Raising the stakes: Russian military support for Syria

Syn­op­sis
Rus­sia is step­ping up mil­i­tary sup­port for Syr­ia; rein­forc­ing its oppo­si­tion to inter­na­tion­al efforts to force Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad to halt his eight-month-old crack­down on anti-gov­ern­ment pro­test­ers. In so doing, Rus­sia is turn­ing the Syr­i­an cri­sis into an inter­na­tion­al test of wills. 

Com­men­tary

RUSSIA IS rein­forc­ing its oppo­si­tion to inter­na­tion­al efforts to tight­en the eco­nom­ic embar­go on Syr­ia by send­ing a Russ­ian bat­tle group of three ves­sels led by an air­craft car­ri­er to the east­ern Mediter­ranean. The flotil­la, expect­ed in the region at the end of this week, is like­ly to dock in the Syr­i­an port of Tar­tus, Russia’s only naval base in the Mediter­ranean, before the end of the month, accord­ing to Russ­ian defence officials. 

The arrival of the flotil­la comes on the heels of the deliv­ery to Syr­ia of super­son­ic anti-ship Yakhont cruise mis­siles as part of an agree­ment signed in 2007 and a Russ­ian promise to go ahead with the train­ing of Syr­i­an per­son­nel in the use the state-of-the-art weapons. 

As Syr­ia teeters on the brink of civ­il war, Rus­sia, in send­ing a flotil­la to the east­ern Mediter­ranean and main­tain­ing arms sup­plies to Syr­ia, is in effect bol­ster­ing Pres­i­dent Bashar Al Assad’s resolve not to give in to inter­na­tion­al demands that he halts his bru­tal eight-month-old crack­down on anti-gov­ern­ment protesters. 

That cor­ner of the Mediter­ranean is already being patrolled by US 6th Fleet war­ships led by an air­craft car­ri­er. By rais­ing the bar, Rus­sia is sig­nalling its deter­mi­na­tion to foil attempts to stran­gle the Syr­i­an leader’s regime and also hopes to reduce the chances of a mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia, pos­si­bly spear­head­ed by Turkey. In a defi­ant show of force, Syr­ia last week held war games that includ­ed test-fir­ing of mis­siles and air force and ground troop operations. 

Cap­i­tal­is­ing on influ­ence in Dam­as­cus

In an iron­ic twist, Russia’s break­ing of ranks with the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty could posi­tion it along­side the Arab League as the only pow­er poten­tial­ly capa­ble of coax­ing Assad to mod­er­ate his hard line towards his oppo­nents. Rus­sia has con­sis­tent­ly resist­ed efforts in the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to con­demn Turkey as has Chi­na, which how­ev­er, unlike Rus­sia, has declared its sup­port for sanc­tions imposed by the Arab League. 

Syr­ia this week con­di­tion­al­ly agreed to allow Arab observers into the coun­try to mon­i­tor com­pli­ance with a gov­ern­ment cease­fire in a bid to fend off stepped up Arab sanc­tions and an Arab push for UN involve­ment in the cri­sis. With Syr­ia hav­ing repeat­ed­ly bro­ken its ear­li­er pledges to halt the crack­down, it remains to be seen how seri­ous Assad is this time around. More­over, the bat­tle lines in Syr­ia have hard­ened to a degree that oppo­si­tion forces may be unwill­ing to set­tle for any­thing less than Assad’s demise. 

Russia’s defi­ant resis­tance to allow­ing Syr­ia to be inter­na­tion­al­ly iso­lat­ed is fuelled by the fact that it has far more to lose polit­i­cal­ly, strate­gi­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly in Syr­ia than it did in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen — the four Arab nations whose auto­crat­ic lead­ers were this year swept aside by the wave of anti-gov­ern­ment protests sweep­ing the Mid­dle East and North Africa. 

The naval base in Tar­tus is oper­at­ed by the Russ­ian mil­i­tary under an agree­ment signed in 1971 between Syr­ia and the then Sovi­et Union even though the Sovi­et Navy’s Mediter­ranean Fleet was dis­band­ed after the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union. As a result, the port’s float­ing docks fell into dis­re­pair and Russ­ian naval ves­sels rarely vis­it­ed. That changed four years ago when Rus­sia decid­ed to ren­o­vate the base and turn it again into its win­dow on the Mediter­ranean. Some 600 Russ­ian tech­ni­cians are upgrad­ing facil­i­ties, dredg­ing the har­bour, and prepar­ing it for Russ­ian Navy port calls of which the Admi­ral Kuznetsov would be the first. 

Polit­i­cal risk out­strips eco­nom­ic and strate­gic stakes

Russia’s eco­nom­ic stakes in Syr­ia are equal­ly high. Rus­sia has con­clud­ed US$4 bil­lion worth of arms con­tracts with Syr­ia and has invest­ed some $20 bil­lion in Syr­i­an infra­struc­ture, ener­gy and tourism. Russia’s Stroitransgaz is build­ing a nat­ur­al gas pro­cess­ing plant and sup­port­ing an Arab gas pipeline while Tat­neft, which is already pump­ing Syr­i­an oil, announced ear­li­er this year that it would invest $12.8m in oil explo­ration near the Iraqi border. 

If the eco­nom­ic and strate­gic stakes are high, they pale from Russia’s per­spec­tive com­pared to the poten­tial fall­out if Assad’s oppo­nents pre­vail in the face of a crack­down that has so far cost 4,000 lives, wound­ed thou­sands, and led to the arrest of even greater num­bers. Russ­ian forces have this year killed some 300 mil­i­tants in the north­ern Cau­cus, a patch­work of eth­nic and reli­gious groups where Islamists reg­u­lar­ly attack Russ­ian tar­gets. They could well be encour­aged by the top­pling of Assad. Alter­na­tive­ly, a Syr­ia that dis­in­te­grates as a result of civ­il war could equal­ly inspire mil­i­tants in Russ­ian republics like Chech­nya, Dages­tan and Ingushetia. 

Syr­i­an accep­tance of Arab League observers, if imple­ment­ed, offers Rus­sia the oppor­tu­ni­ty to align sup­port for Assad with Arab efforts to resolve the Syr­i­an cri­sis peace­ful­ly. The ques­tion is whether a nego­ti­at­ed solu­tion that seeks to meet pro­test­ers’ demands for an end to repres­sion and cor­rup­tion and a tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy, is pos­si­ble as long as Assad remains in office giv­en that the Syr­i­an leader and his cohorts are unlike­ly to risk a polit­i­cal open­ing after so much bloodshed. 

At the very least, Rus­sia hopes that by posi­tion­ing itself along­side the Arab League as a key play­er with influ­ence in Dam­as­cus it will be able to pro­tect its inter­ests by shap­ing what­ev­er nego­ti­at­ed res­o­lu­tion is achieved whether or not it main­tains Assad in office. The alter­na­tive — the over­throw of the Assad regime — would con­sti­tute a sig­nif­i­cant set­back for Rus­sia not only in the East­ern Mediter­ranean but also across the Mid­dle East and North Africa. 

About The Author:
James M. Dorsey is a senior fel­low at the S. Rajarat­nam School of Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies at Nanyang Tech­no­log­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty in Sin­ga­pore and the author of the blog, The Tur­bu­lent World of Mid­dle East Soc­cer.

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →