War and Foreign Rescue

OPENING SCENE

It is September 30, 2015, shortly before dawn at Hmeimim airbase on Syria's Mediterranean coast. The base sits inland from the city of Latakia, in the Alawite heartland that has always been Assad's most reliable social and geographic foundation. Technicians work under floodlights. Fuel trucks circulate between aircraft. The planes lined up on the tarmac are Russian: Sukhoi Su-24 strike bombers, Su-25 ground attack aircraft, and Su-34 all-weather fighter-bombers. They have been arriving for weeks, along with the personnel, ammunition, spare parts, and communications equipment that a modern air campaign requires.

When the aircraft take off at first light, the Russian Defense Ministry announces at a press conference that it has launched strikes against the Islamic State, known as ISIS. The statement is technically true in the sense that ISIS is among the enemies Russia names. What US officials and rebel commanders on the ground confirm within hours is something different: the first strikes hit rebel positions in Homs province and Hama province, areas that contain no significant ISIS presence. The targets are Free Syrian Army formations and allied groups that have been advancing on government-held territory in the weeks before the Russian intervention. The mission is anti-terrorism. The effect is regime rescue.

The four years between the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011 and Russia's September 30, 2015 intervention are the years in which the Assad government came closest to collapse. A chemical weapons attack in August 2013 brought the United States to the edge of military strikes and then pulled back. ISIS grew from a marginal presence to a territorial state. Hezbollah deployed thousands of fighters openly. Iran committed billions of dollars and thousands of personnel. By the time Russian aircraft lifted off from Hmeimim, no development in the entire history of the war changed the strategic picture more fundamentally. The question of whether Assad would survive, which had seemed genuinely open in mid-2015, ceased to be a question.