Earlier today Secretary of State John Kerry met with his Russian counterpart in Lausanne, Switzerland to see if it might be possible to restore the cease-fire in eastern Aleppo which broke down 12 days ago when Russian air power and Syrian forces on the ground renewed their scorched earth campaign against Assad's opponents.
Of course nothing positive came out of the meeting in Lausanne, and nobody should deceive themselves about Russian tactical intentions in Syria, which are in fact transparent.
Indeed, it seems clear that the brutal, indiscriminate and criminal attacks of the Russians in Aleppo and in other parts of Syria - in conjunction with their Syrian and Iranian allies - reflects a decision by Putin to do everything possible to defeat or destroy Assad's enemies between now and November 8th, or by January 20th at the latest.
In short, it appears that Putin believes that he has a window of opportunity in which he can act brutally and with impunity because he calculates that the Obama administration will not dare oppose him on the ground while the American election campaign is underway.
And one can bet that Putin has also calculated that Hillary is likely to respond much more forcefully to what Russia is doing in Syria and elsewhere from her very first day in office. Indeed it will doubtless be of great importance to the incoming Clinton administration to show the Russians, and the world more generally, from day one, that our enemies cannot act with impunity. So one can imagine that Putin understands this as well and knows that he will have to act in a more restrained and circumspect manner come January 20th.
In the meantime, he and his allies seem bent upon bringing maximum force to bear in an effort to cripple or destroy Assad's opponents before the ref blows the whistle.
Moreover, if Putin is thinking a few steps ahead, as one would expect, he may even be planning on simultaneously consolidating his gains and mounting a "peace offensive" in January that will seek to lock in Assad's and Alawite primacy (and Russian hegemony). How could Hillary possibly resist his offer of a "reset", especially if he sweetens the pot with new promises to work closely "again" with Washington to defeat ISIS?
I would further observe that the shift by the Russians toward a much more aggressive stance in Syria, which occurred sometime in August after the Democratic Convention, likely owed to the Russians having assessed that Hillary was much likelier than Trump to win the presidency, which led the Russians, in turn, to decide that they needed to do all they could to land a knockout blow against Assad's enemies before the American election or, at the latest, before the presidential inauguration.
Clearly, at least so far as their Syria policy is concerned, the Russians may prefer a President Trump since all of his public statements have given them reason to conclude that he would be far less likely than Hillary to stand in the way of Russia's continuing to flex its muscles in Syria in a manner that is increasingly brutal and in contravention to the laws of war. But Putin can read the US election polls as well as anybody and knows that it is increasingly less likely that he will ever have the opportunity to do business with a President Trump. .
Finally, I would note that while I see January 20, 2017 as the putative final day of the current Russo-Syrian offensive, there is some reason to think that the Russians may decide to curtail their behavior on November 9th for fear that once Obama is freed of the electoral constraints of the present moment, he may choose to respond forcefully to Russian provocations both because it is the right thing to do and in order to begin the process of rectifying the long train of unfortunate consequences which were set in motion when Obama flinched and permitted his infamous red line to be crossed with impunity.
While it would be easy to deride such "bold" action as too late even if not too little, by initiating such a mid-course correction after the election, Obama might also be inspired by the hope that such boldness might soften the judgment of future historians and biographers who are likely to conclude that Obama's policy vis-a-vis Russia in general, and vis-a-vis Syria in particular was a colossal failure of immense strategic consequence. The negative reverberations of this failure are, after all, enough to make one shudder: from the horrendous loss of innocent life, to the rise of dangerous regional instability, to the far-flung tremors which continue to ripple across the globe, including a significant uptick in jihadist terror and a refugee crisis that has in turn helped to produce a rightward and xenophobic turn in the politics of the region and far beyond. (And going even further, one might plausibly argue that the collapse of the Arab Spring itself should be understood to be a consequence of the Obama administration failed Syrian policy (aided and abetted by the administration's failed policies vis-a-vis Egypt and Libya as well), which helped to transform the Arab Spring into a new Arab Winter.) Having ample reason then to fear the judgment of presidential historians, it would not surprise me in the least if Obama Obama sought, during his final days in the White House, to strike back with force against the Russians in Syria and to establish the predicate for Hillary's continuing in this same direction, in a push back against Russia that cannot but recall Jimmy Carter's "reset" of his Russian policy in December of 1979 following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, an act which similarly established the predicate for Reagan's continued support of the mujahadeen.
Being wary of the possibility of such a shift in Obama's stance, it is reasonable to assume that the Russians may press even harder to finish their dirty work before November 8th, while America remains distracted by an electoral contest that is devoid of any serious attention to the serious issues that will preoccupy the next president from his or her first day in office.
About this sad and even tragic tale, we are sadly likely to someday find ourselves reading a book that bears the familiar and always too soon forgotten title: 'While America Slept -- Again.'
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