzlement as to why Russia is being almost provocative in the face of terrible depredations, evidently attributable to the régime she supports categorically.  This afternoon, when I was composing my weekly letter to my compañeros in the engineering research center where I serve, I was thinking about a question several colleagues had posed to me as "their" norteamericano.

That question was why the U.S. government is not listening at all to the government of Vladimir Putin.  Admittedly, there is far more interest around me in why the National Security Agency is monitoring the various communications of Presidents Peña-Nieto and Rousseff, respectively.  (My response being because it is easier to spy than ‘google’, a dumb joke that wrests the requisite chuckles).  Nevertheless, as I tied together the Syria debate with technology transfer in Mexico (?¿?¿?), President Putin’s view came into focus.

A basic question – a serious question – about the Syria discourse remains unaddressed.  Specifically, the reasons I have heard about why President Putin is acting like a jerk are unconvincing.

1. Vladimir likes to “poke America in the eye”.  This argument seems weak and does not get any stronger with the re-telling ad nauseam.  It is hard to believe that a man who has survived the rough-and-tumble politics of the U.S.S.R. and of Russia would allow his personal feelings to affect his judgement and behavior when the stakes are so high.  Poking in the eye is reserved for things like Mr Snowden but to risk a regional war or worse? No, I don’t think so.
2. Russia needs a Mediterranean port for her navy to maintain her status as a world power.  This thinking, at least as far as the port is concerned, makes more sense.  Yet why did President Putin not offer a deal: “Hello, Joe, we will support your meddling in Syria if you guarantee that we retain the right to our base in beautiful downtown Tartous?
3. Back in the U.S.S.R.  This sentiment tends to link onto the previous idea of naval access to the Mediterranean.  It argues that President Putin rues, misses and aims to restore the lost status of a super-power.  Nevertheless, setting out the great-power swap would play better into this fantasy as co-equals negotiating the fate of another bastard-child of the Sykes-Picot affair.
4. Economics.  This argues that dueling pipelines through Turkey versus the Caucusus is driving this pariah status assumed by Russia.  Honestly, I know too little to address that question.  This trade-off could well be true but I wonder if it would rise to the level of great power confrontation.  Additionally, given the harrowing destruction of the one-time jewel of the region, it may be a very long while before any business runs through Syria, except for illegal arms, of course.

So, unconvinced by any of these reasons for the great bear’s growling obstinacy, I pondered – indulging myself in a fruitless exercise – about what I would be thinking if I were President Putin.  That I cannot do.  The cultures of Russia and the United States are so different as to make direct empathy impossible. The intricate nature of Russian politics and President Putin’s role in it make empathy sheer speculation; frankly, I would trust more my chances at playing darts without my coke-bottle glasses.

So, I went to a second line of thought. In looking at the Syrian dilemma, I asked myself, “Now, hot-shot, why do you think President Putin would be so stubborn in his support for an unseemly régime that likely has used poison gas on its people, especially as refugees swell in number and dwell in suffering?”  Then a thought crossed my mind.  It was one of those moments I flashed back in time, thirty-three years ago, when I was a senior in college.

It was Clark Mollenhoff’s class in journalism and contemporary political issues in the winter semester at Washington and Lee in early 1980.  It had been snowing one of those damp Blue Ridge snows that made Lexington, Virginia almost celestial in its small-town splendor.  But it made getting to class a soft-shoe in Hell.  So, I was late, already well on my way to getting the only hook ever administered by Mr Mollenhoff, a retired, if not retiring, investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register. 

Mr Mollenhoff was a kind man, not least for his grading students on a pass-fail basis: A = PASS; B = fail.  Yet I found a way to a precedent-setting ‘C’.  Leave it to me to prove myself so exceptional as to prove the Mollenhoff grading rule.  That day, the contemporary political theme was the then-recent invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S.S.R. along with the U.S. response to it (i.e., wheat embargo, Olympics boycott, etc.).  Back then, the widely discussed reasons for that invasion revolved around a desire for Soviet a deep-water port.

 

That seemed nutty to me, even then.  The idea of invading a land-locked country to wrest docking rights in Pakistan strained my wretched little mind into a migraine.  So far-fetched.  There were other things flitting through my mind that day: recent taking of hostages in Iran; the attack and take-over of the Mecca mosque by extremists; and, other reports of rising Islamic extremism.  The U.S.S.R. had a large population of Muslims. 

 

So, in class that day, I said that the U.S.S.R. attacked Afghanistan to send a message to its large, apparently restive Muslim minority: “Hey, if we are willing to take this flak in the United Nations and around the world by publicly invading this bozo country next door, imagine what we will do to you who are out of the public eye.  Sooo, quiet down…”  That idea was laughed out of the room because, well, I was well on my way to a hanging hook and the idea, admittedly, seemed outlandish.

Since then, I have found out that senior Soviet foreign policy leaders (supposedly in released Kremlin papers or interviews; I do not know which one, if either) have stated that the reason I had cited was one of, of course, several reasons, the simultaneity of which prompted the follow-trhough of an already-planned invasion.  The point I am making is that the Russians today, sans les Stans, have reason to be anxious with what happens in Syria.  So why would President of Russia be one petty Putin?

• The Russian sphere of influence most definitely still extends strongly to the south via the Commonwealth of Independent States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States).
• There are some twenty million Muslims living in today’s Russia and up to another eighty million in Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, largely living under secular authoritarianism.
• Russia has already lived through a civil war and a bloody insurgency in Chechnya and, perhaps, Dagestan.

Where would al Qaeda go next once it were to triumph in Syria?  With possibly the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world? You make the call.  Before doing so, please also ponder the more general question of what motivates nations in the anarchy of international relations.  My guess would be fear and the prospect of aggrandizement. Perhaps we have an inkling of what President Putin’s answer might be: a desire to keep that navy base and a fear of Islamaoists, armed with convenient instruments of mass murder headed his way. 

Since some of the toughest jihadists around come from Chechnya, where might these people look for their next indulgence in blood-drunk blood-sport of stamping out takfiris and combatting the heresy of secular governments, especially one under the possible thrall of those awful orthodox Christians?  So, President Assad’s remaining in power may not be the worst-case scenario in the Russian mind; instead, the great Russian bear may want to defend her cubs far away from home.