Quote:
Originally Posted by ikalugin
@skybird
Our strategy in Syria is emergent not deliberate, ie beyond few core goals (fighting terrorism, securing coastal bases - both of which have already been achieved) we are open to whatever deal is available. Back after the Su24M shot down we were open to, for example, supporting Kurds against Turks, up to and including Yemen style deal with Tochkas popping up in Kurdistan.
Now I think Russia is mostly playing a powerbroker, in this case negotiating a compromise where Kurds surrender to Assad (the least evil for them) on terms of good autonomy, but restrictions on political activity (esp cross border kind), with a buffer zone where Turks can dump their refugee/imigrant camps.
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I see Putin's cleverness in the fact that he ran from beginning on a strategy in Syria that optimally manipulated chances to maximise his degrees of freedoms in the future, no matter how the specific details of such future would look. It compares a bit to how you play Backgammon: you cannot forsee all the dice results coming in the future, but you can lay out your own pieces as optimal as you can with te diece you already got, to optmise your options for any dice result coming in the future. In this understanding, yes, his strategy was an emerging one, as you called it - but also one with a very well laid fundament. I think he has seen the deep-reaching geostraeteic relevance of Syria very early, thats why he e,barke don it so early and with such brute detem,rination, leavign no doubt that Russia's interest to keep syria was absolutely serious. Compared to that the European and American stomping blindly around in the Middle East, is clueless and shortsighted. It is here where Russia has had a strong interest for sure to get a headless, emotion-driven shortsighted stupdi like Trump into the WH - if the psychological profile they must have done of him was correct (and apparently it was!), then he was the ideal American opponent for Russia in that he would allow Russia by his decision-making and general attitude to do what russia wanted to do, and to run its own game with no serious american opposition, and America not even preventing that the rift between the US and Europe, the rift inside NATO, is widening. I am convinced that the Kremlin did what it could to influence the elections and make Trump the winner. They must have wanted him, else they would have been stupid. And look what Russia got: an America that is almost taken off the global playfield and is fully engaged in playing with its own little Willie, while doing so being no threat to Russia's game of dealing new cards in the ME, and Europe. The opposition in America also is deadlocked and taken out, is fixiated on Trump and does not have time left to direct attention to foreign policies.
Seen this way, Russia is currently the by far most aggressively acting player at the table beside China. And it is extremely clever and competent in hiding this. Trump on the other hand collects translucent wins. Putin also can build on a revival of the youth's strong interest and love for left, socialist conceptions throughout the Westm, the money crisis and debt crisis play sinto Russia hands again, for it raises anger at the capitalist base structure of the West, weakening it further. . Herr ein germany, Germans are kind of Americaphobe by genes it seems, and Russophile at the same time. Putin might not be able to indeed serve to these interests (he is no old Marxist and also no Stalinist, but he knows how to use the popularity of the Stalin cult for his purposes), but they provide him an inherent willingness to give Russia the benefit of doubt under circumstances where America already would have been condemned once again. A subtle game. A game with high pay-offs. A game of long breath and foresight. None that Trump knows how to play. He is just marching from day to day, on stomping feet.
Everybody doing martial arts knows that cowboy-walking with wide legs and long steps - gives you a very weak stand. Its not strength, but just posing.