Government-backed paramilitary forces (supported by Turkey) in Syria’s Alawite enclave brutally suppressed the Alawite opposition. The Alawites are now seeking protection at Russian military bases as the Sunni-led government consolidates power.
Turkey’s support was critical in this crackdown and furthers the Turkish goal of weakening opposition along their Southern border. The Russians are getting squeezed out of the region, although Israel would prefer they stay in place to keep Syria fragmented.
Israel isn’t the only one favoring the Russians though; US policy is shifting in favor of Russian interests in Syria. This is just another layer of how Russian influence is reshaping global power dynamics.
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Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the Denver airport. Today we’re talking about something happened yesterday, and they did before. Basically, we had a blow up of violence in the Alawite enclave of Syria. Now the highlights live on a coastal enclave that’s heavily forested on the west side of a mountainous ridge that separates the interior of the Fertile Crescent region from the Mediterranean.
This is the place where a couple of the Russian bases are called on Tartus and, Bonnie on. I mean, buddy is something like that. Anyway, it’s unclear what started. The Alawites had reason to go after the government. The new government, which is Sunni different ethno sectarian group, had reasons to go after the Alawites.
And the Alawites were the ethnic group that the previous dictator, Assad, came from. So it’s unclear who pulled the trigger first, but both of them went at it and the government absolutely came out on top. Specifically groups of the paramilitary group that’s aligned with the government called the FCS. They’re the ones who recently, decisively won the Civil War.
They’re the ones who did most of the killing. And several hundred, civilians were basically dragged out the street shot. They had group definitely had a hit list lined up. And so it’s unclear who started the fight. It’s very clear who finished it. A couple things here, number one. The government forces backed by or vice versa.
We’re a little bit too confident, a little bit too together. Had a little bit too good of Intel and too good of weapons for just being a government that has been there for less than two months at this point. So their sponsors, the Turkish government, were absolutely in play and they wanted these massacres to happen. It’s not hard to see why the Alawites were the core of the previous government that was anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti Turkish.
And the Turks want to make sure that everyone in the northern perimeter of Syria is either broken or on their side. And this one along we would mean that. But that brings us to the second thing. The Russians have had bases in Syria for about a decade now, and they intervened very decisively in the favor of the old government in the Civil war, killing probably close to 100,000 people before all was said and done, mostly civilians.
And the Russians would like to hang on to the two naval bases that they have on the coast. But they were in the process of getting squeezed out by the Turks and the new Syrian government. Well, a few things. Number one, the Alawites now are apparently congregating outside the bases asking for protection. But number two, the Israelis kind of would like to have the Russians keep at least a nominal foothold because it would shatter Syria and prevent it from ever resurrecting itself as any sort of threat to Israel again.
But third, far more importantly, is the chief Russian agent in the US government, Tulsi Gabbard, is now starting to agitate actively against the new Syrian government in favor of the Alawites. And it’s probably only going to be a matter of days before she, and by extension, the US government, starts actively asking the Russians to stay behind. We’ve been seeing American, foreign and strategic policy tilt towards the Russians in any number of ways.
It’s loudest in Ukraine. It’s also happening within NATO’s Europe. It’s also now happening in places like Japan. And now we have it also in Syria. So the degree of Russian penetration into the white House really is robust, and it’s starting to reshape regional dynamics in ways that will empower the Russians for years, if not decades to come and will complicate American foreign policy for years, if not decades to come.
Yeah, that’s all I got to.
