VDH:
Contrary to the principles of American foreign policy of the last 70 years, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry tacitly invited Russia to “help” monitor things in the Middle East. Now they are learning that there are lots of Middle East scenarios far worse than the relatively quiet Iraq that the Obama administration inherited in January 2009 — and soon abandoned.
Russian president Vladimir Putin liked the American invitation so much that he now has decided to move in permanently. Marshal Putin now wants the West to join his new Syria-Iran-Hezbollah-Iraq axis against the Islamic State — or to at least sit back and allow Russia to straighten out the Middle East as it sees fit.
To fight the Islamic State, Putin has called for something similar to the “anti-Hitler coalition” of World War II that saw the Soviet Union and the West unite to defeat Nazi Germany.
Certainly, the Islamic State, like Nazi Germany, is a savage regime. So far, it has grown unchecked at the very center of the Middle East. Yet under the cloak of fighting the Islamic State, Putin has two greater visions.
One, he is intervening to save his client in Syria, strongman Bashar al-Assad – and with him a new Middle East Shiite axis of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia. Putin says he wishes to destroy the terrorists of the Islamic State. But for now he is bombing moderate opponents of Assad and bolstering the anti-Western terrorists of Hezbollah and perhaps Hamas as well.
Two, Putin is sending a warning to the oil-exporting Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf, who are as rich as they are militarily weak: Russia, not the United States, is the new cop on the Middle Eastern beat.
If oil-rich and nuclear Russia and a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran can bully the Sunni monarchies, Putin’s new cartel may control the spigot of some 75 percent of the world’s daily export of oil.
Putin’s recall of history is as fishy as his current proposed coalition. Since he has invoked the “anti-Hitler” alliance of World War II, we would all do well to remember the circumstances that led to the totalitarian Soviet Union of Josef Stalin joining with democracies to defeat Hitler.
Stalin, remember, was originally a de facto ally of Adolf Hitler. Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany on August 23, 1939. That devil’s agreement green-lighted the start of World War II just over a week later.
Germany invaded neutral Poland on September 1, 1939. It was joined soon after by Russian troops attacking from the east. With a now-friendly Russia at his rear, Hitler was then free to turn westward against the European democracies.
Russia still seems embarrassed by its 1939 sellout. Marshal Stalin would supply the Third Reich for 22 months with key resources that helped Hitler to attack Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Greece, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, and Yugoslavia.
There is no reason to believe the Soviet Union would ever have flipped to join Great Britain against Nazi Germany had Hitler not double-crossed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. After all, Stalin’s Communist regime had liquidated more than 15 million of its own citizens during 1920s and 1930s, and was a kindred genocidal state to Hitler’s National Socialist Third Reich.
Finally a reasonable opinion on Syria-Russia matter… However, Hitler did not double-cross Stalin; in fact it was Stalin who committed an attempt of epic backstabbing, preparing to “liberate” entire Europe so Hitler had no choice but to smite the former buddy before it could smite him.
Chaos and bloodbath that Russia spreads now is a direct consequence of Western siding with them during WW2. Allowing communist monster to live and mutate into modern form of russism was a doom that current generation is bound to face.