Konflikten i Syrien

The reports show the Russians’ primary target is the infrastructure the jihadis have built up to support their war effort: command centres, weapons depots, training centres, and communications facilities as well as oil pipelines, workshops and factories.

The Russians have on occasion destroyed jihadi vehicle convoys (there are reliable reports that a 16 vehicle convoy belonging to the Islamic State was destroyed in this way) and they regularly report the destruction of major items of military hardware belonging to the jihadis such as tanks and artillery. However, these targets appear to be secondary.

There are also a few reports of the Russian airforce providing direct air support to Syrian troops engaged in offensive operations, though the extent to which this is happening appears for the moment to be limited.

What conclusions can we draw from all this?

Firstly, it is clear that the purpose of the deployment is not to defeat the jihadi insurgency in Syria or to destroy the Islamic State through air power.

The strike force in Latakia - which the Russians insist they have no plan to increase - is obviously inadequate for such a task.

That the Russians have ruled out expanding their strike force suggests that they do not think that it is possible to defeat the jihadi rebellion in Syria by air power alone.

This is consistent with Russian military philosophy. The Russians have never bought into the US idea of “victory through air power”. Russia’s operational military doctrine is based on the principle of “combined arms” in which every arm of the military service is used together in a complimentary way to achieve victory.

The pattern of Russian activity in Syria in fact bears out what we said previously about the purpose of the deployment: it was done to prevent the US from declaring a “no-fly zone” over Syria.

If the size of the strike force is obviously inadequate to win the Syrian civil war and destroy the Islamic State, it has proved fully adequate for the purpose of preventing the US from declaring a “no-fly zone”.

We know the US planned to set up a “no-fly zone”. The US has admitted as much.

We know the US was in active discussion with its allies to set up such a “no-fly zone” over the course of the summer.

Deployment of the Russian strike force to Syria has forced the US to abandon the idea.

There have been some worries - exacerbated by excited talk from perennial war hawks like Zbigniew Brzezinski - that the US might attack the Russian strike force in order to humiliate Russia and impose the “no-fly zone” despite Russian opposition.

As we discussed previously, the launch of the Russian cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea - demonstrating that all US bases in the region are within striking range of a potentially devastating Russian counter-strike - has put paid to that idea.

The reason there have been no further Russian cruise missile strikes is not because Russia’s Caspian Flotilla has run out of long range cruise missiles, as some have suggested.

It is because the cruise missile strike achieved its purpose, which was to demonstrate to the US Russia’s ability to launch a counter strike if its strike force in Syria is attacked.

The Russians’ success in forcing the US to drop its plan for a “no-fly zone” has had a dramatic effect on the strategic calculus.

In contemporary parlance “no-fly zone” - whatever its original meaning - is now simply shorthand for “US bombing campaign”.

Had the US declared a “no fly zone” it would have rapidly evolved into an all-out bombing campaign against the Syrian government and military.

That is what happened in Yugoslavia and Iraq in the 1990s and in Libya in 2011, and the same would have happened in Syria.

The “no fly zone” would have been accompanied by the declaration of “safe havens” inside Syria. We know this was the plan, and incredibly there are some people who still demand it (see here and here).

These “safe havens” would have been presented as areas for civilians and refugees to flee to for safety from attack (“barrel-bombing”) by the Syrian army and airforce. Based on what happened in Yugoslavia and Iraq in the 1990s and in Libya in the 2011, they would quickly have become base areas under rebel control.

Before long, to the accompaniment of a furious media campaign, the “safe havens” would have been extended to all and every part of Syria where refugees and civilians were supposedly “in danger” from the Syrian government. It would have been only a question of time before they included the whole of Damascus and Aleppo, and towns like Homs and Hama.

The US airforce, supported by those of Britain, France, Turkey and probably Jordan, would then have gone into action “to protect” “the safe havens” by bombing the Syrian military and - as was the case in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya - the civilian infrastructure upon which the Syrian state and military depend.

Many more civilians would of course have died but as was the case in Yugoslavia and Libya that would not have stopped the bombing.

As the bombing campaign escalated, weapons and special forces to “advise” the rebels would have poured in, and it would only have been a matter of time before the Syrian government and military collapsed.

It was to prevent this scenario that the Russians acted. By acting as they did, they stopped it in its tracks.