What Assad’s fall says about Putin’s great-power ambitions

The lightning-fast collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has sent shock waves across the Middle East. The disposal of the dictator whose family had ruled the country with an iron fist for more than half a century has triggered a potentially seismic shift in the balance of power in the region.

But there are also important repercussions beyond Syria and its neighborhood – with Russia one of the more significantly affected powers.

Back in 2015, Assad’s regime had been on the brink of collapse. It was saved by a Russian intervention – with support from Iran and Hezbollah. Launched in the context of a growing threat from Islamic State, Russia enabled Assad’s regime to push back other rebel forces as well.

Over the years that followed, it enabled Assad to consolidate control over the capital, other key cities, and in particular the coastal region where Russia had two military bases.

The future of these bases is now uncertain. The Russian naval base in Tartus – which dates back to Soviet times – as well as an air base at Khmeimim, established southeast of Latakia in 2015, were vital assets for Russia to project military force in the Mediterranean Sea and bolster the Kremlin’s claim to Russian great-power status.

Given the importance of the bases for Russia and the significant investments made over the years in propping the regime, Assad’s fall reflects badly on Russia’s capabilities to assert credible influence on the global stage.

Even if Russia somehow manages to negotiate a deal with Syria’s new rulers over the future of its military bases, the fact that Moscow was unable to save an important ally like Assad exposes critical weaknesses in Russia’s ability to act, rather than just talk, like a great power.

There are clear intelligence failures that either missed or misinterpreted the build-up of anti-Assad forces by Qatar, and Turkey’s tacit support of this. These failures were then compounded by diminished Russian military assets in Syria and an inability to reinforce them at short notice. This is, of course, due to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.

The depletion of the military capabilities of two other Kremlin allies in the region — Iran and Hezbollah — further compounded the difficulties for Assad and exacerbated the effect of Russia’s overstretch. This also raises the question of whether Russia strategically misjudged the situation and underestimated its vulnerability in Syria.

But even more so, it highlights Russia’s own dependence on allies who do not simply acquiesce to Moscow’s demands — as Assad did when he provided Russia its military bases — but who actively support a wannabe great power that lacks some of the means to assert its claimed status – as Iran and Hezbollah did in 2015.

Where’s China?

Missing from this equation is China. While Beijing had sided with Assad after the start of the Syrian civil war, this support was mostly of the rhetorical kind. It was mainly aimed at preventing a UN-backed, Western-led intervention akin to the one in Libya that led to the fall of Gaddafi and has plunged the country into chaos ever since.

A high-profile visit of Assad to China in September 2023 resulted in a strategic partnership agreement. This seemed to signal another step towards the rehabilitation of the Syrian regime, in Beijing’s eyes at least. But when push came to shove and Assad’s rule was under severe threat, China did nothing to save him.

This raises an important question about Chinese judgment of the Syrian regime and the evolving crisis. But there is also a broader point here regarding Russian great-power ambitions.

For all the talk of a limitless partnership between Moscow and Beijing, China ultimately did nothing to save Russia from an embarrassing defeat in Syria.

Where Russia needed a military presence to bolster its claims to great-power status, Chinese interests in the Middle East are primarily about economic opportunity and the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

This has clearly limited Beijing’s appetite to become more involved, let alone to bail out Assad.

Putin diminished

Russia’s position in the Middle East now is in peril. Moscow has lost a key ally in Assad. Its other main allies, Iran and Hezbollah, are significantly weakened. Israel and Turkey, with whom the Kremlin has not had easy relations over the past few years, have been strengthened.

This exposes the hollowness of Russian claims to great-power status. It is also likely to further diminish Russian prestige and the standing that it has in the eyes of other partners – whether they are China or North Korea, members of the BRICS, or countries in the Global South that Russia has recently tried to woo.

The consequences of that for Ukraine – arguably the main source of Russia’s overstretch – are likely to be ambivalent.

On the one hand, the ease with which Assad was deposed demonstrates that Russia is not invincible and that its support of brutal dictatorships has limits. On the other hand, there should be no expectation of anything but Russia doubling down in Ukraine.

Putin needs a success that restores domestic and international confidence in him —and fast. After all, Donald Trump does not like losers.

Stefan Wolff is professor of international security, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.