Putin's military intervention in Syria marks the forceful return of Russia to the Middle East after 40 years of absence, an absence that has made the United States the sole arbiter of the destinies of the governments and people of the region. So far, the military intervention of Russia in the Syrian conflict or the civil war, as some like to describe what's going on in Syria has enabled Syrian forces to advance and score military gains. This has strengthened the position of the Syrian government in any future talks to implement the United Nations peace plan, adopted by the Security Council in July. Both the US administration and the Kremlin, while they are pursuing different objectives in Syria and in the wider Middle East, have shown willingness to coordinate their respective air sorties against Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria. The Pentagon announced on 10 October that the two sides are making progress at de-conflicting their operations, while the Russian Ministry of Defence described the talks as “professional and constructive.” Last week, on 8 October, US Secretary of State John Kerry had a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. Kerry “repeated our concerns about the preponderance of targets that are being struck by Russian military forces that are not IS-related,” according to a State Department spokeperson in an 8 October press briefing. He went on to say that the two also talked about the “importance of moving forward on tactical discussions and dialogue towards the goal of de-confliction.” Amid the advances of the Syrian military, aided by Russia's concentrated air strikes, the United States announced what the Pentagon qualified as an “operational pause” in its overt training and equipping programme (known as the T&E programme). The decision came in the wake of increasing concerns in the US Congress about the effectiveness of the programme as originally planned by the Pentagon, and later approved by Congress. Funding for the programme amounts to $500 million a year. In a press call on the counter-IS campaign on 9 October in Washington, Christine Wormouth, undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, stressed that “a key part of our strategy remains trying to work with the capable indigenous forces on the ground . . . We have seen how it works where we combine our sustained air campaign with offensive operations on the ground by capable ground partners.” In the same press call, Ambassador Brett Mcgurk, deputy special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter IS, called the situation in Syria the “most complex imaginable”, as well as the “most dynamic imaginable.” He said that over the year the United States has “learned . . . that the more we can be adaptive, the more we can look to seize opportunities as they arise, the more effective we can be.” Commenting on Russia's military operations in Syria, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, had this to say in the same press call: “We see the Russian actions as extraordinarily counterproductive in terms of eroding the space for political resolution” in Syria. In light of the above, we can argue, with a certain degree of certainty, that Russia's military moves in Syria not only aim at annihilating IS and all other Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in Syria, but also at ensuring the return of Russia in the Middle East and what is more important, Western acceptance of such a return. As an example of such acceptance, I take US-Russian talks on “de-conflicting” as proof that the United States and the West, in addition to their regional and Arab allies, are ready to work in concert with Moscow as long as they can succeed in harmonising their objectives a situation unseen and unheard of one year ago, when the United States assembled a 60-country coalition to degrade and defeat IS. Back then, the strategic objectives pursued by the West were to benefit from Russia's role and presence in Syria, to work for a political solution to the Syrian crisis. This was based on the widely-held interpretation of the United States and its allies that the Geneva Communique of 30 June 2012 necessitates the departure of President Bashar Al-Assad from power at the beginning of Syria's transition to a pluralistic and democratic regime. That was back then. Today, I believe the Russian interpretation of this communique, which I consider more credible, has started gaining ground in Washington. Rhodes, in the press call referred to above, commented on this point by saying that the United States still believes “that any political resolution [in Syria] has to involve Assad leaving power as part of a process of transition.” I do not intend to discuss the merits of such an American position, particularly as regards Al- Assad's political future, but the point I want to make is that the Americans are willing today to see the Syrian president as part of a transitional process, at the end of which they want the Syrian president leave power. Untill the military intervention of the Russians, the American position was the contrary: that is, they talked about the Syrian president being out of the picture as a pre-condition for the start of the process of transition. For the first time since 40 years, Moscow has a say in regional affairs in the Middle East. This is a welcome development from an Egyptian point of view for it establishes or I would rather say, it restablishes a balance of power between Washington and Moscow, The absence of this balance of power was responsible for much of the insecurity that has destablised the regional order across 40 years of wars, conflicts, civil wars, military confrontation and a fierce struggle for power by the respective allies and partners of the two great powers. The writer is a former assistant to the foreign minister.
