Russia Complicates. Everything.

This blog will focus on two New York Times articles showing Russia’s growing involvement in the Syrian conflict. Since the Syrian Civil War began there has been a quiet, growing fight between Russia and the United States to control the balance of power. Meanwhile, other countries and militaries such as Israel have been increasingly concerned about direct Russian military involvement in Syria.

Russia has been sending a steady stream of military supplies to the Assad Regime over the past five years but recently has stepped up its actions and have begun building up its own military capabilities in Syria, most notably on a Syrian airfield in which it now has artillery and tanks. Meanwhile, the United States has been noticing and has been very subtly convincing other nations to restrict Russian planes from their airspace on the way to Syria.

The interesting new component is that it seems like an international regime is being formed around the military powers in the area. Israel is planning on meeting with Russia to discuss the military implications of Russia’s increased involvement. The article “Israeli Leader to Visit Moscow Over Concerns About Russian Moves in Syria” shows Israel looking after itself by making sure that Russian equipment don’t go towards Assad’s allies, the terrorist regime Hezbollah. It is important to note that Israel is now focusing on convincing the Russians to come to a mutual understanding in order to avoid military altercations.

Similarly, the United States has almost the same ideas in mind. The headlines today focused less on how the US is trying to undercut Russia’s plans and more on how the two can move to lessen confrontation. In the New York Times article “Russia Proposes Talks With U.S. Over Syria” we are told that the Russians actually started the move towards communicating better. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, in a fairly unprecedented move under Putin’s leadership, reached out to John Kerry (Secretary of State) to begin to have a conversation between the two militaries on how to avoid issues. Whether or not Russia is actually serious about those conversations are yet to be seen.

Clearly Russia is trying to take control of the power vacuum that the United States left since after the two Middle Eastern wars. Now the jostling of powers continues although the usual back and forth, passive aggressive behavior has momentarily stopped. Could this be a real shift in policy from Russia who are possibly trying to fill the void but not mess with the US? Or is this just more of the same games from an increasingly aggressive Russia?