Russia is the New Hegemon

by James Lewis

Under Obama and the Left, America has retreated from the world. We have abandoned our allies, all the way from Japan and South Korea to Saudi Arabia and Israel. Obama has supported thepaleofascist Ikhwan (brotherhood) in the Sunni Arab world, and Iran in the Shi’ite half of Islam. China has snatched a major part of the South China Sea, with its undersea mineral wealth. Russia is gradually pushing Europe back from the East.

While Obama was distracting you with Mohammed the bomb-faking kid, Russia made a major anti-Iran, anti-Obama move in Syria, sending a reported 2,000 personnel to take over a large Syrian airbase in Latakia, along with the naval port of Tartous.

Putin is a strategic opportunist, and his chess game isn’t hard to guess. We know he wants to exploit American weakness and betrayal of our allies to rebuild Russia as a superpower.

Russia’s big move into Syria is designed to accomplish several objectives.

First, Putin is propping up Syrian president Assad. This seems to serve Iran’s strategy of surrounding the Arab Sunnis and Israel in a Shi’ite Crescent. But in fact, Putin has just sliced the Iranian Crescent in half by interposing a blocking force. Assad will owe his survival to Uncle Putin, not the theocracy of Iran.

Putin has an alliance of convenience with Tehran, but Russia has centuries of experience fighting Muslim enemies, all the way to the end of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Putin has battled Muslim rebels in Chechnya and doesn’t need a rising nuclear Caliphate next door, an hour’s flight from Russia’s borders.

Putin is nobody’s friend. He is a Russian nationalist, with a close domestic alliance with the Orthodox Church, just like the czars.

In the Armageddon world Obama has allowed to rise, Putin is a rational player compared to the suiciders of Iran.

As usual, Putin is playing a double game, helping to build Iranian nuclear power stations, each of which is also a big, fat target for air or missile attack. Putin is taking money to sell Iran 100 long-distance air-refueling planes designed to project military power far from their Iranian bases. The trouble is that those planes put Russia well within the flight radius of Iran’s new nuke bombs. So Putin just sliced Iran’s pincer movement around Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel.

Move, countermove.

Putin claims to want to fight ISIS. He may do so. It’s good cover, and would give Russia military clout in Iraq and parts of Syria.

Putin desperately needs a bigger energy supply to maintain his political clout in Europe, to supply Russia with fuel, and to try to set up a second OPEC with Russia at the top.

By rescuing the Saudis and Israel from Iranian aggression, Putin is piling up IOU’s in the fast-changing world of energy politics. The world price of oil is collapsing with the spread of shale exploitation, and there is no way to stop it. China is becoming a shale producer in the South China Sea.

Read more at American Thinker: 

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/russia_is_the_new_hegemon.html#ixzz3nFFO50Pa