The Russian bear in sheep’s clothing
As written by Andrew Foxall of The New York Times:
Syria is being destroyed. The civil war, now more than four years old, has left the country in ruins. The implacable Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant controls vast areas of the north and east, and the barbaric regime of President Bashar al-Assad maintains its Damascus stronghold.
The Western powers — the United States, Canada and Europe — have no good options to combat the Islamic State, but they can’t do nothing. Either they must work with Assad’s regime to combat the jihadists, or ignore its existence and undertake military action alone to push back the jihadists. Thus far, though, the American-led air campaign against the Islamic State has done little to halt its advances.
This stark choice is a result of the failure of recent Western policy. One person who understands this better than most is Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Sept. 4, Putin announced that Russia had been providing military aid to Damascus against the Islamic State — support that has recently been ramped up. He also called for “some kind of an international coalition to fight terrorism and extremism.” This is in keeping with Moscow’s Syria policy, which has been consistent since 2010: block any American-backed move to remove Assad from power and instead force the West to embrace him as a partner.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-foxall-the-russian-bear-in-sheeps-clothing