It's important to recognize that the strength of Russia in Syria is more political than military. The U.S. itself has many more military assets in the region than Russia, and there are 16 other countries flying combat aircraft in Syria. The American-led anti-Syria alliance draws on forces and facilities in the neighboring countries of Jordan, Israel, and Turkey. Indeed, the latter two have the significant armed forces that have directly attacked Syria, and shot down a Russian plane. Not to mention the global logistics and arms-supply network (even Croatia's in the act) backed by the enormous financial resources of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
It was not just American, but also UK, Danish, and Australian air forces, that accidentally-on-purpose bombed Syrian army positions at the Deir Ezzor airport on September 17th, killing about 100 Syrian soldiers and wounding 110 more, in an operation that was an acknowledged violation of regulations, and just happened to support an ISIS offensive on the airport. There are more planes and weapons arrayed in the America-led coalition than in the Russian contingent.
That attack on Deir Ezzor was, by the way, exactly the kind of attack Obama had promised a year before. This time it was destined to be a one-off, because the Russians were there to prevent it from happening again. It's thought, in fact, that it was a Pentagon tantrum designed to sabotage the Kerry-negotiated cease-fire--which it did--and, as Gareth Porter says , meant as "payback" to Russia for its "poke in the U.S. eye." That means it was a direct defiance of civilian command. Let's see how Donald deals with Mad Dog when that comes up again.
The fundamental problem is that there's an inverse relationship between America's military power and its political strength. That centrifugal tension derives from the increasingly obvious discrepancy between America's publicly-declared motivations and objectives, and the actual motivations and objectives--which cannot be publicly declared, but which the results of American actions make harder to hide.
In the Syrian case, it plays out like this: Russia supports the Syrian state against the jihadis. That's what it says it's doing, and that's what it is doing. You can support that or oppose it, and it's clear what you're supporting or opposing.
The US, on the other hand, is supporting: reactionary religious monarchism, the destruction of secular nationalism, Zionism, Turkish neo-Ottoman ambitions, capitalism and neoliberal globalism, oil and gas drilling and pipeline rights, etc. But the American (and European) people aren't going to want to fight, die, or give up their Social Security and Medicare for any of that. So the government of the U.S. cannot say what it's actually doing, and wraps it up in a bullshit fairy tale about democracy and humanitarianism, which its client regimes in Europe and its global media agents promote around the world incessantly.
This story only sells as long as people accept the legitimacy of the source--which means as long as they have enough material comfort, and as long as they only get the story from approved sources. But that's over. All of it. People no longer have, and will not be getting back, lives of increasing material comfort, and they are no longer limited to, and won't be swallowing whole, the blather that's intoned by multi-million-dollar news anchors (which is why there will be continuing futile attempts to shut down, or steer people away from, alternative media).
In Facebook world, Russia and Syria are in a relationship.
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