Michael Young

Last week, President Barack Obama cast doubt on the Russian intervention in Syria. “An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up [President Bashar] Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work,” Obama said during a news conference. He added that Russia was acting “not out of strength but out of weakness.”Obama may be right, but his reaction sounded more like sour grapes than anything else. So obsessed has he been that America would get caught in a quagmire by doing anything useful in Syria, that the president appears to assume that others will perform as incompetently as Washington has there.

Yet, for the misfortune of Arab democrats everywhere, Russia has been more careful than that, projecting an image of seriousness and commitment in the past four years. But seriousness and commitment to what? Principally to the Arab status quo and regime survival. Meanwhile, American hesitancy to defend old allies such as Hosni Mubarak in 2011, or sanction the military coup against President Mohammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, has alarmed those in the Middle East who once relied on Washington for their security.

That’s not to say the Obama administration was wrong, though its management of the situation in Egypt was especially confusing. Rather, it is to underline that Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately grasped that in a time of volatility the priority of Arab regimes was to stay in power.

This reflects an inherent refusal among Russian leaders, from the time of the tsars, particularly through the Holy Alliance of 1815, to the modern-day establishment of paradoxically conservative, authoritarian communist regimes at home and in Eastern Europe, to allow democracy and the popular replacement of regimes.

That attitude is very much reflected in the ruling classes in the Arab world, for whom the so-called Arab Spring brought only instability and conflict. Bashar Assad and Moammar al-Gadhafi understood the equation well, precipitating their countries into the forbidding void of war and carnage, knowing it would alarm the surrounding states and increase their own chances of prevailing. The tactic failed for Gadhafi, but could be succeeding for Assad, as several Arab countries, notably Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, fear the consequences of chaos in Syria if the regime were to fall without a managed transition.

As Putin made his move in Syria, he held up his enthusiasm for regime stability as a calling card. Unlike the Americans, the Russian president has affirmed he will come to the assistance of his autocratic allies when they are endangered. This may have placed Russia on a collision course with the Gulf states over Syria, but their leaders can sympathize with Putin’s decisiveness in standing by his friends, a test Obama failed in Egypt.

The Americans did not err in siding with Egyptian democrats, but they repeatedly equivocated, ultimately angering everyone. Obama might respond that when he helped remove Gadhafi in Libya, he partnered with conservative Gulf regimes. Yet the result was anarchy, reinforcing Obama’s conviction not to engage in similar actions in Syria, while also strengthening Putin’s hand. Dedication to the status quo is the Russian leader’s version of “soft power” in the Arab world – the ability to appeal to regimes in the region without engaging in coercion.

The Obama administration has shown no similar devotion to democracy. In his Cairo speech in 2009, Obama made only cosmetic reference to democratization, and has, since, sought to portray himself as a political realist. That he’s been a mediocre one doesn’t detract from the fact that, like Putin, he has systematically ignored wooly concepts such as humanistic values, popular representation and human rights.

In other words Arab regimes today are presented with the choice between an equally amoral America and Russia, but on the Russian side a greater ability to adopt a clear strategy, no matter how cynical, while America hypocritically portrays itself as morally upright while doing nothing at all. Between the two it’s not difficult to see whom they will prefer. No matter how badly Russia behaves in Syria, the likelihood that Arab regimes will sever relations with Moscow is not high. That’s because Putin does not bathe in a sea of ambiguity, while Obama does.

The U.S. administration has said it wants Assad to leave office, but not in such a way that it might benefit jihadi groups. Obama says Assad must stop killing civilians, but has consistently rejected the imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria allowing for the protection of civilians. The White House says it opposes Russian intervention on Assad’s behalf, but has coordinated with the Russians to avoid aerial confrontations while vowing to increase its attacks against ISIS, suggesting collusion between the two. Obama has backed the Syrian Kurds against ISIS, but then reached an accord with the Turks over the use of Incirlik Air Base, which soon led to Turkish attacks against the PKK, the party with which most Syrian Kurds are allied.

Quite simply, Obama is incoherent when it comes to Syria, while Russia is not. And Putin will use this to market himself to the region’s leaders, even if his intervention on Assad’s behalf alienates a number of them. His longer-term objective is to show that there is a reliable alternative to America in the Middle East, and that Russia is that alternative. It may be ambitious and Putin may yet crash. But on the one issue that matters to Arab leaders, their own survival, he leaves them with no doubts.