It all happened very fast, in the end. Last Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin was at the United Nations saying that the United States of America was making "an enormous mistake" in not backing Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in his war against Islamist rebels, notably including "Islamic State".
On Tuesday, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament unanimously voted to let President Putin use military force in Syria to fight "terrorism", in response to a request from the Syrian government.
And on Wednesday, Russian warplanes started bombing rebel targets in Syria. Moscow gave the US embassy in Iraq one hour's notice, requesting that US and "coalition" aircraft (which are also bombing Islamic State targets in Syria) avoid the airspace where the Russian bombers are in action. And Donald Trump, bless his heart, said "You know, Russia wants to get ISIS, right? We want to get ISIS. Russia is in Syria - maybe we should let them do it? Let them do it."
And for once, Trump is right. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
If you want to stop the Islamic State, you need troops, and the only ground troops fighting the terrorist outfit in Syria are the Syrian army and the Kurds along the northern border with Turkey. But the US has been duped by Turkey into betraying the Kurds, and it will not use its air power to help the beleaguered Syrian army.
That's why Palmyra fell to Islamic State forces in May. Despite all the other American air strikes against Islamic State forces in Syria, it made not one to help the Syrian forces when they were desperately defending the historic city, and so they eventually had to retreat. It was more important to Washington not to be seen helping Assad than to save the city.
Help at hand
This is a fine moral position, as Assad's regime is a deeply unattractive dictatorship. Indeed, the great majority of the four million Syrians who have fled the country were fleeing the regime's violence, not that of the Islamic State. But if you don't want the Islamist extremists to take over Syria (and maybe Lebanon and Jordan as well), and you're not willing to put troops on the ground yourself, who else would you help?
Washington's fantasy solution to this problem has been to create a 'third force' of rebels who will somehow defeat the Islamic State while diplomacy somehow removes Assad. But the other big rebel organizations in Syria, al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, are also Islamists. In fact, al-Nusra is a breakaway faction of the Islamic State, now affiliated with al Qaida. (Remember al Qaida? Chaps who did the 9/11 attacks?)
If Assad goes down, it is the Islamic State, al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham who will take over Syria, not the pathetic little band of fighters being trained by the US in Turkey. In fact the first group of them to cross back into Syria were immediately annihilated by the Islamic State, who had probably been tipped off by America's not very loyal ally, the Turkish government.
Putin does not make the same meaningless distinctions between the Islamic State and the other Islamist groups that the US insists on. The first Russian air strikes were on territory held by al-Nusra, not the Islamic State. But the Russians will hit the Islamic State too. In fact, the first big operation will probably be an attack by a re-equipped Syrian army to retake Palmyra, heavily backed by Russian air power.
Whether Putin's intervention will be enough to save Assad remains to be seen. The carping comments in the Western media about how he wants to distract attention from Russia's involvement in the Ukrainian civil war and restore Russia as a great power are true enough - indeed, he is probably shutting down the fighting in Ukraine mainly to clear the decks for Syria - but that is not his primary motive.
He is just doing what needs to be done.
