Vladimir Putin loves failure. A very cynical Obama ruthlessly manipulates this failure addiction into ever-deeper messes from which the Little Guy cannot extricate himself, no matter what he does. Like in Syria, where Vladimir has thrust the Russians into a lose-lose hell that they can never escape.
Publius is a generous guy. Let's assume, as he does, that the 64-year old Putin has been at least sentient for the last 40 years. For a decade, starting in 1979 when the L'il Dude was 27, the old Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, a mistake that many believe was the proximate cause of the collapse of the Iron Curtain. At the time, most in the West predicted another Auckland's Folly, the disastrous First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839-42. They were right, only it took ten years instead of three.
As the Soviets knew in 1979, Afghanistan was always an unmanageable black hole between The Middle East, Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. Only fools try to dominate it and none succeed.
The Soviets, the new imperialists, nonetheless tried to outsmart the old imperialists, the British, and soon discovered that they were not so bright. You would think that Vladimir learned something from this by the time that the Soviet Union collapsed.
Even if he learned nothing then, Vladimir must surely have learned something from former U.S. President George Bush II, who ranks just above Buchanan for his foresight and abilities. Bush II ignored a century and a half of U.K. and Soviet history and invaded Afghanistan anyway. He thought that he was so much smarter than Aukland and Brezhnev. Oh well ...
Did Vladimir not notice that Bush II compounded his Afghan miscalculation by invading Iraq? In that spectacular fiasco, Bush decided to bring down the enemy of his enemy, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein. No one knows why he did something as stupid as this and he will likely go to his grave without telling us. Anyway, he left both Iraq and Afghanistan fractured messes.
Then, when the the cost of information fell far enough on the Moore Curve for social media to rip through the shattered Middle East, the whole place imploded into a seething mass of tribes, religions, and factions all tearing each other to pieces. Exactly as Marshall McLuhan predicted in the early 1960s. The Middle East dissolved into its seventh century outlines. Artificial nations created a century ago by the French and British in the Treaty of Versailles (against the strong advice of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson), vanished. The Middle East will never recover its balance.
Vladimir must know all this at least as well as Publius. And let's be ever more generous and assume that, because the L'il Guy is a former KGB agent, he knows way more about how bad the situation is than Publius does.
So, why did Vladimir wait until several years after Syria had imploded to do his imitatio Bush there? As Publius has shown, in the early days of the so-called Arab Spring, Vladimir could have used his influence in Syria to finesse Assad and position himself as the necessary man in the Middle East at no cost to Russia. He would be a hero there. Russia's role would last long after him.
Publius reached the only possible conclusion. The L'il Guy has not the slightest idea of what is going on or how to profit from it.
No one got this faster than Obama. He knows that the numbers say that our oil self-sufficiency means that we have no further interests in the Middle East. Also, we don't care what Putin does in Syria because we know that the situation there, as in the rest of the Middle East, is irretrievable. Obama knows that Putin could only hang himself if he messed with the place.
In a paraphrase of what Sherman said of Hood as Sherman prepared to turn from Atlanta to the sea, "If Hood will go to Nashville, I will give hm the rations to get him there," Obama is saying, "If the L'il Guy will put his foot into the boiling Syrian cauldron, I will help him take off his shoes."
Vladimir has done everything he can to do Obama's bidding. He has bombed hospitals and food convoys, killed children and done anything he can think of to destroy Russia's position for generations. As in the Ukraine, he has generated hatreds where there were none and set Russia up as the enemy of everything and everyone.
In a BBC interview a few days ago, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister tried to blame the U.S. for Russia's inability to extricate itself from its Syrian mess. You could, literally, hear Lavrov follow Obama's script for him word-by-word. All Obama has to do is to stand back and let Sergei and Vladimir make fools of themselves and their country in the most public way possible.
As Bloomberg's Leonid Bershidsky reports, to compensate Russia for his Syrian missteps, like a truculent child the L'il Guy is demanding that the U.S.:
Roll back NATO and cut its numbers to September 2000 levels.
Repeal the Magnitsky Act.
Repeal all U.S. sanctions against Russia,
Compensate Russians for damages from U.S. sanctions and Russia’s own “forced counter sanctions.”
Offer a “clear plan of irreversible destruction” of U.S. plutonium surpluses.
In return for what? When you have nothing to offer, what are you offering? This is so simple that even Dumb Don Trump should be laughing. Sadly, the Dumb Dude has other issues.
Putin the Small has now allowed the U.S. to unilaterally break off talks with Russia on stabilizing Syria. We have nothing to lose. We simply highlight Russian human rights abuses, easy press in most of the world, talk about the death of children from Russian bombs, and let the Russians stew in a boiling pot of that used to be Syria.
Check out the piece that Aresu Eqbali and Asa Fitch penned for the Wall Street Journal on August 23, 2016. It shows Putin's growing weakness in Iran and loss of leverage in the Middle East from his Syrian missteps.
For the L'il Dude, this is going to be endless. He's in, like the Soviets and Americans in Afghanistan. And there is no way out. He broke it so he pays for it. He's in so deep now that even a limited ceasefire is a huge loss. And the smallest "victory" means he foots the bill for rebuilding the steaming pile of rubble and hatred that remains. If the cost of any outcome is too much for the collapsed Russian economy -- it is -- he still loses.
Obama laughs.
Follow Up
October 27, 2016
The Economist just published an excellent 16-page Special Report, Inside the Bear, that details Putin's failings and the outlook for Russia. Great to see it on Publius' bandwagon.
November 16, 2016
Putin Slaps Trump Silly
Hours after talking to Dumb Don, now President-elect, the L'il Dude slapped Don silly by renewing Russian bombing of hospitals and schools in Aleppo. Talk about a message!! Turkey got it. Iran got it. Iraq got it. Saudi Arabia got it. Israel got it. The Euros got it. Xi Jinping got it. Abe got it. Kim Fatty III got it. Obama was furious that Don was so dumb. But the Great Dumb One? Too stupid to know he was slapped!! He's making America great again ...
April 16, 2018
The Financial Times today, Karen Hille joined Publius, backing his 18-month old assessment of Putin the Small's in Syrian quagmire. While it is amazing how long it takes for the media to catch up to Publius, who does no more than point out the obvious, it is nice to see them catch up.
April 28, 2020
It's taken nearly four years for the media to catch up with Publius. But today, Bloomberg finally did. In a piece entitled Putin Has a Syria 'Headache' and The Kremlin's Blaming Assad, Henry Meyer and Ilya Arkhipov describe Vladimir The Small's frustrations. What they don't point out, however, is the immense cost to Russia of rebuilding Syria so that it is a sparkling showcase of Russian power and influence. Leaving Syria as a pile of rubble with half a million dead, 5.2 million refugees, 6.2 million displaced internally and calling this some kind of victory will be seen worldwide for what it is. And Assad's end will be assured. Something that Assad will resist to the death, literally.
January 8, 2021
In a massive setback for Putin the Small, Russian security operations launched the Solar Winds hack, the damage from which is growing bigger every day. This hack has, for decades to come, eliminated any trust that anyone could have in Russian goods and services. "Made in Russia" is no longer an option. That Putin allowed this to happen when he so desperately needs market share Europe and the U.S., the combined economies of which are 10X Russia's, is a staggering failure of management.