Friday, June 15, 2012

Russia and China Mull Syria ... and Saudi Arabia; My God, I can't believe it, I've stumbled upon an honest journalist....


The Zioconned and utterly corrupt and criminal war-mongering Western countries abdicated any claims to moral or political leadership and content themselves by bleating from the sidelines as the ZIOCONNED Western media pleasures itself with fantasies of righteousness for Decades....

Russia and China Mull Syria ... and ZIOCONNED Saudi Arabia....
By Peter Lee;

My God, I can't believe it, I've stumbled upon an honest journalist!

Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao had an interesting question to discuss during their summit in Beijing. Is it good business and good geopolitics to acquiesce to a Sunni Arab triumph in Syria? Or is Syria the place to hold the line against a destabilizing and counterproductive projection of Saudi Arabian power into Iran's near beyond?

Absent from the discussion is the United States, which has abdicated any claims to moral or political leadership and contents itself by bleating from the sidelines as the Western media pleasures itself with fantasies of righteousness.

Meanwhile, Syria bleeds … and bleeds … and bleeds.

The simplest explanation for the massacre of almost 200 villagers at Houla and Qubeir is brutal payback by regime irregulars with a dash of ethnic cleansing. The possibility of a false flag operation - a massacre orchestrated by regime opponents in order to discredit the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and polarize opinion - would appear to be very very likely. Murder will out, as Shakespeare put it, and it would be nice to think that even amid Syria's chaos the most brutal strategist would shrink before the political risks of trying to murder scores of civilians and try to pin it on the other side....

However, accurate details of the massacres have yet to emerge. Most recently Rainer Hermann, Middle East correspondent of Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, further muddied the waters by accusing the rebels of committing the Houla atrocity. [1]

If one steps back and adopts the standard of cui bono? - who benefits ? - to the atrocities, it is undeniable that the massacres have been a propaganda godsend to the opposition.

Post-Houla, broadcasting dire warnings of an impending massacre of civilians seems to be becoming a staple of rebel media management whenever it faces a regime counter-offensive. Most recently, the rebels assaulted the town of al Haffeh. When government troops appeared to seal off the town and prepare to retake it, the Free Syrian Army warned of another impending massacre and announced to the avid international media it was spiriting civilians out of the city to safety. For its part, the government broadcast wiretaps of what it claimed were rebel provocateurs discussing plans to stage a Houla-style outrage at Haffeh and the nearby town of Tal and blame them on the government.

The cry of (looming) massacre also encourages the deployment of what one might term "the Benghazi gambit" - using claims of imminent civilian peril to short-circuit discussion and investigation at the international level, push for a quick military solution, and then take advantage of the "winners write history" privilege to bury any traces of error, skullduggery, and dishonesty by the good guys.

The narrative of escalating Syrian government brutality is important to Assad's enemies, as it counters another, more embarrassing narrative: the increased flow of money and material aid to the rebels, aid that is in contravention of the ceasefire, helps elicit more brutal government action to quash the rebellion, and thereby justifies the provision of more clandestine aid to "protect civilians" while rendering the failure of the Annan mission even more likely a virtuous cycle, at least for the opposition committed to Assad's downfall.

A sure sign of the increased flow of aid to the rebels was the deployment of publicly unsubstantiated accusations by the US State Department that Russia was sending attack helicopters to Syria. Perhaps the State Department has unique insights into the flow of military materiel from Russia to Syria, but the key change in Syria is not in the order of battle of the government forces; it is the increase in military capabilities of the local rebels thanks in significant part to foreign supply of arms.

Likewise, escalating foreign outrage over the Assad regime's brutal excesses and the emergence of the detested irregulars- the shabiha - as regime shock troops has paralleled the climbing death count of government security forces.

The fact remains that the only clear path to a negotiated solution of the Syrian crisis requires a military stalemate, not regime overthrow.

Assad's strategy (and that of Russia and China) appears to be to neutralize the armed opposition militarily, and then goose the political process by releasing the domestic moderates among the hundred thousand or so political prisoners his secret polices services have placed in their grim inventory. Indeed, that's where things were headed after Assad's forces crushed the rebels at Babu Amr in Homs and held parliamentary elections … and before a flood of international condemnation and an increased flow of arms heartened the opposition.

The fact that the United States is working toward the exact opposite end by encouraging the armed struggle now remorselessly polarizing the country and grinding away at the regime's legitimacy (or more accurately, just letting Syria collapse into chaos) is, I suppose, a subject that the infinitely capacious and flexible American conscience will find a way to deal with.

To be fair, the United States, the EU, and Turkey have been paragons of timidity when it comes to effecting the overthrow of Assad. The overt military option is off the table and Turkey, which by rights should be seizing the regional leadership role, has apparently acquired a serious case of cold feet now that the inclusive liberal revolution has turned into a sectarian-tinged uprising that threatens to bring unrest and anxiety to Kurdish populations in Turkey as well as Syria.

Attempts to tease out the significance of Houla and Qubeir, together with the impression that the Assad regime is on its last legs, has turned attention to a possible endgame: a bloody spasm of ethnic cleansing in the Alawite homeland of the coastal mountains, followed by some sort of hunkering down by pro-regime forces as they negotiate for their future with a triumphant new regime in Damascus.

This speculation fueled comparisons with Bosnia - another gateway justification for increased foreign intervention.

There are indeed some interesting historical precedents for Alawite separatism.

Alawite communities, which now constitute about 12% of Syria's population, were marginalized during the Ottoman empire thanks to widespread condemnation of their heterodox and esoteric religious practice by Islamic authorities. Indeed, traditional Alawi belief apparently includes some unique elements, particularly the deification of Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad, that would make it extremely difficult for it to pass muster with mainstream Muslim practitioners.

The Ottomans categorized Alawites as apostates, referring to them by the dismissive term of Nusayris (a term that has re-emerged in heated discussions of the Syrian situation on Muslim-related message boards and even in media accounts).

Until 1870, clerical fatwas declared it was permissible to slay Alawites and take their possessions; in the latter decades of the Ottoman empire Alawite thieves were still occasionally crucified or impaled for their transgressions - a punishment that was not applied to Muslims and had been eliminated for Christians almost 100 years before.

At the fall of the empire, only one "city" - a Christian town with a population of 2,600 - allowed Alawites to reside within its walls. The rest lived in small hamlets under conditions of medieval poverty and subjugation to the Sunni political, economic, and administrative elite residing in the important coastal towns of Latakia and Tartus.

French assumption of the Syria mandate after World War I, though resented by most Syrians, was a godsend to the Alawites. The French, applying the proven divide-and-rule template, supported the Alawites' aspirations to equality and dignity, at least for a time, as well as enrolling them disproportionately in the military force it created to slug it out with the Syrian nationalist uprising. The French administration also promoted the use of the more dignified term "Alawite" instead of "Nusayri". From 1922 until 1935, when the French government achieved a satisfactory accommodation with the local governing authority in Damascus, the Alawite areas enjoyed autonomy as the "Sanjak of Lattakia", with their own rulers and flag, albeit with a French tricolor in the corner. [2]

After World War II, when decolonization was clearly in the cards, Alawi leaders fruitlessly agitated for the creation of another Lebanon - another island, in other words, of protected non-Sunni minorities - encompassing the Alawi heartland along the Syrian coastal range or, at the very least, autonomy. However, the French stood aside, and the Damascus regime reasserted control over the Alawi areas after a series of skirmishes that were little more than bandit suppression exercises.

With their dreams of independence dashed, Alawite religious and political leaders began the difficult process of affirming their Arab identity and loyalty in an environment of intense Arab and Syrian nationalism, after an inglorious interval serving as France's colonial assets, and the even dicier task of redefining their religion so that their faith and its adherents would be accepted by the greater Syrian community, which is overwhelmingly Sunni. Syrian Sunni acceptance was slow and grudging. Only in 1952 did the Syrian state extend even partial recognition of the Islamic character of Alawi religious observance. [3]

In response to their difficulties, Alawite religious leaders unilaterally identified themselves as part of the "Twelver" strain of Shi'ism, a claim that was only fitfully and incompletely acknowledged by the Twelver hierarchy in Lebanon over 40 years, until ties were formalized in 1973 by the renowned Twelver leader Musa al-Sadr (whose subsequent disappearance in Libya and apparent murder at the hands of Gaddafi still roils Libya-Lebanese relations). [4]

Alawi re-invention was completed as Alawi soldiers leveraged their leading position in the French and early Syrian armies and came to dominate the officer corps as well. When the time came for a coup in 1971, the Alawites - in the form of Hafez al-Assad - were there to take control of Syria's central government, beginning the unlikely 40-year reign of a sect that was almost totally marginalized 25 years before.

If, as Thomas Wolfe said, you can't go home again, this probably rings truer for the Alawis than any other group in Syria. The legitimacy and authority of the Alawi elite is embedded in the matrix of Syrian nationalism and centralism, and not the abandoned flirtations with local independence or autonomy. Add to that the fact that the major cities of Latakia and Tartus still have sizable and demonstrably restive Sunni populations, the prospects for retreating to a defendable haven in western Syria appear extremely remote.

Finally, it is unlikely that Russia, China, or even Iran would defy international sanctions to prop up the Assad regime with economic and military aid if it shrank to an Alawite coastal enclave.

The Assad regime's political strategy, in other words, is predicated upon clinging to central political power and some legitimacy, not trying to leverage its dubious separatist option.

If the example of Lebanon resonates with Syria's Alawite leadership, it is probably in the context of the 1989 Taif Agreement, an episode of externally negotiated power sharing led by Saudi Arabia and Syria that brought an end to the most violent phase of the Lebanese civil war - one that demonstrated the bloody futility of efforts by Lebanon's close analogue to the Alawites, the overly-represented and heavily-armed Christian minority, to protect and assert its privileges through the establishment of sectarian enclaves.

Under the accord, the various foreign sponsors persuaded their respective Sunni, Shi'ite, Christian, and Druze clients to get off each other's throats and instead divvy up powers and offices based on their respective power and inclination to do mischief (as a conflict avoidance measure, Lebanon has refrained from conducting an official national census, which would demonstrate that the dwindling Christian population still enjoyed offices and parliamentary seats vastly disproportionate to its current share of the population).

The Taif process enjoyed across-the-board support from the Arab world, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Syria, which had traditionally called the shots in Lebanon, accepted a diminution of its clout (though it honored its obligations to withdraw its troops from Lebanon "in the breach", as it were) and leadership of the Sunni interest by Saudi Arabia's anointed choice, Rafik Hariri.

It is safe to say that, post-Arab Spring and with the explosion of domestic dissent, Bashar al-Assad recognized the futility of trying to suppress the aspirations of Syria's Sunni majority, and hoped for some smooth Taif-esque exercise in power sharing enabled by the good offices of Saudi Arabia and the United States, that would give the political representatives of the Sunnis greater access to offices and power while preserving a healthy amount of Alawite privilege.

Not to be, clearly. Saudi intransigence on the issue of political transition in Syria is the big and largely unreported story of the Syrian conflict.

It has its roots in the political fragmentation of the Arab realm in the modern era, and the unending opportunities it offers for mutual meddling by the dozen or so compromised and ethnically fractured states that compose it today.

Since the fall of the Ottoman empire in 1921, there has been a strong if frustrated impulse toward Sunni Arab nation-building in the "Fertile Crescent", at least the Sunni-majority portions that encompass western Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. The heartland of the Muslim religion is Mecca and Medina; but the spiritual core of Islamic empire lies in the agricultural lands to the north and its heart is, arguably, Damascus, capital of the Umayyad Caliphate - a period regarded as a golden age both for the political and military advance of Islam and for the unity and righteousness of the Islamic umma.

The dream of pan-Arab nationalism in World War I, cynically incited by the British and sincerely encouraged by T E Lawrence, was to replace detested Ottoman rule with a united Arab nation stretching from Aleppo to Aden under the rule of the family of the Sharif of Mecca, the Hashimites.

Famously, soon after Prince Feisal joined the triumphant liberation of Damascus in 1918 (commemorated in the closing scenes of the film Lawrence of Arabia), a secret French-British agreement jobbed him out of the Kingdom of Greater Syria - which would have encompassed the Arab remnants of the Ottoman empire all the way from the Turkish border down to the Sinai - and he ended up ruling the newly created Kingdom of Iraq instead as a consolation prize. The British government subsequently installed Feisal's brother Abdullah as King of Transjordan (the area beyond Palestine and west of the Jordan River that the British didn't want to govern themselves); the Hashimite family still rules there today in the person of King Abdullah II of Jordan.

People with long and grim memories of Western shenanigans leading up to the war to remove Saddam Hussein may recall that the idea was floated of installing a disgruntled uncle of King Abdullah II as Saddam's successor, thereby reintroducing the glories of Hashimite rule to the people of Iraq while removing a troublemaker from the Jordanian scene.

In any case, after all this imperial slicing and dicing all that was left of "Greater Syria" after the French grabbed Lebanon, the British set up shop in Palestine, and various sandy interior reaches were turned over to the Hashimites, was "Lesser Syria", the Syria we know today.

Geopolitically, Syria had a Goldilocks problem: it simply wasn't the right size or shape to satisfy its Greater Syria aspirations or find a happy role in pan-Arab nationalism.

In 1947, Syria haltingly participated in the disastrous pan-Arab campaign against Israel. In the 1950s, it feared subversion from Transjordan, whose king contemplated grabbing a slice of Syria as compensation for his own Palestine-related setbacks. In the early 1960s, Syria drank deeply from the well of pan-Arabism and rushed into a misguided political union with Nasser's Egypt (forming the short-lived United Arab Republic) and came close to a similar tie-up with Iraq.

Then in 1966 the Ba'ath Party split into Syrian and Iraq factions, and the separate cells came to rule their respective countries. The murderous, outsized ambitions of Saddam Hussein then compelled Hafez al-Assad to ally with that traditional b๊ete noire of Arab nationalism and Sunni religion, Shi'ite Iran. With pan-Arabism in the dustbin, Assad carefully and cannily pursued a Greater Syria agenda by serial meddling in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia assumed leadership of the Sunni states by virtue of its stewardship of holy sites, its gigantic oil revenues, and its inclination to project its power throughout the Middle East by means of richly endowed Islamic initiatives in the ZIOCONNED Wahhabi-Takfiri- Salafi crazies' vein.

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad attempted to migrate to a concept of Syria as a viable nation-state and good neighbor both to Turkey and his Sunni Arab brethren to the south and an west, an ally to Iran and the Shi'ites of Lebanon, and a useful black intelligence and interrogation asset to the United States, but has learned to his bitter disappointment that the role of regional linchpin is not to be afforded to "Lesser Syria".

Today, there is no international consensus and a shrinking domestic commitment to sustaining Syria - a diminished, artificially constructed rump with almost no oil and no atomic bomb (with hindsight, Assad's failed clandestine attempt to get Syria into the nuclear business appears wise instead of reckless) - as a successful multi-ethnic state.

Instead, the role of regional Sunni lawgiver is being fought over the prostrate hulk of Syria by two regional powers: Saudi Arabia, Qatar backed by its outsized petroleum reserves, and Turkey, which is beginning to feel its Ottoman oats thanks to a successful program of political and economic reform, superimposed on a local struggle between liberal reformists and the authoritarian regime.

ZIOCONNED Turkey dashed out on a limb, expecting to midwife a quick and easy Arab Spring victory and a grateful liberal-minded, pro-Turkish regime on its southern border. However, the Assad regime has not gone quietly and the burgeoning violence has made Turkey think twice about tossing more gasoline on the flames.

ZIOCONNED Saudi Arabia apparently has no such qualms. Together with its regional ZIOCONNED ally, Qatar, it has been employing the maximalist rhetoric in public while secretly funneling money and arms to opposition forces, thereby driving the ZIOCONNED international response.

The hostility of these two autocracies toward ZIOCONNED Assad, of course, has nothing to do with the illiberal shortcomings of his ZIOCONNED regime and everything to do with his alliance with Iran.

Not neighboring on Syria and relatively indifferent to the consequences, ZIOCONNED Saudi Arabia sees the opportunity to consolidate a bulwark of anti-Iranian Sunni states by seeing to it that Assad does not survive to dilute the anti-Iranian fervor of whatever successor regime emerges from the Syrian chaos.

The question that should be asked is, should the events in Syria be driven by an opaque, insecure ZIOCONNED kingdom that seeks geopolitical influence by exacerbating sectarian and ethnic divisions?

That is a question the ZIOCONNED United States is in no position to ask, since the aggressive unilateral Saudi push against Iran and Shi'ism is in large part driven by the recent memory of the ZIOCONNED United States allowing the regime of another heavyweight Middle Eastern ally (and unsavory autocrat) go down the tubes in the name of democracy: ZIOCONNED President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

It is a question that China and Russia have answered, to their own satisfaction at least, in the negative.

Their vision for the Middle East includes Iran somehow emerging from the morass of ZIOCONNED US-led sanctions and assuming its rightful place near the heart of central and south Asia, and a major, secure economic partner and ally for Moscow and Beijing.

As for ZIOCONNED Syria, Moscow treasures its Mediterranean port-of-call at Tartus, and Beijing has deep qualms about enabling continued ZIOCONNED Western experiments in externally promoted regime change. Certainly, if the ZIOCONNED Saudis bought into a more peaceful, negotiated transition - per the Russian proposal for a conference on Syria that would include both Saudi Arabia and Iran and protect Russian and Chinese influence and interests - it would be welcome. [5]

But it is also likely that Russia and China would acquiesce to the sacrifice of ZIOCONNED Bashar Assad's regime if ZIOCONNED Saudi Arabia made it clear that a pickup in Syria would serve as a satisfactory exclamation point to the anti-Iranian campaign and everybody could just go back to pumping oil and making money.

However, ZIOCONNED Saudi Arabia has yet to give such a signal. The trend seems to be going the other way. Recently, the ZIOCONNED Saudi government went out of its way to insult Russia by giving a low level reception to a visiting Russian commercial delegation on account of Russian support for the Assad regime while darkly muttering than the ZIOCONNED Kingdom would have no problem turning elsewhere for "iron and wheat". [6]

Parsing ZIOCONNED Saudi intransigence, Putin and Hu probably see little incentive to throw Assad under the bus and, effectively, give a free hand for continued mischief to the Middle East's richest but least competent, most ZIOCONNED and backward, and perhaps most extremist hegemon…one that might run out of oil before it runs out of spleen.

At the end of their summit in Beijing, Putin and Hu issued a statement condemning outside interference in the Syrian crisis and called for all interested parties to put their efforts into support of the Annan ceasefire initiative.

An op-ed by the Chinese pundit Tian Wenlin in People's Daily laid out China's case against regime change in Syria. It is not, in my opinion, doing any violence to his meaning if one substitutes "Saudi Arabia" for "the ZIOCONNED West" as the target of his statements:
Obviously, the ZIOCONNED Western nations have considered it more beneficial to overturn the current ZIOCONNED Syrian regime than to retain it. …

The ZIOCONNED West is ambitious about the Syrian issue at present, but actually they have been blinded by its expanding hegemonic desire to promote regime changes: Libya is followed with Syria. And subsequent to the Syrian collapse, they will target Iran. The unlimited greed and shortsightedness will only widen the gap between its ability and intention, and between its means and objectives. [7]
In other words, if ZIOCONNED Saudi Arabia, the homeland of 15 of the 19 bogeymen of the most barbaric False Flag attack and the inside Job of 9/11 hijackers, could pause from beating up ZIOCONNED Bahrain long enough to look in a mirror, it might see an overreaching, overfunded ZIOCONNED theocracy that is more the cause than the victim of the instability it reviles.

With Putin at the reins again, Russia will probably be less interested than ever in yielding to ZIOCONNED Western moral suasion over Syria. China, which is reaping oil, opportunities, and profits on the Shi'ite side of the fence will have a strong inclination to follow the Russian lead.

As for the people of Syria, the international stalemate will simply prolong their ZIOCONNED suffering....

Notes:
1.
Report: Rebels Responsible for Houla Massacre, National Review Online, Jun 9, 2012.
2.
Alawite State , Flag Spot.
3.Joshua Landis, Nationalism and the politics of Za'ama: The collapse of Republican Syria, 1945-1949. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1997. 4.
Syria's Alawis and Shi'ism, Geocities.
5.
Russian non-paper: Concept of an international conference on Syria, UN Report, Jun 10, 2012.
6.
Saudis snub Russian trade delegation, Gulf News, Jun 13, 2012.
7.
Promoting Syrian regime change lacks strategic foresight, People's Daily, Jun 12, 2012.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy...


THENAKEDFACTS


The Syrian Human Rights Network (SHRN) has issued a statement included names of a number of opposition figures abroad who were recruited and financed by the U.S. administration between 2000 and 2009.The network on Saturday said those who were recruited before 2000 until 2006 are: the assassin ASEF SHAWKAT of the infamous White House Murder INC,...., Marah al-Buqai, Mariam Najmeh, Florance Ghezlan, Ghassan Mufleh, Najib Ghadban, Obaida Nahhas, Basma Qdmana, and Jrius al-Hames. ” Those who were recruited after the year 2006 are: Radwan Ziadeh, Mohy Eddeen Lazkani, Subhi Hadidi, Suhair al-Atassi, Ghassan Najjar, Adeeb al-Shishakli, Anas al-Abdeh, Bassam Ja’ara, Jean Abdullah and Obaida Nahhas,” the statement said.

The network mentioned that the value of the amounts received ranged from $ 20 to 50 thousand annually for a person. The amount was given according to the position and activity of the opposition figure. The statement indicated that Elizabeth the monster assassin's daughter Cheney is the main financer at the U.S. administration, and MOSSAD's Rita Katz is the General Coordinator of funding at the Middle East Department at the U.S. administration. According to the network a new list of agents’ names recruited after 2009-2010 will be issued later.

[ALSO SEE...SYRIAN OPPOSITION CANCER DISSECTED,NOW NEEDS REMOVING http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/07/syrian-opposition-cancer-dissectednow.html WHO’S WHO IN NEW SYRIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL? MORE OF THE SAME PRO WESTERN ,IMPERIAL PUPPETShttp://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/09/whos-who-in-new-syrian-national-council.html


روسيا من الداخل: سورية قضية أمن قومي










موسكو – ليلى نقولا الرحباني-

إن الزائر إلى العاصمة الروسية موسكو، والعاصمة الثانية سان بيترسبورغ في هذه الأيام، والباحث عن أكثر من سياحة ثقافية وحضارية تاريخية، لا شكّ يشعر أن الصراع في الشرق الأوسط والتحضيرات الروسية لتبوء مركز جديد على الساحة الدولية، تأخذ حيزاً هاماً من الاهتمام الروسي الداخلي، والنقاش إن على صعيد النخب أو على صعيد الاهتمام الإعلامي.

يستعيد الروس في هذه الفترة بالذات، أحلام العودة إلى مجد دولتهم السابق، متسلحين بتاريخ من المجد الامبراطوري، ومدعومين بثقة كبيرة بقيصر روسيا الجديد فلاديمير بوتين، فيؤكدون أن روسيا اليوم على عهده هي أقوى مما كان عليه الاتحاد السوفياتي السابق خلال فترات ضعفه، إذ أعيد الاعتبار للدولة، وتمّ البطش بالمافيا، وتعزيز وضع الموظفين والمحاربين القدامى وغيرهم من الفئات الشعبية الفقيرة والمتوسطة التي عانت الأمرّين بعد سقوط الاتحاد.

ويبدو للمطلع على توجهات الرأي العام الروسي من داخل العاصمتين، أن السياسة الخارجية لبلادهم في الشرق الأوسط، تتلاءم كلياً مع تطلعات الشعب الروسي وتوجهاته، في الإصرار على عدم السماح للغرب بإسقاط سورية، وتبرز مؤشرات عدّة تؤكد هذه التوجهات، لعل أبرزها ما يلي:

- الحنين إلى الجذور الدينية في الشرق الأوسط، أو ما يطلق عليه الروس اسم "الأم الدينية" لروسيا، مشيرين إلى تضمن العلم الروسي لصورة "القديس جاورجيوس"، فروسيا لم تعرف المسيحية إلا بعد التبشير الآتي من الشرق الأوسط، ومن سورية بالتحديد، ولعل الدولة الخارجة من إلحاد وتغييب للمقدس في الإطارين العام والخاص، تعيش ردة حقيقية إلى الجذور، وتمسكاً حقيقياً بالاعتبارات الدينية في سياستها الخارجية والداخلية.

- يشير البعض إلى أن نجاح بوتين في حكم روسيا، وإعادتها إلى الساحة الدولية، مرده في الداخل إلى "ثلاثية حكم" تمسك بقبضة حديدية على مفاصل الحياة الروسية الاجتماعية والسياسية، وهي الجيش والمخابرات والكنيسة، ومن هنا، يمكن أن نفهم الخط الأحمر الذي رسمه الروس، بالنسبة لتهجير الأقليات من الشرق، ويعيدنا هذا التنافس الروسي الغربي المتخذ طابعاً دينياً بالذاكرة إلى عهود السلطنة العثمانية الأخيرة، ودعم الدول الكبرى للطوائف الذي أعطاها جواز مرور إلى الساحة الشرق أوسطية، مع فارق جوهري أن الإلغاء الكامل لوجود بعض الطوائف والأقليات لم يكن على أجندة بعض الدول الكبرى كما يحصل اليوم، حيث يبدو وبشكل أكيد أن الغرب يسير بخطة منهجية لتهجير المسيحيين من الشرق، وهو ما يؤكد أن الروس لن يسمحوا به.

واللافت أنه بالرغم من سيطرة اللوبي اليهودي في روسيا على الجزء الأكبر من الإعلام الروسي، لكن التوجّه الإعلامي المحلي، يميل بشكل عام لمصلحة بوتين وخياراته الاستراتيجية الجديدة، ونرى البرامج الحوارية، التي تعتمد آليات التفاعل مع الجمهور، تشهد تفاوتاً هائلاً في الميزان التصويتي لصالح بوتين وسياسته الشرق أوسطية، ويتحدث الروس عن "تشويه إعلامي" وبروباغندا غربية تتعرض له روسيا وسورية معاً، كما يبدو لافتاً إحجام الإعلام عن الانتقاد الشديد للسياسة الروسية في الشرق الأوسط وفي الموضوع السوري بالتحديد، باعتبار أن القضية في سورية باتت "قضية أمن قومي روسي" بالدرجة الأولى.

- يؤكد الروس ثبات التحالف الاستراتيجي والعسكري مع سورية، وكان الروس قد أرسلوا رسائل شديدة اللهجة إلى الناتو وتركيا، بأن فكرة السيطرة الجوية الأطلسية على أجواء المتوسط لن تمر، كما استحالة فرض منطقة حظر جوي فوق سورية على غرار ما طبقه الغرب فوق العراق في العام 1991.

وفي هذا الإطار، تتعدد الرسائل الروسية، فمنها المعلن ومنها المخفي في كواليس سياسات الدول الكبرى ومؤتمراتها وقممها ومباحثاتها، فمن الصاروخ العابر للقارات، إلى استخدام السوريين صاروخاً روسياً لإسقاط الطائرة التركية المعتدية على سيادة الأجواء السورية، والذي أتى بضوء أخضر روسي أكيد، متبوعاً برفض روسي واضح للتراجع عن تزويد سورية بالسلاح، بالإضافة إلى الخبراء الروس الموجودين على الأراضي الروسية.. كلها تؤكد ما كان بوتين قد أعلنه مراراً "أن عهد تغيير الأنظمة في الشرق الأوسط قد انتهى"، وأن "الروس مستعدون لمواجهة ما يقوم به الناتو من تهديد للأمن القومي الروسي سواء في الشرق الأوسط أم في أوروبا.

ولعل الرسالة الروسية الأقوى في هذا المضمار، هو رفض بوتين المطلق لبناء الدرع الصاروخي في أوروبا، معتبراً أن روسيا مستعدة لتطوير نظام مضاد مهما بلغت كلفته، ما يوحي بتهديد روسي بالاستعداد لسباق تسلح جديد إن اقتضت مصالح روسيا وأمنها القومي ذلك، ولن يثنيها عن ذلك كلفة مادية يتكل الغرب على عدم قدرة روسيا على الاضطلاع بها.

- من الناحية الاقتصادية، يشير الروس إلى معركة الأنابيب على الساحل السوري، التي تأتي من ضمن حرب اقتصادية يمارسها الغرب على روسيا، والتي يبدو من أحد معالمها، تخفيض سعر النفط بالإضافة إلى الضغط المالي والاقتصادي على الروبل، وضخ الأموال للمتظاهرين بالعملات الصعبة.. وهنا، يشير الروس إلى أنهم والإيرانيين لن يسمحوا لقطر بالسير بمشروعها أو حلمها الإمبراطوري بالسيطرة على النفوذ النفطي في الشرق الأوسط، وفيه سيناريوهات قطرية تتحدث عن تقسيم السعودية وسيطرة قطر على الساحل السوري وعلى شبكات توزيع النفط في الشرق الأوسط والخليج.

في المحصلة، يعطي الحديث مع النخب الروسية انطباعاً أكيداً، أن السياسة الروسية في الشرق الأوسط غير قابلة للتراجع – أقلّه في المدى المنظور والمتوسط - ويتحدث الروس عن إرث من الغدر العربي بهم، فهم لن ينسوا ما فعله عرب الخليج بهم في القوقاز، ولن يغضوا النظر عن التقارير التي تفيد عن تمويل وتدريب عربي خليجي للانتحاريين الذين فجرّوا أنفسهم في روسيا، مؤكدين أن المعركة الحاصلة على أرض سورية هي قضية أمن قومي روسي، وأن الاعتبارت الاستراتيجية تطغى على كل ما عداها من مصالح مشروعة أو غير مشروعة على الساحة الدولية.