What interest dictates

A new script is being written for the Middle East by the United States Secretary John Kerry during his extensive talks with the Russian leadership this week.

Moscow has become this month a mecca for many regional players, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Morocco.

The visits reaffirm Vladimir Putin’s hopes of regaining the political greatness that the former Soviet Union used to cherish.

In case the “advice to take the correct decision” takes a tangible form in Syria, where it is predicated on convincing the regime to accept a political transition, equally detrimental decisions in Yemen, Iraq and Libya can be expected.

Putin has successfully capitalised on the West’s aversion to direct involvement in the region to advance his country’s strategic interests.

Moscow is gloating about the successive capitulations to its cardinal musts, including President Bashar Assad’s status and regime.

Washington’s fear of being duped into another Afghanistan or a second Iraq made Moscow deploy its ground troops and air force to do the fighting alongside a kaleidoscope of anachronistic allies representing fundamentalist Islamists like Hizbollah, secular Syrians like the Baath Party, atheist groups from the Damascus political opposition, devout Shiites like the Iraqi ruling group or expansionist Iranians who are about to get the requested Russian Sukhoi PAK FA fighters and S-300 missile defence system.

Syria is a zero-sum game for Russia, and while the West does not honour its red line commitments, the vacuum was filled by the power that can put an end to any attempts to impose new hegemony.

Kerry came back from Moscow this week, accepting Putin’s theory that a post-Assad Syria will be another Libya, a failed state with a power vacuum that will be filled by terrorist groups like Daesh or Jabhat Al Nusra.

The Russian diktats were inscribed so bluntly that fighting militias in Damascus or moderate opposition groups in Geneva will opt to join radical Al Nusra rather than tolerate more years under the rule of sectarian Alawite regime headed by Assad.

United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura and Putin successfully crafted a stratagem to extend Assad’s presidency by 18 months now, and for many more years later.

As long as Russian interest in Syrian gas, and Mediterranean strategic naval and air bases is secured, there is no need to worry about 250,000 killed, or 1 million injured, or 11 million displaced from their homes.