By Paul Merkley
RUSSIA’S ROLE IN SYRIA TODAY.
by Paul Merkley.
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Disclaimer: The word “coronavirus” does not appear anywhere in this essay.
It is a law of life that where any problem of human government is allowed to avoid the world’s attention for any length of time anti-gravity takes over: the worst elements rise to the top.
Examples are not hard to find. The clearest of these are in the Arab world.
For roughly a century, from the mid-Nineteenth Century until the mid-Twentieth Century, most of the Arab world was governed under two European Empires – the British and the French. While this is not the whole story, it can be said that the Colonial Services of France and of Britain were manned by some of the best elements of the societies of both countries. But from the moment when these colonies received their independence, they fell under the jurisdiction of feeble and corrupt local masters. Quality of government declined at once – in all categories of life.
Syria is no exception to this story. For several decades now, the sovereign State of Syria has been falling apart, along the lines of the remarkable one-horse shay – and at an accelerating rates since 2011.
Corruption among its governing elements is perhaps the foremost reason to for this failure. In 2011, Syria was one of those unhappy Arab countries which underwent quickly-aborted popular uprisings which, so long as they lasted, our news media applauded as proof of an “Arab Spring”. The hope was that as these former colonies shed the last vestiges of their imperial legacy, they would become, by swift stages, just like Kansas. Instead, they wobbled briefly, like newborn calves, but got no further along the path of self-confidence. The authority of Syria’s sovereign government was quickly and brutally re-imposed
If there were anything rational about world affairs, and if historical analogies had any meaning, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Assad regime which has governed it for twenty years ought to have disappeared from the pages of history many years ago. (See my essay, “The Imminent Partition and the Ultimate Extinction of Syria, The Bayview Review, 2020/02/24.) But when it does, what then?
In my reckoning, the name “Syria” will remain, and so, likely, for a while at least, will its description as an “Arab Republic”. But then a massively popular campaign will appear, demanding that it be described in its title as an Islamic Republic (like Egypt, for example.) By then, “Syria”, while retaining the name of a nation, will have lost all the dignity that belongs to a nation: all the circumstances that support its national dignity will have been hollowed out. Its political life will have become entirely subsumed under an Islamic regime. It will be effectively governed and wholly-owned by Russia.
Russia has given major political support as well as economic support to the Assad regime since its beginnings. But long before that regime came along Russia (and the Soviet Union before it) had become the puppet-master of the Syrian regime of the day. In fact, the Russian actions in Syria in support of the Assad regime marked the first time since the end of the Cold War that Russia entered an armed conflict outside the borders of the old Soviet Union.
Since October, 2011, Russia, as one of the Five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council has vetoed several draft resolutions in the UN Security Council that demanded the resignation of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad or which have called for sanctions against his government.
All along, Russia has enjoyed a historically strong, stable, and friendly relationship with Syria.
The keystone to the Syrian –Russian relationship is the existence of Tartus, a Syrian port over which Russia has been given virtually sovereign control, for the use of its Black Sea fleet. Recently, the bands of the Russian –Syrian alliance have been drawn tighter, as Russia’s Upper House of Parliament has authorized the Russian President Vladimir Putin to use armed force in Syria. No one knows how long the regime of Vladimir Putin will remain content to hold this authorization in reserve. But it has to be noted that this forward step seems not to have caused alarm at the White House, which has evidently lost interest in Syria since President Trump withdrew American armed forces a few months ago.
Syria, we should remember, was up until a very few years ago the home of one of the largest communities of Christians in the Middle East. It was also the focus of the concern of many evangelicals and other church groups, who had, not too long ago, been gathering offerings in their congregations at home for the building of new churches for Syrians. But today, these Christians are fleeing the scene, prompted by the harassments of Muslim neighbours who covet an early opportunity to seize their abandoned goods and chattels.
Without a Christian community with which American Christians can identify, the fate of this nation will soon cease to be of interest to American policy-makers.
Thus, taken together with the President’s recent withdrawal of the bulk of U.S. forces from Syria, Russia’s advance into Syria surely marks the beginning of the end of sovereign Syria.
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