Steve James wrote:There are those who argue that Russia is using Syria as an opportunity to test and develop weapons systems.
That's pretty much always going on, and the more your economy is based on the military the more it happens. We let the Israeli's be the first to use depleted uranium munitions. I don't think weapons testing is even partly Russia's motive for being in Syria, but I'm sure they know this is an opportunity to recalibrate NATO's battle plans to be more respectful of the Russian capability.
Putin said their military is there to stop ISIS because they are a threat to Russia, for example because there are estimated to be a few thousand Russian citizens who have joined ISIS and they could be a problem returning home. And the Syrian army and the current government of Assad are the only way to stop ISIS, so supporting them makes sense. This is the stated purpose and it seems to be consistent with what the Russians are doing militarily as well as diplomatically regarding the 9 point agreement from Vienna Oct. 30 about bringing peace to Syria.
Unfortunately, the USA/NATO have no such consistent policy, as evidenced by their failure to do much at all to stop ISIS in Syria or Iraq, their spending $500mln USD to produce 5 "moderate rebel" fighters, and other failures, and it seems that the Obama admin was ambivalent with its amazing 60 country coalition about whether they wanted more to destroy Assad, or to slow down ISIS from time to time and herd them in various directions.
Finally, it seems that Obama's appointment of
a special envoy to in April to Moscow and the eventual resignation of Gen. Allen as the USA rep. to the 60 nation coalition has signaled a change.
This article suggests that the USA and Russia have been proceeding with a diplomatic solution in the background and Assad has accepted during his visit to Moscow, all the while Obama continued with anti-Assad rhetoric, perhaps to please the chicken hawks. I hope that's what he was doing.