Obama’s Insanity on Russia and Assad Leaves U.S. Isolated

Bloomberg’s Josh Rogin, reporting over the weekend from the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain, found that nobody shares the U.S. belief that Russia will eventually come around to the U.S. view on the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. argument, as put forward by Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is that it’s only a matter of time before Moscow realizes that its military intervention and its ardent support for Assad’s continued rule are mistakes, after which the Russian government could support a political process that includes replacing Assad.

Rogin reports that after Blinken spoke, a series of officials and experts from the countries that are allied with the United States on the Syria issue openly disagreed with the contention there was any significant chance Russia would come around to the Western view on Assad’s future.

Even the British don’t buy the U.S. theory on Russia and Assad. “There’s a school of thought that says that as the Russians get drawn into this conflict, they will more and more look for a way to get a political solution,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, but “it’s not my government’s assessment.” Hammond told Rogin that the day before the Vienna meeting, last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told him Russia did not have any flexibility on the issue of Assad’s departure. Hammond said that the Russian position on Assad is exactly the same as it was three years ago and that it’s likely to remain the same.

François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, disputed Blinken’s contention that the Russians would change course under the cost pressure of their intervention. “I would be very surprised if Russia could not sustain such an effort despite its other difficulties until at least the end of the American electoral cycle in November of next year,” he said. In other words, Heisbourg expects the Russians to run out the clock on Obama’s administration.

Maxim Shepovalenko, a senior research fellow at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, said that Russian thinking is that the intervention might actually succeed and that Assad will stay in power. “We believe firmly that the Syrians will decide for themselves, and if this campaign is a success, Assad is definitely the one who will be preferable,” he said.