In these grim times, I am afforded light relief by CNN--the only news channel offered by the treadmill of my Tokyo apartment house--as its presenters and pundits gravely debate the motives behind Putin's investment in Syria.
His own version is that he is fighting "extremism," which oddly enough is the same dark threat that President Barack Obama also recognizes while rigorously avoiding the qualifiers Islamic, Islamist, or Muslim--although he will refer to Isol, prompting the thought that it is impossible to defeat an enemy one is afraid to name. There is no Isol or even Isis anymore, because the good old ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah fi'l-ĘżIraq wa-sh-Sham--the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria--has long since become the Islamic State of everywhere from Nigeria to Afghanistan, no doubt also including the British Isles and Michigan.
Ignoring earnest declarations of its un-Islamic character solemnly issued by non-Muslim presidents, premiers, and prelates, volunteers who recognize the authenticity of the Islamic State keep pouring into its still-expanding borders, easily offsetting the casualties inflicted by the very expensive U.S. bombing campaign, now joined by the British, French, ... and Putin, whose air force already claims dozens of air strikes against the common foe.
Putin's enthusiasm for the great cause might be expected to earn him some gratitude. Instead, the Russian leader is criticized by wise CNN pundits--and by the Obama Administration--for seeking to defend his client Assad by bombing his other enemies as well, i.e., the dozens of quarreling Islamist bands that grandly call themselves Jaysh al-Fatah, "the army of conquest," the several quarreling factions of Syrian Army defectors that call themselves al-Jaysh as-Suri al-Ḥurr, "the free Syrian army," the unabashedly extremist al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat an-Nuᚣrah, which is much stronger than both, and, above all, the brave "pro-democracy" warriors armed and trained by the United States itself, under a $500 million program.
...So, yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, the aforementioned accused, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is guilty of a very great crime: He defends his allies and attacks his enemies--conduct particularly reprehensible in the eyes of the Obama Administration, which does the exact opposite.
...Side with the Americans and you will be promptly abandoned if troublemakers force the police to shoot. Side with Putin's Russia and you will be supported no matter what.
...Putin is also different in his understanding of the business of diplomacy. The Obama version is that the practicalities of any actual transaction are much less important than their decoration with fashionably modish principles and procedures, including genuflections to the forever useless United Nations. Hence none can expect to exchange X for Y in dealing with the Obama White House and Administration--it all has to go through its indecision machine that delays everything inordinately, at the very least.
By contrast, when Netanyahu heard that Putin was sending fighter-bombers to Syria, over which Israeli fight-bombers must operate from time to time to destroy trucks carrying Iran-supplied missiles to Hezbollah, thus opening the very real possibility of deadly aerial encounters, there were no lengthy pre-negotiation palavers to arrange for preparatory meetings that might one day lead to a meeting of the principals, in the manner of the Obama Administration. Instead Netanyahu asked for a quick meeting, Putin responded by inviting him to come to Moscow right away, where the two right away agreed that the Russians would telephone Cohen ... Bibi's National Security Advisor ... Israeli flights would be announced to Nikolai Patrushev, Putin's national security adviser ... the operating rule being that when one side does any bombing, the other side must stay on the ground.
...Many Americans view Putin simply as a thug but public opinion polls show that Russians disagree. His popularity is bound to decline as Putin's own counter-sanctions are needlessly intensifying the shortages caused by Western sanctions, and by the fall in the value of the ruble, yet a majority of Russians are likely to remains responsive to his fundamental message: "You are Russian. Sanctions or no sanctions, you will never eat as well as the Italians nor dress as elegantly as the French, and you will never be rich as the Americans--but you Russians are an imperial people, masters of the largest state in the world, equally ready to rule benevolently two dozen obedient nationalities and to punish the lawless. I, Putin, for my part, will not give away parts of your empire as my feckless predecessors Gorbachev and Yeltsin did, and I will strive to recover what I can, not just Crimea but as much of the Ukraine as possible, with more gains to come elsewhere."
Such primitive notions are no doubt incomprehensible to Obama and his officials, as well as to their intellectual milieu, for which empire can only be an embarrassment, power cannot be purposeful, peace is obtained by good will and not by assured security, war is purposeless destruction (and all warriors are merely future PTSD cases), and diplomacy should be a multilateral pursuit, having to do with Global Warming if at all possible. These are all useful stances for rank-and-file Obama officials as they prepare their future with Bill and Melinda, Bill and Chelsea, and the rest of the PC foundation universe with its light lifting and ceaseless conferencing travel to yammy destinations, but to conduct the foreign policy of the United States they are hopelessly off-target. Putin and Netanyahu, by contrast, are determined to hit their targets hard.