Syria cease-fire aims to serve needs of US, Moscow rulers

BY MAGGIE TROWE

Washington’s bloc with Moscow in Syria is aimed at drawing down the instability and combat there in hopes of better defending the interests of the propertied rulers of the U.S. in the region. The rulers of the two countries continue to push a truce in parts of the country as a new round of United Nations-organized talks opened on reaching a political deal there. Against this backdrop, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced March 14 he would “begin withdrawing the main part of our military group” from Syria.

The war began when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad savagely suppressed peaceful mass protests against his regime in 2011, part of the “Arab Spring” mobilizations that swept the Mideast and North Africa. Today the country is divided between areas controlled by the regime, territory in northern Syria controlled by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), other smaller areas run by opponents of Assad, and sections where brutal control is exercised by the reactionary Islamic State.

“The resurrection from oblivion of Russian-U.S. cooperation is one of the most important political results of the operation,” Russian news writer Vladimir Frolov told the New York Times.

U.S. imperialism was weakened by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, leaving it without Moscow’s capacity to use Stalinist parties throughout the world to stifle revolutionary struggles and nationalist uprisings. Washington’s efforts since then to use raw military might to press its interests — in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere — have failed. So President Barack Obama led moves to pull back from use of ground troops in the Middle East and seek accommodation with Tehran, through the recently concluded nuclear pact, and with Moscow, in efforts to forge a new axis of power.

Moscow intervened directly in Syria more than five months ago, deploying some 50 warplanes, 4,000 support troops and a modern anti-aircraft missile system. The Russian government says it has conducted more than 9,000 bombing missions. Most have been high-flying runs with low-precision bombs, meaning significant destruction and death in civilian areas.

Moscow claimed it was targeting Islamic State, but most of its attacks were aimed at opposition forces that had been backed by Washington. These groups have been significantly weakened. Flying cover for Assad’s troops and aided by Iranian and Tehran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah ground troops, Moscow helped the regime recover and retake territory in Latakia province as well as around Damascus, Aleppo and in the south. In his announcement on the Russian withdrawal, Putin said the “principal tasks set for the armed forces of Russia in Syria have been accomplished.”

While Washington sometimes cries crocodile tears over the blows delivered to opposition Free Syrian Army forces, the U.S. rulers have welcomed Moscow’s moves to stabilize the region.

This “is not a bad outcome for the White House, which has been lukewarm about the prospect of Syrian regime change,” the Washington Post said March 16. The White House announced that day that Secretary of State John Kerry would go to Moscow to confer with Putin about what to do next.

‘Obama Doctrine’

An article titled “The Obama Doctrine” by Jeffrey Goldberg in the April issue of the Atlantic throws light on the weakened state of U.S. imperialism. It is based on numerous interviews with the president.

Goldberg describes Obama’s approach to foreign policy as “realist-driven restraint.” Obama refers to London and Paris as “free riders,” reflecting the fact that Washington remains the central imperialist military power, allocating $581 billion a year to warfare, 36 percent of total world military expenditures.

Discussing his pivot to Tehran, Obama says the Saudis need to “share the neighborhood” with Iran to bring about “some sort of cold peace.” His contempt for the masses of working people in the Mideast comes through in the article, when Goldberg writes, “In recent days, the president has taken to joking privately, ‘All I need in the Middle East is a few smart autocrats.’”

Goldberg points out that while Washington resists putting American boots on the ground, it relies increasingly on airstrikes by warplanes and drones. Goldberg calls him “the most successful terrorist-hunter in the history of the presidency, one who will hand to his successor a set of tools an accomplished assassin would envy.”

‘Armageddon’ if Kurds get autonomy

The battle of the Kurdish people — some 30 million strong spread across Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq — for control of their homeland remains a burning question in the region. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told the press March 15 that any redrawing of borders in the region — like Kurdish autonomy — could lead to “Armageddon.”

Tehran, like all the capitalist regimes in the area, fear “infection” from moves toward Kurdish independence in Iraq and Syria.

A suicide car bomb attack killed more than 36 people in Ankara March 13. No group has claimed responsibility, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the Kurdistan People’s Party (PKK) and ordered bombing of PKK camps in northern Iraq the next day. He also launched a new assault on the majority Kurdish southeastern region of Turkey. More than 230 Kurds were arrested, dozens killed and new curfews imposed on Kurdish towns there. This area has been under attack by government forces since last summer. The Kurdish-based People’s Democratic Party (HDP) denounced the Ankara bombing as a “savage attack.”

In preparation for further attacks on political rights in Turkey, Erdogan has called for broadening the legal definition of “terrorist” to include those who speak in support of Kurdish independence. “It may be the terrorist who detonates bombs and pulls the trigger, but it is these supporters who enable them to achieve their goals,” he said March 14.

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