Video: Russian intervention in Syria

On 29 September, Russia launched airstrikes in Syria after a quick military build-up in Latakia and Tartous. According to the Russians, the main purpose is to fight the Islamic State, but rebel positions in Aleppo and Hama have also been targeted. Putin has made no secret of the fact that the intervention is also a means to support the weakened Assad regime and save the Syrian state from collapse.

This development has elevated the war in Syria to a full-scale international conflict and primarily a proxy war, DIIS senior researcher Helle Malmvig argued at the seminar ‘Russian intervention in Syria – responses and implications’ at DIIS on 27 October.

- External powers are now playing out their own rivalries, which have nothing to do with dynamics inside Syria or with Islamic State. Therefore, it is misleading that we tend to interpret Russian and Iranian intervention as a way to assist Bashar al-Assad. This terminology is wrong, because Assad can no longer decide his own military strategy. It is worked out in Tehran and Moscow, she said.

Until recently, there has not been a coherent Russian strategy in Syria, said DIIS senior researcher Flemming Splidsboel, who presented two different explanations to why Russia has chosen to intervene: either a ‘window of opportunity’ in the absence of the Western coalition, especially the U.S., or the threat of a possible collapse of the Assad regime.

- There is a script by which the Russian government hopes that the conflict in Syria will unfold and eventually come to a solution. This script is relatively new, and prior to this, the Russians have muddled along and tried to assess their options. The main goal remains the same: to have a pro-Russian regime in Damascus, Flemming Splidsboel said.

The U.S. has condemned the targeting of rebel groups and provided some groups with new weapons, but the Obama administration has also stressed that it has no interest in a proxy war with Russia. This restraint, which some have characterized as ‘the loss of influence in the Middle East’ is part of a profound change in how the U.S. perceives itself in world affairs and the exercise of power, said DIIS senior researcher Vibeke Schou Tjalve.

- This is a kind of willful abdication from the role as superpower, not just in the Middle East, but in the world as such. The Obama administration calls this ‘strategic patience’, she said.

At the same time, regional allies in the Middle East are stepping up their military aid to rebel groups. Turkey, a NATO member, is once again calling for a no-fly zone, and some regional powers are suggesting that they might provide air cover to the rebels fighting the Assad regime.

- Further escalation of the war in Syria could force NATO to deeper involvement, but in terms of readiness and presence in the region – air defense in Turkey and naval presence in the Mediterranean, said Kristian Søby Kristensen, senior researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen.

The geopolitical role of NATO in relation to the Syria conflict has been sparse, he argued. Countries within the alliance have formed a ‘coalition of the willing’, but outside a NATO context.

- In this conflict, NATO functions more as an arena for discussion, Kristian Søby Kristensen said.

Watch the entire seminar, including a discussion on future implications and outcomes in Syria, in the embedded video above.