Today, Vladimir Putin can undoubtedly be considered as one of the most influential leaders of the world. His ideas and his foreign policy have worldwide consequences. Yet, it remains very difficult to have a clear picture of how indeed, Putin takes decisions and by which factors he is influenced. However, one can see that various features appear as a leitmotiv in Putin’s discourses leading us to think that he is aware of some characteristics of his environment, and will take decisions according to what he perceives.
The fall of the USSR is probably the event that predominantly shaped the foreign policy of Vladimir Putin. To him, it was a gigantic catastrophe and a terrible loss that should have never happened. On more than one occasion, he expressed how much he was affected by this. For instance, on April 25th and May 5th 2005, he presented the collapse of the USSR as being “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”, but this leitmotiv can be found much earlier in his discourses. Putin associates this event with Russia’s loss of cultural, economic and political influence. This is why he is enlivened by his will to “give back its prestige [to Russia] and its major role worldwide” as he stated in a television speech in 2000. The Russian leader has thus a great ambition for Russia that was also promoted by his predecessors, and especially former President Boris Yelstin. Based on the belief that Russia, through history, has always been a great power he tries to rebuilt its “derzhavnost” (power in Russian). He is eager to see Russia getting back to its previous place, amongst the biggest powers, as a key player in the international political arena. He wants to sit at the tables of the negotiations, and refuses to be sidelined and marginalized as a minor actor, incapable of influencing international relations.
When looking around him, Putin observes that with the end of the USSR, Russia has lost a great part of its sphere of influence, that used to encompass many countries. As a result, Russia is rather vulnerable compared to the West. By acknowledging that his environment is not as friendly as it used to be, Putin takes two decisions that will constitute the main directions of his foreign policy.
First, recovering Russia’s greatness. To achieve this goal, Russia needs some allies, or at least countries that would remain under its umbrella. The last decade reflects well his will to strengthen its country’s influence in its immediate neighborhood, in Europe, and in the Middle East. For example, it is to be seen in his will to re-assert his position in the Middle East, a region that has been lengthily dominated by his Western rivals. Indeed, during the Cold War, the USSR had managed to extend its sphere of influence to some Middle Eastern countries such as Syria or Iraq or even Egypt. Today, Putin strives in order to regain some of its previous influence and relationships with those countries For instance, he regularly hails Russia’s Muslim heritage. By doing so, he presents his country as a more naturally closer and trustworthy ally to the Arab countries, than the Western countries.
Besides, Russia has to oppose the hegemony imposed by the West. In this quest, Putin is highly influenced by Ivan Ilyin, a Russian thinker of the early 20th century. His work extensively examines the use of force as a necessary tool. Drawing upon the philosopher’s work and the history of Russia, Putin proposes a solution that keeps with what he learned from his environment. Indeed, Russia has a long history of physical aggressions, wherever they came from. Russia is probably the country in Eurasia that has suffered from the most aggressions and infringements to its territorial sovereignty. When both factors are assembled, one can more easily understand Russia’s tendency to aggressiveness and its willingness to enhance its military apparatus. For instance, in a speech he delivered to the Russian National Assembly on May 10th 2016, Putin heralds his commitment to the restoration of the Russian military power.
When one looks at the intervention of Putin in Syria today, much of this leitmotiv is to be found again, showing that some enduring features of Putin’s environment impacted many of its decision of foreign policy, including the war in Syria.
In his article of December 2015, Robert A. Manning[1] summarizes the main reasons for Putin’s intervention in Syria. To him the civil war and the implantation of ISIS in Syria represented an opportunity that he could not miss. It was a chance to “show the world a Russia as a world power”, a Russia that would stand behind its friends unlike the USA. Besides Russia could also bolster its presence in the Middle East.
Firstly, Syria enabled Russia to show that it had a real and significant international standing, and that Russia did have a say in important international issues. In an article of the National Interest[2], Andranik Migranyan, a foreign-policy expert analyzes Putin’s intervention in Syria as obeying to “a win-win decision”. He stated that “if the Russian attacks succeed, he’s shown leadership; if they fail, the intervention will have killed lots of bad people, to the world’s benefit, and the blame for the failure will still rest mainly on the United States and its coalition for not cooperating with Russia”. Moreover, in an article of the magazine Foreign Policy, Julia Ioffe[3] declared that while for many decades, the US have been the dominant foreign power having its grips on the region, they now are in a bad position, of which Russia could take advantage. She encapsulates this idea arguing: “And that, too, is part of the goal: restoring Russia as a leader of world opinion after the reputational damage it suffered in Ukraine, muscling in as a power broker that needs to be consulted in important crises far from its borders and sphere of influence.” The Middle East is indeed, an area where Russia can tries to balance the US hegemony to ensure its place amongst the mightiest nations of the world. Intervening in the Middle East is an opportunity to demonstrate to the western world that Russia could and had the capabilities to intervene in place usually considered as being the US backyard and thus completely obliterating the image of Russia as being a declining power in the world. [4]
Striving to re-assert Russia’s status, Putin had to constitute himself solid partnership, and in this case to secure its allies. Syria was the perfect country to implement this policy. Firstly because through Syria, Russia could re-establish a strong hold in the Middle East that it had lost since the end of the Cold War. Secondly, Bashar Al-Assad represents one of the only regime that is favorable and close to Moscow. And finally because of Syria’s proximity to Iran, with whom Putin entertains friendly relationships. Alex Davies has delved into that relationship and shown that it would highly benefit Russia[5] since “Moscow’s close relationship with Tehran also augments the benefits of maintaining forces in Syria. Both Shia, Iran and Syria are firm allies — Iran supports the pro-regime Hezbollah and provides significant aid to Assad’s forces. Regardless of whether Assad remains in power or whether Syria maintains its current borders, the governments of both Iran and Syria will demand a say in any political settlement after the removal of ISIS. Assuming he, or someone close to him, remains in power, Assad’s reliance on Russia combined with Moscow’s influence in Tehran will afford Russia much bargaining power in that settlement.”
With Bashar Al Assad’s regime regaining control over large parts of the territory, Russia has rather successfully consolidated its sphere of influence that contributes to increase its power. [6] But this intervention also reflected how Putin has long perceived its neighboring environment. Having been the object of manifold aggressions, Putin sought to secure the region against ISIS, although this point of view is highly controversial. He feared that the spread of the terrorist organization over the Middle East on the long run, would affect Afghanistan and Asian countries near Russia and belonging to its sphere of influence.
Finally, the decline of the Russian economy due for instance to the European and American sanctions concerning the Crimean and Ukrainian crisis, harshly impacted both the Russian military. Therefore, Syria was an opportunity for Russia to test and reinforce its military capabilities. Indeed, a former treaty concluded between Hafez Al Assad and the USSR, enabled this latter to use the port of Tartus. By maintaining Bashar Al Assad in power, Putin ensures the permanence of this treaty that permitted him to rebuild the naval capabilities of Russia and thus to enhance Russia’s hard power internationally. However, it has to be acknowledged that it was not Putin’s main goal when he decided to intervene in Syria. Furthermore, by stabilizing the regime of its old ally, Putin made it sure that Syria would continue buying Russian weapons. Indeed, for many years, and especially since the beginning of the Civil War, Russia has been a very important weapon supplier of Syria. In a period where Moscow is under very harsh international sanctions for having invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea, those revenues generate an aid that is useful in attempting to stabilize the economy.
As a conclusion, influenced by Russia’s history, Vladimir Putin, as the most important player in the process of decision-making of its country, has a particular stance on the Syrian civil war. Over time, Russia’s foreign policy contains significant strategies of affirming itself as a world power. Moreover, it keeps on competing with the legitimacy of the United States and winning diplomatic allies in the Middle East. Owing to the fact that Russia was often subjected to aggressive military and political attacks on its territory by the rest of the world, its policy is now centered on its will to recover its previous strength. However complicated, the case study of the current war in Syria seems to be a relevant point in order to shed light on Putin’s goals.
M.C., A.F.D., A.M., V.M.
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[1] http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/18/what-does-putin-want/
[2] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/syria-why-russia-went-14030
[3]http://nationalinterest.org/feature/syria-why-russia-went-14030
[4] https://geopoliticalfutures.com/why-putin-went-into-syria/
[5] https://diplomacist.com/2015/10/06/putins-power-play-the-real-reason-behind-russian-intervention-in-syria/
[6], Syria’s Future? « A black hole of instability » (Thanassis Cambanis in The New York Times), http://geopolitics.blog.lemonde.fr/category/syria/
Understanding Decisions 