Russia has to decide if it wants to continue to support Assad’s Syrian government

ANALYSIS: Donald Trump’s missile strike upon a Syrian airbase is the most significant event in the country’s six-year civil war.

The body of a plane burned as a result of the US missile attack on an air base in Syria. Picture: AFP

THE US Tomahawk missile launch on the Syrian airfield was, on one hand, an extremely restrained demonstration of force, targeting only one airfield and damaging 20 Syrian planes with minimal loss of life.

Yet it is the most significant event in the six-year Syrian war.

For too long, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been granted legitimacy by his Russian and Iranian allies, able to slaughter his own people at will, assisted in this by the unwillingness of Barack Obama to make good on his threats to retaliate if Assad used banned chemical weapons.

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The body of a plane burned as a result of the US missile attack on an air base in Syria. Picture: AFP

The world now watches to see whether the show of strength from President Donald Trump, as commander-in-chief of US forces, will take the world closer to war — or if his actions could force a path to peace by making Russia ask itself if it really wants to invest its lives and armaments on behalf of the murderous Assad.

All emphasis in Syria had been on the Islamic State, even though the refugee flow into Europe was largely as a consequence of Assad’s barbarity.

Until Tuesday, when the Syrian regime once again used illegal nerve gas on innocent civilians, this time at Khan Sheikhoun, Assad clearly believed he had become untouchable.

Trump changed that two days later, making the first US assault on Assad since the war began, and making it clear that his priority of restoring America’s homefront will not come at the cost of overlooking acts of ferocity against innocents, wherever they are.

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America, whose military slumbered under Obama, is back as a world force. Trump is being sorely tested by North Korea, which by its insane ballistic missile tests appears to be begging to be bombed; but he is wagering heavily that his Syrian missile strike will not lead to a deeper Middle-Eastern engagement.

It is a high-risk gamble, yet one worth taking.

Russia cannot pretend it has no knowledge of Assad’s use of chemicals: its forces, along with Iranians, are embedded with the Syrians and it has intimate knowledge — if not overriding command — of where Syrian planes stage their attacks.

This satellite photo courtesy of the Department of Defense shows a battle damage assessment image of Shayrat Airfield, following US Tomahawk Land Attack Missile strikes.

It is entirely up to Russia whether it decides to shore up the Assad regime by reinforcing air-defence systems and potentially proactively attacking the jets and drones of the US-led coalition.

The US is banking on the certain knowledge that Russia cares nothing for Assad, but does not want to lose the strategic airbases and naval ports it holds on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.

So far, it appears that threats by Russia to immediately dismantle the agreement with the US-led coalition on airspace over Syria, which are designed to prevent unforeseen clashes, have not been invoked.

Likewise, it is curious that Russia did not use its anti-missile barrages to stop the US attack on the Shaykat airfield.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s scheduled visit to Moscow next week has not so far been cancelled — a positive sign that the US and Russia are still talking for now, even though Vladimir Putin described US actions as “an act of aggression against a sovereign government”.

There is nothing in it for Russia, already weak and isolated, to risk it all on a fullblown Syrian adventure, but that depends on whether the erratic Putin is prepared to be reasonable.

Originally published as Russia has to decide if it wants to continue to support Assad’s Syrian government