EDITORIALS

The risks of alliance with Russia

Staff Writer
The Progress-Index

The Paris attacks created a tactical opportunity for Vladimir Putin. For two months the Russian ruler sought to persuade Arab and Western nations to join what he described as an alliance against the Islamic State, even as a Russian offensive in Syria targeted Western-backed Syrian rebel forces. He was spurned, and his military campaign bogged down. Now, in the wake of Paris, French President François Hollande suddenly has become a convert to the grand-alliance idea.

Putin is doing his best to look like a potential partner. After weeks of obfuscation, his government suddenly confirmed that the Islamic State was responsible for the bombing of a Russian airliner last month, and Russian forces carried out a rare wave of attacks against the Islamic State capital, Raqqa. The Kremlin has much to gain: An alliance could mean the end of European sanctions against Russia, which will expire in January unless renewed, and the concession of a Russian say over the future of Syria and perhaps also Ukraine, where Russian-backed forces have resumed daily attacks.

The question for Western governments, including a rightly skeptical Obama administration, is whether joining with Putin would help or hurt the cause of destroying the Islamic State. For now, that's not a hard call. Russia has little to offer the U.S.-led coalition in military terms, even if it proved willing to focus its attacks on the Islamic State rather than rebels fighting the regime of Bashar Assad. At the same time, Putin's strategy of bolstering rather than removing the Assad regime is, along with Iran's similar strategy, the single biggest obstacle to defeating the jihadists.

Russia has sought to demonstrate in Syria that its military forces have been modernized since they struggled to defeat Chechen rebels a decade ago. But military analysts haven't been impressed with the Russian-led assault on anti-Assad forces in northern Syria.

Putin duly dispatched his foreign minister to talks in Vienna last weekend on a Syrian political settlement. But Moscow and Tehran continue to push for terms that would leave Assad in power for 18 months or longer.

Secretary of State John Kerry was rather elegant in explaining the dangers of accepting Russian terms. If the West "cut a deal" such that "Assad can be there for a while longer," he said, "the war won't stop." The Syrian dictator’s atrocities, from chemical weapons to "barrel bombs," have convinced the vast majority of Syrian Sunnis that he - and not the terrorists - is their principal enemy.

The only productive contribution Putin could make to an anti-Islamic State coalition would be to reverse himself, use Russia's leverage to obtain the removal of Assad and stop attacks on Western-sponsored forces. Failing that, an alliance with Russia would be a dangerous false step for the United States and France.

The Washington Post