A New Cold War?

The coldness with which Obama and Putin met is a sign of this new international time that asserts the strong differences between the United States and Russia.

The difficult situation that has been happening in Ukraine since 2013 is the most important event driving a wedge between the two countries. It is a region that Russia sees as part of its zone of influence, and which U.S. foreign policy has wanted to influence more than Moscow has been willing to accept for 20 years.

The Russian blow with the annexation of Crimea was very serious, because it broke Ukrainian territorial integrity — which, moreover, is currently being threatened in its eastern zone by paramilitaries affiliated with Moscow. Nevertheless, despite the huge difficulties that remain, the more than 8,000 dead in clashes that are ongoing, and the coming to power of President Petro Poroshenko by democratic vote in Kiev in 2014, the subsequent international agreements in Minsk give hope for a political solution to this crisis.

In stark contrast is the situation in Syria, where Washington and Moscow have two different strategies.

Since 2011, Russia has resolutely supported Bashar Assad, the tyrant of Damascus, who buys Russian armaments and has given Moscow access to a naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus by the Mediterranean Sea. In recent days, Putin has proposed an international coalition, comparable to “the fight against Hitler,” in order to militarily attack the Islamic State terrorists who govern a good part of Syria and Iraq.

To this end, he has already received the support of the Shiite governments of Iraq and Iran. Moscow sent naval support, aircraft and infantry to Syria, and has begun military action there.

The United States and its allies share the same military goal of defeating the Islamic State group. In 2014 and 2015, the multinational coalition led by Washington carried out more than 6,000 airstrikes to combat this terrorist movement. Nevertheless, Obama is not willing to support the tyrant of Damascus, nor does he think that the political solution to the Syrian conflict should be taken into account. Among the United States’ allies, France is the most decided enemy of Assad, and Germany is possibly the most flexible, as shown in the last few weeks, but always within the general conviction that the Damascus government has committed unacceptable war crimes.

In this regard, it is clear that more of the responsibility should be given to Assad than the Islamic State group for the more than 240,000 deaths it brought to the Syrian civil war.

The differences between Moscow and Washington are substantial in the Middle East. Putin has already assured Israel that the arming and support of the Syrian regime will not be to stop the terrorist group Hezbollah, which operates mainly in southern Lebanon. But the most important part in Moscow’s strategy is demonstrating that Russia is capable of stabilizing a key region of the international system based on its strong military involvement.

Putin has decided to send hundreds of troops to Syria because, in his view, he is doing what needs to be done to initiate the end of the Islamic State group. In parallel, Obama is taking into account the terrible experience the U.S. had in the 2003 Iraq invasion, and has repeated that his country will not send troops to occupy reconquered territory from the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

What is occurring in Syria is a civil war with military involvement from the region and the world’s leading powers, with the United States and Russia, but also France, Turkey and Iran, among the most relevant. Putin has decided to be the leader in order to obtain a victory in this war, supporting his ally Assad as well as being a stabilizing power in all of the Middle East.

It is a foreign policy that fits with the historical and famous Russian willingness to engage in the front lines of the most important theaters in the international scene.

The Russian defiance with regard to Washington in a region where until now, the United States would claim to be the hegemonic power, could rekindle a kind of 21st century regional Cold War. However, as was the case in the ’70s and ’80s, the Achilles heel exists in Moscow’s enormous economic instability.

It is a policy that can hardly be sustained over time without destabilizing the economy and finances of Putin’s great Russia.