Posts
The Great Game Comes to Syria
By John McLaughlin
Published in OZY, September 28, 2015 |
Nature abhors a vacuum, but Vladimir Putin really loves one. The Russian president clearly sensed a big power void in Syria, where the civil war has intensified and where the United States has neither committed ground forces nor devised a compelling strategy to settle the conflict or defeat the Islamic State. Although the Islamic State has rampaged through Iraq, its HQs is in Syria.
Nature abhors a vacuum, but Vladimir Putin really loves one. The Russian president clearly sensed a big power void in Syria, where the civil war has intensified and where the United States has neither committed ground forces nor devised a compelling strategy to settle the conflict or defeat the Islamic State. Although the Islamic State has rampaged through Iraq, its HQs is in Syria.
Into
that vacuum, Putin over the last several weeks sent a substantial force
of tanks, armored personnel carriers, air defense systems and upwards
of two dozen combat aircraft. Russia is also building enough housing for
2,000 people, US officials have said.
What to make of Russia’s muscling into the wartorn country? For Putin,
there are essentially five reasons, moving from the broadly strategic to
purely tactical.http://www.ozy.com/pov/the-great-game-comes-to-syria/64940
No comments:
Post a Comment