Russia’s Policy of Peace Is Encouraging War

By Paul Craig Roberts

February 28, 2021 "Information Clearing House" - On February 25 the election thief ordered a US air attack on Syria that killed 17 Iranians. US and Israeli attacks on Syria have been ongoing for years with no consequences other than Syrian and Russian denunciations of the US and Israeli violations of international law.  Clearly, the US/lsraeli agenda takes priority over international law.  One would think that after all these years, the Kremlin would have noticed that and cease sounding like an ineffective broken record.

After years of hesitation, Russia finally permitted Syria to obtain S-300 missiles, which, if they are permitted to be used, are capable of preventing US and Israeli attacks.  As the missiles are never used, Washington regards them as just another bluff by a cowardly Russian government that won’t fight.

Andrew Korybko, an American Moscow-based political analyst, tries to find a Russian policy in Russia’s protection of US and Israeli attacks on Syria.  He acknowledges that while Russia officially regards Israeli and US attacks on Syrian territory as violations of international law, “it never does anything to stop them.”  He points to “the objectively existing and easily verifiable fact that the S-300s have never even once been used to defend Syria since they were dispatched there in late 2018 for that explicit purpose” as evidence that Moscow is “passively facilitating those strikes.”

Korybko postulates that the Kremlin’s toleration of the strikes is part of a Russian “grand strategic ‘balancing act’ of trying to promote a so-called ‘compromise political solution’ to the country’s conflict, one which envisions the eventual withdrawal of Iranian forces and their allies such as Hezbollah in possible exchange for Israel and the US stopping their conventional aggression against the Arab Republic.” 

In other words, he suggests Kremlin complicity with Israel in driving out Syria’s Iranian ally: “the Kremlin continues to deny the SAA the right to use the S-300s for the purpose of defending its allies from Israeli and American attacks against them. This observation very strongly suggests that Russia is pursuing a Machiavellian strategy whereby it unofficially hopes that Israeli and American strikes will result in Iran and Hezbollah’s forced withdrawal from Syria. 

If Korybko is even partially correct, the Kremlin does not understand American and Israeli aggression.  The Kremlin’s failure to understand the enemy is what will lead to war, not Syria’s use of the S-300s to defend its terrority from attack.

If it is OK to attack Iranians and Hezbollah in Syria, Washington will conclude that it is OK to attack Iranians in Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.  This will expand violence and instability, not reduce it. Hezbollah is all that prevents another Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the partition of that country.  The Russian posture in the Middle East is so weak that it encourages more US/Israeli attacks.

In other words, instead of defusing the situation the Kremlin’s policy

inflames it.

Moreover, what Russian interest is served by driving Syria’s Iranian and Hezbollah allies out of Syria?  Only Washington and Israel’s interests are served. Russia’s policy, as postulated by Korybko, implies that Russia agrees that Iran and Hezbollah need to be curbed. Therefore, Hezbollah can be attacked in Lebanon as well as in Syria, and Iranians can be attacked in Iran as well as in Syria.  Russia’s policy as portrayed by Korybko can only be a failure.

Washington and Israel will continue their attacks, because they know that there will be no consequences but words.  

The Kremlin needs to consider which policy is the least risky: continuing to fire off ineffectual words or missiles that make attacks costly.  The easiest and surest way to establish peace in the Middle East is the announcement of a Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Syrian mutual defense pact with NATO’s banner that an attack on one is an attack on all.

The accusation that this would lead to war can be answered with a question: why then hasn’t NATO led to war?  If war is likely to be the result of an attack, an aggressor thinks more than once about an attack.  As long as aggression is tolerated, it grows until it has to be resisted. This has been the official narrative of World War II for three-quarters of a century. 

The Kremlin could begin by comprehending that 90% of US Middle East policy is determined by Israel and Israel’s US agents, the zionist neoconservatives.  Biden’s regime is stocked up with them.  Israel wants Greater Israel, and the neoconservatives want US hegemony in the Middle East in order to give Israel what it wants.  Israel has been slowly and patiently stealing Palestine for decades and now wants to move faster.  Washington’s destruction of Iraq and Libya moved the plan forward.  Syria’s destruction was in the works until Russia intervened and prevented it.  But Syria is still partly a partitioned country, and Syria, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and Iran are the remaining obstacles to US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. If this hegemony is achieved, Russia can expect Washington’s subversion of Muslims in the Federation and in the former Soviet Asian republics.  

As US General Tod D. Wolters again told the Russians three days ago, apparently to no effect, the United States regards Russia as “an enduring existential threat to the United States”  ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/02/26/americas-absurd-foreign-policy/ ).  The inability of Russia to come to terms with this fact will result in war.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

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