The silence from Western capitals as ISIS fled Palmyra was as deafening as it was understandable. In Syria, history has refused to follow the script.
On 2 October last year, US President Barack Obama warned that ‘a military solution alone. . . an attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work.’ Russia, he added, was acting ‘not out of strength but out of weakness’.
Yet in military terms, Syria shows that Russia is stronger today than at any point since the Soviet collapse, capable of effectively deploying …read more