Realistically, it is impossible to sit all regional and international players around the same table
Despite eight years of horrific conflict, and over 500,000 thousand deaths, a stable peace in Syria remains elusive. The two writers of this article may disagree on what the final outcome should be, but they share the same concerns regarding the potential risks of new escalations in the near future. Such risks are increasing, partially because ...
It is becoming increasingly more difficult for Moscow to retain its position as an honest, if not completely independent, broker
On February 14, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran will meet in Sochi to discuss Syria and hold separate bilateral meetings. Recently, new developments have emerged that could prove dangerous if each state pursues its own hidden agenda. The three states depend on the Astana format for settling the Syrian issue.
By 2019, the Syrian ...
... Council.
On February 5, 2019, delegation of Shaikh Group international consultancy headed by the CEO Salman Shaikh visited Russian International Affairs Council.
In the course of the meeting the sides discussed issues of resolving conflict situations in Syria and Yemen, the role of regional players and great powers in the evolution of the Middle East region, and possibility of preparing joint proposals for creating a new security system in the Middle East by specialized expert organizations from Russia,...
Why Is Peace Bad?
The decision announced by President Donald Trump on December 19 to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria provoked an outpouring of denunciations and vitriol against him which demonstrates, once again, how hysterical his opponents are about his intention to put an end to his immediate predecessors' commitment to a state of permanent imperial warfare....
...
When making a future study, it is important to look for some long-term structures, to get a clearer focus on the variables. Thus, we see that the Middle East, as here defined, has crystallized into two parts: A
North
, consisting of Turkey, Iran, and Syria with Russia’s input, and including Iraq which is becoming increasingly self-conscious in its balanced cooperation with two antagonists: Iran and the US. The US works with Kurdish provinces in this North, but generally, the US position in the North ...
...
Judging from the new State Armament Program for 2018-2027, which Putin signed off in December 2017, many of the most ambitious and expensive aerospace and naval weapons programs have effectively been pushed back to the mid-2020s or even beyond 2027.
In Syria, Putin will keep trying to convert the military success of the Russian intervention into political and diplomatic gains, but he will be hampered by the growing Syrian involvement of the United States. Unlike Moscow, Washington has no constructive ...
... issues include allegations of possible Russian connections into European politics, or perhaps also the other way around (we never hear about that). And the Skripal case. All these are secondary and solvable, issues, once the above hard-points are solved.
Syria
Andrey Kortunov:
Russia: the Power Broker in the Middle East?
If it is at all possible to speak of any “winner” in such an ugly civil-war, with perhaps 400,000 dead people and 5 million refugees out of 22 million previous inhabitants, it must ...
... by representatives from more than fifty countries.
The conference speakers included:
Sergey Lavrov
, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, at Special Dialogue session, and
Andrey Kortunov
, RIAC Director General, at plenary session on the future of Syria. Other participants of MED2018 included: Aleksandr Dynkin, RIAC Member, President of IMEMO, RAS Full Member; Alexander Grushko, RIAC Member, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia; Sergey Razov, RIAC Member, Ambassador of the Russian Federation ...
Russia and its partners can arguably win the war, but they cannot win the peace in Syria
Historically, the Middle East has never been a Russia’s strategic priority comparable to Europe, the North-East Pacific or even the Central Asia. Unlike many other major European powers, Russia had no colonial ambitions in the region; it never ...
Today Syrian armed forces lack discipline, centralization, technical and organizational modernization, prestige, and authority and could hardly be called a real army
Army is considered to be one of the most important state institutions which in many ways ...
