By Murhaf Jouejati

Assuming that the Assad regime will collapse – many indications support this assumption – Russian-Syrian relations are set to go south in the post-Assad era. This conclusion is based on what one anonymous Syrian opposition leader described as “outrageous” Russian behavior throughout the ongoing Syrian uprising.
 
Last Feb. 4, Russia (and China) vetoed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the Assad regime’s crackdown on protests. The resolution also called on President Bashar Assad to step down. Confident, thanks to the veto, that external force would not be used against his regime, Assad exploited the divisions at the U.N. by escalating his security forces’ brutality. He sought to crush Syria’s protest movement, especially in Homs where the uprising was centered, adding hundreds of deaths to the thousands of Syrian civilian casualties. Six months ago, Russia (and China) vetoed an earlier draft resolution threatening Damascus with sanctions.
 
In both instances, Moscow argued that the draft resolutions were not balanced. It blamed the violence on the protest movement’s armed elements, even though the latter are soldiers who preferred to defect rather than shoot at their civilian countrymen. Moscow further argued that the Syrian crisis would be better resolved by Syrians themselves through a political dialogue. Yet dialogue is impossible given the Assad regime’s pursuit of what it calls “the security solution.”
 
In between the vetoes, and to emphasize Moscow’s determination to support its beleaguered ally, a Russian flotilla led by an aircraft carrier docked in the Syrian port of Tartous. This was followed four days later by a Russian ship carrying what the Cypriot Foreign Ministry called “dangerous cargo.” Furthermore, Moscow defiantly approved the sale to Syria of 36 YAK-130 advanced training jets worth $550 million.
 
By supporting the Assad regime throughout the Syrian crisis, Russia is among a handful of states that are isolating themselves from the international community.
 
Russian justifications are not taken seriously. At play are Russia’s attempts to advance its interests. For decades, the former Soviet Union has been Syria’s largest supplier of military hardware; Russia currently holds about $4 billion worth of contracts for future arms deliveries to Damascus. Under these circumstances, Moscow is not prepared to drop its longtime Syrian client, especially now that it has lost arms sales to Iran following United Nations sanctions against that country.
 
Furthermore, Russia is determined to maintain its grip on Tartous – the only port outside the former Soviet Union where Russian ships enjoy unique anchoring privileges.
 
Over and above all this, however, is the need for Moscow to reassert its authority. As a candidate, Vladimir Putin was not about to defer to or show weakness vis-à-vis the West on the eve of Russian presidential elections. The crisis in Syria and Western attempts to punish the Assad regime for its horrific human rights abuses were also an excuse and an opportunity for Moscow to display its displeasure with NATO’s Libya operation. Moscow felt hoodwinked by NATO forces whose military intervention ultimately forced regime-change in that country – a step beyond the U.N. Security Council’s mandate to protect Libyan civilians.
 
In sum, Russia needed to flex its muscles so as to reassert its global influence – at the expense of hundreds of Syrian civilian lives.
 
In so doing, Russia has positioned itself on the wrong side of history. The crisis in Syria is not a conflict between supporters and opponents of the Assad regime, but between the regime and the majority of the Syrian people. Further, it is part and parcel of the Arab Spring in which the masses, from Morocco to Bahrain, have, with varying degrees of success, revolted against their tyrannical rulers.
 
Moscow, in its obstinate support of the Assad regime, may have gambled on the wrong horse. Despite the cosmetic political reforms that Assad says he will implement and that Putin himself thinks “should have been carried out long ago,” indications are that the Assad regime will collapse. The security option the Assad regime adopted has only served to amplify the crisis.
 
With presidential elections behind him, Putin faces less pressure to demonstrate his bravado to his domestic constituency. The hope is that he will shift gears and join the rest of the international community in bringing relief to the Syrian people. The meeting that Russia’s foreign minister held with his Arab counterparts last weekend provided such a forum. Even then, however, the long shadow Moscow has cast over future Russian-Syrian relations is there to stay. Syrians have a long memory: They will not forget easily, or soon, that Russia was a willing accomplice in the murder of innocent Syrian civilians.
 
Murhaf Jouejati is a professor of Middle East studies at the Washington-based National Defense University’s NESA Center for Strategic Studies, and adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.