Syria could be the beginning of the end for Russia

Some international relations scholars interpret Russia's operations in Syria, and its open occupation of Syria, as evidence of Russia's unstoppable rise within the system and of Russian power threatening the Western world. I think there is a measure of truth in this approach. After all, Russia has cleverly exploited the vacuums created by the oscillations of US foreign policy and has set about building a clear sphere of influence and a geography of occupation in the Middle East.

On the other hand, we can also say that this move by Russia may be the beginning of the end.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, after citing Hegel's observation that all great historical events and figures occur, as it were, twice, Marx adds sardonically: "Hegel forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as comedy."

Putin, who has been seized by the passion of becoming the Tsar of Russia's new era, seems to me to be heading, with his direct occupation of Syria, toward a tragicomic repetition of an event in Russian history. (Incidentally, there are increasingly those who liken Putin's expansionist policies to another tragicomic repetition, that of following in Hitler's footsteps; let us take up that chapter in our next article.) The experience that was a turning point in terms of tragedy and world history took place in 1979.

In 1978 the government in Afghanistan was overthrown by a leftist coup from within the army. This was almost the defining characteristic of leftist movements in underdeveloped countries. After toppling the government, the junta officers handed the administration of the country over to two Marxist-Leninist parties, and these two parties began to carry out top-down reforms of a sort that went as far as changing the country's name.

The Afghan people began to react against and resist the top-down, so-called "reform" practices of the coup regime. Realizing that the oppressive coup regime in the country would be overthrown as a result of the resistance, the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, citing an agreement signed between Afghanistan and the USSR in 1978 and the invitation of the Afghan government.

On one of the tanks in the advancing armored columns, in one of the iconic photographs of the invasion, there was this inscription: "Our fallen comrades will always be with us, welcome to your homeland." It is a remarkable statement in that it shows the link of motivation between the invasion launched in Afghanistan almost 40 years ago and the occupation of Syria carried out today.

One of the most important developments that ended the détente between the blocs, which had begun with the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, was the USSR's attempted occupation of Afghanistan. For the USSR, besides the fact that trying to protect a Marxist-Leninist regime would cement its dominance within the Bloc, there were also the geostrategic interests that the occupation of Afghanistan would provide.

In the end, Afghanistan became the beginning of the end for the USSR. Through its occupation policy in Afghanistan, the USSR found itself in an intensified second phase of the Cold War in which it would never again have the capacity to resist. When US President Reagan launched the Star Wars project, the leadership of the Communist Party governing the USSR, lacking the political and economic strength to respond, tried to draw a dazzling curtain over the collapse by declaring that the final phase of building socialism had been entered.

In the early 1990s the USSR withdrew from the stage of history. The occupation of Afghanistan created such a deep rupture that in the following period the US intervention in Afghanistan was also compared with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. For Russia, the tragicomic version of the "tragedy" in Afghanistan seems set to be the direct occupation of Syria.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the détente between the Western world and Russia lasted roughly until the 2008 Munich Security Conference, until Putin's speech at that conference. In that speech Putin signaled what would happen over the following 10 years. Then came the occupation of a certain region of Georgia, and in the recent past the occupation of Crimea, Ukrainian territory. Most recently, just as in the case of the occupation of Afghanistan, Russia, citing the call of the oppressive dictator in Syria as justification for its legitimacy, has begun directly occupying Syria in order to keep this oppressive dictator on his feet.

This act of occupation is a consequence of the Obama doctrine in US foreign policy, but Russia imagines it to be a miracle of its own making. The occupation of Syria by Russia is a message not only to Turkey but to the Western world. If the Transatlantic world takes a resolute stance against Russian expansionism, Syria could become the name of the geography in which Putin's dreams of becoming Tsar vanish in a very short time. Even without such a stance, Russia's future in the region will not be very long. But along with Russia, the Western world too will be tragically purged from the region. NATO and the Western world should consider the matter in this dimension as well.