Syria warms up to Russia, as Russian-American rift widens

According to the International Herald Tribune, Syria has publicly upped its outreach to Russia in the recent days, clearly taking advantage of the growing rift between Russia and the West over the Georgian conflict.

Syria’s overtures show they are apparently seeking aid and a build up of Syrian air defense forces.

Syria’s long-term aim, however, remains unclear, in part because Assad also continues to pursue peace efforts with Israel — a key U.S. and European goal — even as he makes overtures to Russia that are sure to antagonize the West. Syria has a long history of apparently contradictory diplomatic moves as it maneuvers to find options and balance its interests.

Syria openly supported Russia’s military action in Georgia, as did Iran and both are likely hoping to get kudos in return. This is exactly what Western leaders had feared.

What is clear to foreign policy experts but apparently escapes U.S. officials is that bad relations with Russia is more than one less friend in our address book. Russia is a world power, and if we antagonize them, they will antagonize right back. The West needs to decide how many new problems it is willing to take in return for standing up to Russia on the Georgia problem.

It should be noted as well, that all of this could have been — and was (in my blog) — foreseen. The United States and Europe (Russia included) made the same mistakes in this modern drama as they made in the run-up to the first World War. Seeking influence and empire they made alliances with everyone they could, hoping that would keep the balance of power in their favor, when in reality it only made conflict inevitable.

Serbia, a small country with disputed territories in a large country, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was supported by Russian Empire, which had classicly protected the Balkans’ Slavs. Serbian terrorists, protesting Austrian rule over a Serb province assassinate Prince Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary invades Serbia; Russia declares war. In accordiance with its alliance with Autria-Hungary, Germany declares war on Russia, which was allied with France. German troops advancing towards Paris pass through Belgium, by treaty bringing Britain into the war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A month later, seeing its economic interest lied with the Central Powers, the Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia, France and Britain.

We all know how well that went. So then why would we support such a foolish policy towards Georgia? The United States and NATO knew full well that Georgia had territorial disputes with Russia, but we nonetheless approached them with an alliance, one that would have threatened Russia’s national interests specifically because of these disputes. We then further destabilized the situation by creating a precedent for an ethnic minority gaining independence due to outside intervention in Kosovo, and upped our pressure to Russia in other ways (i.e. Missile Sheild, criticizing Russian democratic processes, etc).

As this new development shows, these kind of conflicts never remain conflicts between a couple or few countries. We weren’t just playing with fire in Georgia, we were playing with world war.