Bombing cities, killing civilians and crushing aspirations for democracy—what Vladimir Putin is doing to Ukraine now, he first did to Syria. Bassma Kodmani is a leading member of the Syrian democratic opposition. Her father, a senior diplomat, was exiled in 1968 due to his opposition to Hafez al-Assad, father of the present ruler Bashar al-Assad. Born in Damascus in 1958, she is currently a senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne in Paris.
Patrick Marnham: The Arab Spring reached Syria in January 2011. Were you involved from the start?
Bassma Kodmani: I joined the democratic opposition in the very early days of the uprising, and became the foreign affairs representative and spokesperson of the Syrian National Council. I have been in and out of the formal political bodies of the opposition over the last 10 years, but I have always been active, initiating back channel discussions with friendly and pro-regime governments.
Have you negotiated with the Russians?
As a member of the negotiating team in the Geneva peace talks and now a member of the Constitutional Committee, we have regular meetings with Russian officials. These meetings are important to us and to the UN Special Envoy because we rely entirely on Russia to put pressure on the Syrian regime. I have learned to decipher their implicit messages and understand their duplicity.
How did Putin first become so deeply involved in Syria?
In the beginning, Putin was only marginally interested in saving the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The main trigger to give Assad his full support was the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. Putin also realised that Syria was potentially a great strategic asset.
Did he ever seem concerned with reaching a peace settlement in Syria?
The Russians don’t hide their contempt for Assad and his incompetence, but they have come to see him as the perfect “useful idiot.” Putin is clearly not interested in brokering a political settlement. His objective was always to bring the country back under Assad’s nominal control by indiscriminate bombing. Now Syrian society is subdued, the Russian military can go about running their own lucrative affairs in the country.
Recently, in the New York Times, Ivan Krastev said that Ukraine is “not Russia’s war. It is Mr Putin’s.” Would you agree?
All these wars in the Middle East, Africa and now Ukraine are Putin’s wars. They emanate from his vision of power politics, and aim to reproduce the same pattern of autocratic predatory governance that Putin practises at home.
The same analyst suggested that Putin was not attempting “to build an international order.” Instead, he is driven by a desire to “rewrite the past.” He wants revenge for events such as Nato’s bombing of Belgrade in 1999.
Many analysts believed for a long time that Russia’s sense of being humiliated after the end of the Soviet Union should have been managed more carefully by the west, whose triumphalism was imprudent and provocative to Putin and the nationalist elites of Russia. But with this war on Ukraine we are witnessing something different. The relentless onward rush of his dictatorship is likely to become more radical and dangerous.
In Europe, Putin is sometimes compared to historical tyrants such as Ivan the Terrible or to Serb nationalists like Slobodan Miloševi. How do you see him?
Viewed from Syria, Putin is more reminiscent of Saddam Hussein. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine recalls the Iraqi dictator’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. At that time Saddam had embarked on a massive rearmament programme, which alarmed his neighbours. He regarded his army as invincible after eight years of warfare against Iran. Intoxicated by his military strength, he challenged the territorial boundaries imposed by Britain in 1961, which he had never recognised. At the same time, he had become increasingly paranoid about neighbouring regimes undermining him. The invasion of Kuwait eventually proved to be a fatal error from which he never really recovered.
Not a very good example for Putin then.
Putin’s plan is more ambitious. In invading Ukraine he is not simply trying to halt the rampant “Nato-isation” of his neighbours. The action was undertaken in the context of his drive to rebuild Russia’s status as a world power. He models this on the Soviet Union and uses the same means, aiming to acquire allies either as client or satellite states.
Up to now he seems to have concentrated on the old Soviet Union—Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. But you are suggesting his ambitions extend much further.
He resembles a hunter in permanent ambush, waiting for the right moment, ready to seize on every occasion where quick gains can be made. He is always ready to rake in the spoils of war in preparation for his final objective—the last battle—against Nato in Europe.
He intends to move against Nato?
Putin knows that he cannot match US military strength. But his willingness to intervene whenever the opportunity arises, coming at a time when the US is increasingly reluctant to engage in wars without end, gives him a significant advantage.
How does he set about this ambitious programme?
There are several recurrent features of these disorganised interventions, which can be seen as almost a mirror reflection of the methods adopted by western powers. The first is offering protection to authoritarian regimes—what you might call “regime rescue,” not “regime change.” After the fall of Saddam, followed by Gaddafi, the defence of tottering dictators became a central pillar of Russian strategy in the Middle East. He uses the same argument from Syria to Kazakhstan: “let us make common cause against the insufferable western powers that pose as our moral arbiters.” He also sets out to recruit authoritarian regimes allied to the west. Here he sings a different tune—reassuring them that their political systems are legitimate, and that they have the right to limit their citizens’ rights as they wish. In the Middle East this allows Moscow to pursue friendly relations with both Arab and non-Arab governments, for example with the UAE, Turkey, Syria and Israel.
The second difference is that Russia does not intervene as a peacemaker. It is simply looking for clients to draw into debt that can be cashed in as needed. When Putin intervened in Syria, Washington foresaw that Russia would become bogged down, like the US was in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Putin is perfectly happy with endless conflict; the advantages outweigh the costs. Since 2017, Moscow has constructed two major military bases in Syria, at Khmeimim and Tartous. These now balance the Nato base at ncirlik in Turkey. Both Russian bases are of central importance for the defence of Crimea. Marine troops from Russia’s Syrian base were recently transferred to the Black Sea.
So where is the advance in Russia’s national interests?
Putin does not have to show results to justify the Russian presence in these countries. Syria has been turned into an invaluable military training ground and a showcase for Russian arms sales. Russian generals in Ukraine developed their tactics and rehearsed their air strikes by destroying Syrian targets. Over half a million Syrians have died in the war, but official agencies have stopped issuing statistics. For Russia, the civil war in Syria was an extended rehearsal. And the Syrian operation was financed by the massive arms sales in the region. Russia now carries out joint exercises with Arab countries in the Mediterranean and with Iran and China in the Indian Ocean. Another impressive display of power.
Are there other examples?
In Libya, Putin started by supporting Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, who rules the faction based in Tobruk. Then he switched to developing relations with the UN-sponsored government in Tripoli. Neither tactic has anything to do with seeking a peace settlement. Putin is now involved in the reorganisation of the Libyan armed forces. This will provide an opportunity to install a permanent Russian military presence. Meanwhile, a “Wagner operation” [conducted by mercenaries working for the Kremlin] has already taken control of two major Libyan oil fields. Russian oligarchs, working in conjunction with these militias, bond with local mafias and obtain concessions from pariah governments for the exploitation of natural resources.
Yet Russia is also involved in the “war on terror.”
But its chief interest lies not in winning it, but in exploiting the west’s failure to do so. The west seems to have been struggling for 20 years against a ghost army that it cannot defeat. One problem with the west’s strategy is that it requires the co-operation of regional leaders while at the same time demanding that they reform and hold democratic elections—elections that would signal the end of their own personal power. So why would they co-operate?
Russia takes advantage of that contradiction. Autocracies clinging on to power appreciate the protection offered by a permanent member of the UN Security Council—one that is not always preaching at them about democracy and human rights. At the same time, Putin deploys soft power, presenting Russia as a culturally sympathetic society that includes 20m Muslim citizens. Russia broadcasts propaganda in Arabic and has acquired considerable influence throughout the Muslim world.
So is Putin winning?
Putin knows his ambitions exceed his means. He is therefore obliged to form alliances with partners of dubious reliability. This tactic has given him grounds for claiming that Russia, unlike the US, is a regional power with legitimate interests to defend. But this is a dangerous game. It draws Putin into both co-operation and rivalry with other regional powers that have just as much appetite for interference in their neighbours’ affairs—Turkey, Israel and Iran.
Since the interests of those three countries are opposed to each other, Putin has mastered the art of managing his agreements with each. It is a game in which each player forms fluid agreements based on the limits of its individual power. Syria provides the clearest example. Russia’s original intervention could not have succeeded without the massive deployment of Shia militias trained by Iran. But Iran’s presence in Syria alarmed Israel. Putin therefore gave tacit agreement to Israeli air raids on Iranian sites in Syria. With Turkey, Putin’s game is equally risky. In the Syrian conflict Putin and Erdoan have backed opposite sides—just as they have in the Libyan conflict—but they have managed to reach an agreement that prevents either of them from trying to eliminate the other from the board.
Israel became an important strategic partner when the Cold War ended, particularly as a supplier of military technology such as drones. But Israel has also supplied military technology to Ukraine. That had to stop when the Russian attack was launched. Otherwise, the tacit agreement—whereby Moscow did not intervene when Israel attacked Iranian sites in Syria—would have been threatened.
What about the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, traditionally under Washington’s influence?
For the last six years Riyadh and Moscow have co-ordinated their oil production and thereby regulated the world market within the framework of what is known as Opec+. Neither has any interest in breaking this alliance and that fact alone explains the failure of Boris Johnson’s recent mission to Riyadh begging for an increase in oil production. That is the clearest advantage that Putin’s geopolitical strategy has gained him so far.
And what is the position of Erdoan? Is he embarrassed by Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine?
Erdoan would have done everything he could to dissuade Putin from taking this course of action. It has threatened 10 years of hard work building positive Russo-Turkish relations. How will Erdoan reconcile his obligations to Nato without demolishing his Syrian policy? As the conflict broke out, he had to abide by at least some of his Nato obligations, so he banned the passage of Russian warships through the Bosphorous and Dardanelles. However, the ban does not apply to Russian warships based in Black Sea ports. If he ever did attempt to ban those ships, Putin might well instruct Assad to launch a massive assault on rebel positions in northern Syria—and so flood Turkey with another wave of refugees.
