In a CBS interview on the eve of the inauguration of the last but one session of the UN General Assembly, President Barrack Obama described the Islamic State (IS) group as a mid- to long-term threat and added that the US could not limit the numbers of IS fighters and the organisation's areas of control on its own. Therefore, he said, he was in the process of forming a broad international coalition of countries that would play numerous important roles within this framework. It has been a full year since then. But from the outset it was clear that, according to Washington's thinking and instructions, there was no room for Russia in that anti-IS coalition. As the year passed, Russia formed its own opinion on that coalition. The coalition was based on narrow interests and a narrow outlook. It sought to eliminate the threat from only one part of the region, which Moscow held would be ineffective. As it monitored developments closely during the past year, Moscow took frequent occasion to launch diplomatic broadsides against the US-led coalition. It repeatedly insisted that all its operations should obtain the approval of the UN Security Council and the countries in which these were being carried out. In the absence of a Security Council mandate, the US's actions constituted nothing less than an act of aggression and a flagrant violation of international law. Washington responded by obtaining an official invitation to intervene from the Iraqi regime. Naturally, it did not take the Security Council route for fear that its plans would be blocked by the Russian veto. Operations in Syria, however, were kept pending due to the hitch regarding working with the regime in Damascus, which made it a condition that the coalition would have to cooperate with it officially if it were to carry out any operations on any part of Syrian territory. At the same time, throughout the past year, it became increasingly clear that Western capitals continuously had the Ukrainian question and the international sanctions against Russia in mind, and that they also wanted to turn the US-led fight against terrorism, which continued to top the priorities of Western and Arab capitals, into an instrument for tightening Russia's isolation. Against this backdrop it is no exaggeration to say that President Vladimir Putin's sudden military move was a total game changer for the entire theatre of operations and all players. On 20 August, 20 freighters bearing military hardware set sail from Russia's Black Sea ports bound for the Syrian port of Tartus. This, I believe, was the Russian zero hour for launching its operation. We should note here that this operation, which would have been planned down to the finest details in advance, entailed as initial measures tightening the security of Latakia Airport, modernising and upgrading its facilities, installing an aerial defence system capable of intercepting any possible aerial assault and, lastly, ensuring that it had the capacity to accommodate Russia's fighter planes and their crews. Once Russian commanders were assured that all such advanced preparations were in place, heavy-duty Antonov cargo planes set off on dozens of flights per day to Syria. By the end of the first week, Russia had dispatched 28 fighter planes (12 Sukhoi Su-24 strike aircraft, 12 Sukhoi Su-25 close air support fighters, and four Sukhoi Su-30 multirole fighters), 20 pilotless planes (two types) and 20 military helicopters (a mixture of fighter and troop transport helicopters). Experts rank this as a large deployment requiring more than a single airport to accommodate operations. Indeed, satellite images taken by the other side, which appeared both amazed and unprepared, indicate that in Syria's coastal region and the vicinity of Damascus, other airports were readying to receive more troops. Moreover, 72 hours before the beginning of the Russian operation on 30 September, Pentagon officials submitted a report to Obama and his team alerting them to the fact that Russian pilotless aircraft had already begun reconnaissance missions, presumably to identify targets, and that an aerial offensive could begin “within days.” In the space of two weeks, the Russians had brought into Syria an assault force roughly equivalent in size to the number of aircraft remaining in Syria, but equipped with more modern weaponry and surveillance systems. The Pentagon has likened this Russian initiative to the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine last year, leading some to wonder whether the administration in Washington was as slow and clumsy as it appeared, or whether it had not really been taken off guard at all. This in turn gave rise to the question as to whether there was some hidden or unspoken agreement, or whether Washington's response lies somewhere in between, such as compulsory approval. The theatre of operations is too dangerous and complex to expect easy answers or even a single answer. The Russian move, within moments of its entry into that theatre, drew a thick line of fire, placing all that occurred and existed beforehand squarely in the irretrievable past, a past that, as near as it is, also appears to have lost its importance, apart from its possible usefulness in acquiring familiarity with certain places to make them easier to target, or to target the positions and lines of certain parties to hasten their collapse on the heads of their architects. Foremost of these parties, without a doubt, is the US, especially in light of rumours from within the administration itself, or circles close to it, that the decision to stage an American exit from the Middle East has already been taken and that the contours of political action over the past years were shaped by that decision. This contention is corroborated by two extremely crucial developments. The first is the nuclear accord with Iran that the US stage-managed virtually singlehandedly and forced the other members of the P5+1 to accept. Many found the details of how this deal was concluded disturbing. It seemed as though Washington sought to wash its hands as quickly as possible of a matter that was far more complex and influential than portrayed. Not least of these complexities concerns the hugely costly losses it sustained vis-à-vis its traditional Gulf allies who have yet to recover from their dismay and tension. The second development is that feeble, confused and continually puzzling coalition Washington forged to “combat IS”. Here, especially, when we begin to attribute that state of dark grey that prevailed during a full year of US-led events to a desire to remain uninvolved and to a pre-established exit plan, the costs appear outrageous. Certainly they exceed those sustained by any other US administration according to all possible calculations. The US will have gone down, indisputably, as scoring a huge failure in the fight against terrorism, which is definitely the world's real problem. Russian military action in Syria sounded the first concrete toll of that failure and it will not be the last. The problem of terrorism is, by its very nature, a rolling fireball that can reproduce itself to reap more death and destruction in other places and other contexts. If one presumes that the mechanisms of international leadership entail maintaining a solid belt of allies and moving with them and sometimes for them to safeguard the solidity and perpetuity of the alliance, the eight years of the current administration ended with the lowest possible assets one could possibly expect with regard to its alliances. Compared to all previous administrations, It has sustained an enormous loss. At the threshold of this administration's departure, US links have crumbled in very important stages. With Europe, the situation, if not entirely drastic, is still characterised by rifts and fissures on any of their common concerns, one of the most recent being the Ukraine and Crimea. Among its strategic allies in the Arab world, Washington began by losing Egypt, its number one ally for decades, and all for the sake of a number of calculations or animosities that events ultimately proved wrong and misplaced. Egypt is unlikely to return soon, or at least not anywhere near as close as it had been before. The Gulf allies soon followed. For any US administration these would constitute a difficult loss by any standards. But the current administration, in its vain arrogance and unprecedented stubbornness, allowed the interests and security of these major countries to become exposed to severe threat for the first time since they were founded. Not only did it not move to safeguard that alliance, it was, by means of some of its actions, a direct cause of that threat. This, too, is a precedent to add to the list of hugely costly losses. As for who will foot the bill for this and how, it remains unknown.
The writer is director of the National Centre for Security Studies. In a CBS interview on the eve of the inauguration of the last but one session of the UN General Assembly, President Barrack Obama described the Islamic State (IS) group as a mid- to long-term threat and added that the US could not limit the numbers of IS fighters and the organisation's areas of control on its own. Therefore, he said, he was in the process of forming a broad international coalition of countries that would play numerous important roles within this framework. It has been a full year since then. But from the outset it was clear that, according to Washington's thinking and instructions, there was no room for Russia in that anti-IS coalition. As the year passed, Russia formed its own opinion on that coalition. The coalition was based on narrow interests and a narrow outlook. It sought to eliminate the threat from only one part of the region, which Moscow held would be ineffective. As it monitored developments closely during the past year, Moscow took frequent occasion to launch diplomatic broadsides against the US-led coalition. It repeatedly insisted that all its operations should obtain the approval of the UN Security Council and the countries in which these were being carried out. In the absence of a Security Council mandate, the US's actions constituted nothing less than an act of aggression and a flagrant violation of international law. Washington responded by obtaining an official invitation to intervene from the Iraqi regime. Naturally, it did not take the Security Council route for fear that its plans would be blocked by the Russian veto. Operations in Syria, however, were kept pending due to the hitch regarding working with the regime in Damascus, which made it a condition that the coalition would have to cooperate with it officially if it were to carry out any operations on any part of Syrian territory. At the same time, throughout the past year, it became increasingly clear that Western capitals continuously had the Ukrainian question and the international sanctions against Russia in mind, and that they also wanted to turn the US-led fight against terrorism, which continued to top the priorities of Western and Arab capitals, into an instrument for tightening Russia's isolation. Against this backdrop it is no exaggeration to say that President Vladimir Putin's sudden military move was a total game changer for the entire theatre of operations and all players. On 20 August, 20 freighters bearing military hardware set sail from Russia's Black Sea ports bound for the Syrian port of Tartus. This, I believe, was the Russian zero hour for launching its operation. We should note here that this operation, which would have been planned down to the finest details in advance, entailed as initial measures tightening the security of Latakia Airport, modernising and upgrading its facilities, installing an aerial defence system capable of intercepting any possible aerial assault and, lastly, ensuring that it had the capacity to accommodate Russia's fighter planes and their crews. Once Russian commanders were assured that all such advanced preparations were in place, heavy-duty Antonov cargo planes set off on dozens of flights per day to Syria. By the end of the first week, Russia had dispatched 28 fighter planes (12 Sukhoi Su-24 strike aircraft, 12 Sukhoi Su-25 close air support fighters, and four Sukhoi Su-30 multirole fighters), 20 pilotless planes (two types) and 20 military helicopters (a mixture of fighter and troop transport helicopters). Experts rank this as a large deployment requiring more than a single airport to accommodate operations. Indeed, satellite images taken by the other side, which appeared both amazed and unprepared, indicate that in Syria's coastal region and the vicinity of Damascus, other airports were readying to receive more troops. Moreover, 72 hours before the beginning of the Russian operation on 30 September, Pentagon officials submitted a report to Obama and his team alerting them to the fact that Russian pilotless aircraft had already begun reconnaissance missions, presumably to identify targets, and that an aerial offensive could begin “within days.” In the space of two weeks, the Russians had brought into Syria an assault force roughly equivalent in size to the number of aircraft remaining in Syria, but equipped with more modern weaponry and surveillance systems. The Pentagon has likened this Russian initiative to the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine last year, leading some to wonder whether the administration in Washington was as slow and clumsy as it appeared, or whether it had not really been taken off guard at all. This in turn gave rise to the question as to whether there was some hidden or unspoken agreement, or whether Washington's response lies somewhere in between, such as compulsory approval. The theatre of operations is too dangerous and complex to expect easy answers or even a single answer. The Russian move, within moments of its entry into that theatre, drew a thick line of fire, placing all that occurred and existed beforehand squarely in the irretrievable past, a past that, as near as it is, also appears to have lost its importance, apart from its possible usefulness in acquiring familiarity with certain places to make them easier to target, or to target the positions and lines of certain parties to hasten their collapse on the heads of their architects. Foremost of these parties, without a doubt, is the US, especially in light of rumours from within the administration itself, or circles close to it, that the decision to stage an American exit from the Middle East has already been taken and that the contours of political action over the past years were shaped by that decision. This contention is corroborated by two extremely crucial developments. The first is the nuclear accord with Iran that the US stage-managed virtually singlehandedly and forced the other members of the P5+1 to accept. Many found the details of how this deal was concluded disturbing. It seemed as though Washington sought to wash its hands as quickly as possible of a matter that was far more complex and influential than portrayed. Not least of these complexities concerns the hugely costly losses it sustained vis-à-vis its traditional Gulf allies who have yet to recover from their dismay and tension. The second development is that feeble, confused and continually puzzling coalition Washington forged to “combat IS”. Here, especially, when we begin to attribute that state of dark grey that prevailed during a full year of US-led events to a desire to remain uninvolved and to a pre-established exit plan, the costs appear outrageous. Certainly they exceed those sustained by any other US administration according to all possible calculations. The US will have gone down, indisputably, as scoring a huge failure in the fight against terrorism, which is definitely the world's real problem. Russian military action in Syria sounded the first concrete toll of that failure and it will not be the last. The problem of terrorism is, by its very nature, a rolling fireball that can reproduce itself to reap more death and destruction in other places and other contexts. If one presumes that the mechanisms of international leadership entail maintaining a solid belt of allies and moving with them and sometimes for them to safeguard the solidity and perpetuity of the alliance, the eight years of the current administration ended with the lowest possible assets one could possibly expect with regard to its alliances. Compared to all previous administrations, It has sustained an enormous loss. At the threshold of this administration's departure, US links have crumbled in very important stages. With Europe, the situation, if not entirely drastic, is still characterised by rifts and fissures on any of their common concerns, one of the most recent being the Ukraine and Crimea. Among its strategic allies in the Arab world, Washington began by losing Egypt, its number one ally for decades, and all for the sake of a number of calculations or animosities that events ultimately proved wrong and misplaced. Egypt is unlikely to return soon, or at least not anywhere near as close as it had been before. The Gulf allies soon followed. For any US administration these would constitute a difficult loss by any standards. But the current administration, in its vain arrogance and unprecedented stubbornness, allowed the interests and security of these major countries to become exposed to severe threat for the first time since they were founded. Not only did it not move to safeguard that alliance, it was, by means of some of its actions, a direct cause of that threat. This, too, is a precedent to add to the list of hugely costly losses. As for who will foot the bill for this and how, it remains unknown. The writer is director of the National Centre for Security Studies.
