If Vladimir Putin had wanted to rattle Washington’s nerves he could not have found a better way than inviting Bashar Al Assad for a late night visit to the Kremlin. This was the first time that the Syrian leader has travelled abroad since the outbreak of war in 2011. For Mr Putin it was a chance to show how his three-week bombing campaign has upended military and diplomatic calculations about the Syrian conflict.
Sidelined in the Middle East for a generation, Russia now wants to portray itself as master of the war in Syria and the driving force in an eventual peaceful settlement. After the Syrian leader’s departure, Mr Putin lost no time is putting in calls to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan to brief regional leaders on the meeting. Whatever regional prerogatives the Americans have enjoyed for the past 25 years now belong, in Mr Putin’s mind, to the Kremlin.
This could hardly have come at a more sensitive time for US policymakers, eternally anxious about remaining the world’s only superpower. The bombastic billionaire Donald Trump, with his slogan “Make America great again”, has established American decline as a key theme of the presidential campaign. The cover of the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, the publication of the august Council on Foreign Relations in New York, has the cover line: “The Post-American Middle East”. The previous issue was hardly more flattering to American muscle-flexors: it shows the president struggling to carry the weight of the globe.
The verdict on Mr Obama’s foreign policy legacy is being written, and not in a supportive way. Frederic Hof, a former US state department official, wrote on the Politico website that the White House saw Syria essentially as a communications challenge, not a theatre of action.
Getting Mr Obama on “the right side of history” in terms of his public pronouncements was more important than doing anything to influence the country’s trajectory. Hence the declarations that Mr Al Assad had to go, which went unsupported by actions.
A similar accusation is levelled – from beyond the grave – by Richard Holbrooke, the diplomat who brought peace to Bosnia in the 1990s and died while serving as Mr Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The administration mistook domestic political calculations for strategic thinking, according to a new documentary film by Holbrooke’s son, which makes use of a secret audio diary the diplomat recorded in the last months of his life. The focus on words not actions is highlighted by Mr Obama allegedly banning any reference to Vietnam in discussions about Afghanistan.
Such barbs are to be expected when officials seek to avoid blame for policy failure. What is often forgotten is that Mr Obama was selected to be the Democratic presidential candidate in place of Hillary Clinton largely because he had voted against the Iraqi war. He was elected to the presidency to avoid new military entanglements and focus on domestic concerns.
So much for America’s missteps in the region. But what does Mr Putin actually bring to the table – beyond the exploitation of a PR opportunity?
To judge by his words, Russia is leading the fight against international terrorism and preventing Syria from collapsing into armed chaos the way Libya has gone. By counter-attacking the opposition forces and taking the pressure off the beleaguered Assad regime, Mr Putin claims to see a chance for a “long-term settlement based on a political process that involves all political forces, ethnic and religious groups”.
The two men hardly looked comfortable together in the Kremlin. By being summoned to Moscow – in a Russian aircraft, according to some reports – and thanking the Russians for their support, Mr Al Assad looks like a placeman for Russia and Iran, the countries identified by the opposition as “occupiers” of Syria. This is more damaging now that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps seems to be intensifying its military intervention in support of Damascus even as the agreement to curb its nuclear programme looks set to be implemented.
Despite Russia’s support for Syria, it seems that there is no cordiality between Mr Putin and the Syrian leader. He had not visited Moscow since 2005, being more interested during the good times in improving relations with the West. Nor has he shown any keenness to pursue the various peace options floated by Moscow – indeed there are signs of deliberate obstruction.
Against this background there are more questions than answers about the substance for the Kremlin encounter. One clear purpose might be for Mr Putin to make clear that the price for Russian military help in rescuing the Syrian state from collapse might mean the end of the 44-year rule by the Assad family. How that would take place, and who would lead the country, is not clear. A less dramatic conversation would be on the concessions that the Assad regime would make in order to open the way for a serious negotiations with the opposition. But we do not know.
For the moment, the White House has dismissed the “red carpet” welcome to Mr Al Assad in Moscow as “at odds with the stated goal by the Russians for a political transition in Syria”.
To change that, Mr Putin needs to spell out what kind of peace plan he is envisaging and the regime needs to show it is serious about pursuing it. This would certainly help to dispel doubts that Mr Putin’s actions have little to do with ending the war in Syria but a lot to do with grandstanding at a time of American indecision.
Until he does that, the Syrian adventure is likely to be seen as a way to distract attention from the failure of Russia’s intervention in eastern Ukraine, which has succeeded in only empowering local thugs and criminal mafias. In fact, Mr Putin’s actions will look not dissimilar to the accusation levelled by Mr Holbrooke at Washington: that domestic political calculations are a substitute for strategic thinking.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps
