If Russia is the New World Power – What is Next?

I have decried the fall of American power.  This fall from power is not due to our lack of military might but due to our lack of leadership.  The world no longer believes that America has the will power to take on the challenges of being the world’s police.  This fact is indicative that the bad guys are winning the war on terror.

To this end, Russia has clearly demonstrated its willingness and fierceness to take on the challenge of terror.  Or at least it has portrayed its Syrian actions as such. 

Does anyone fear the United States anymore?  Does anyone fear Russia?  Does anyone believe that the United States can stop Russia’s aggression? Answers: No, Yes, and No.

These simple answers must lead us to think of how the world will change if Russia is the sole world power.  Russia could become the sole world power because it is willing to use its power – NOT because it is more powerful than the United States.  The refusal of the United States to exert power left the door wide open for Russia to ascend.  But that is behind us.  Analysis must now be directed to the changes that will result from Russia’s new role and what we should do about these changes.

The Middle East’s center of power may shift from Riyadh to Tehran.  Power in the Middle East may shift from Sunnis to Shias.  America has been aligned with the Sunnis (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait). Russia is aligned with the Shias (Iran, Syria). With civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias potentially expanding to engulf the entire Middle East, a potential proxy war between Russia and the United States is possible. Even worse, with Russia having nothing to lose, direct war is not out of the question. 

Russia did not go to Syria because (as Putin stated at the United Nations General Assembly) they are the only world citizen invited by the Syrian government to help them in their time of need.  They went for two reasons: 1) because the Iranians were willing to pay them as mercenaries, and 2) because they see the possibility of helping Iran expand the Sunni/Shia civil war across the region.  Not only do they see the possibility of the expanding civil war, they see the possibility of asserting enough power to assure that Tehran becomes the undisputed center of power in the Middle East.  Russia sees the potential to control the flow of oil from the Arabian Peninsula and therefore control the price of oil.  Russia desperately needs the price of oil to rise in order for its oil exporting economy to mend.

Although it has not been mentioned thus far, Russia’s actions against Ukraine are also despicable.  However, Russia’s real chance of entrenching itself as the world’s sole super power lies in its ability to control the Middle East.  So while enraged Western countries are responding to Russia’s Syrian actions with increased actions in the Baltic nations; these actions are window dressing by politicians pretending to have a back bone.  Meanwhile, the future of the world is being shaped by the lack of response in the Middle East.

Clearly no Western country should directly confront Russia on a military level at this time.  The potential for any accidental conflict should also be eliminated – even if that means that the West gets out of Syria for the time being.  After all, the Russians will take care of ISIS so the need for the West to be in Syria is not as urgent as it was before Russia’s entry.  They have saddled themselves with this responsibility and we should allow them to focus their full attention in this isolated region.  While they are bogged down in Syria, we must fortify the rest of the region.

The first thing we must do is to send ground troops into Iraq and conduct a brutal, lightning fast annihilation of ISIS in Iraq.  We need to do this to reestablish our bona fides which will be needed for the remainder of the strategy.  If you were a Middle Eastern leader, who would you pick as your protector right now; America or Russia?  We need people to believe in America again!

To rehabilitate America’s super power role, more troops are not needed in the Baltic – they are needed in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahram, Iraq, Egypt, the UAE and even in Yemen.  Wherever there is a Middle Eastern nation willing to host an American force (or NATO) we should be there.  Staging equipment and encampments that can be rapidly manned.  Small forces should be left in all such countries to maintain these encampments and to assist the host countries in eradicating their local form of radical Islamists.  American (and/or NATO) should get the official invitation from each of these nations and an agreement that Russia will NOT be provided with such an invitation.  In this way, Russia will not have the false pretense of do-gooder to enter another Middle East country.

After we resolve the ISIS situation in Iraq, we must resolve the Houthi situation in Yemen, then we must fix Libya.  Down the road we have to consider what we do about the Boko Haram (but focus on the Middle East right now).  If and when ISIS or another radical Islamic group threatens a sovereign nation, we must respond quickly.  We cannot allow the “JV” to get too much practice before we act.  Furthermore, we must leave troops behind to prop up a locally elected civil government.  President Obama has said it so many times that many Americans believe there is no other option: “We will not send our sons and daughters back to war.”  Well if we do not, the Russians will and eventually we will not be fighting splintered militias, we will be fighting a nuclear armed military.

Of course we must demand that the Middle Eastern nations provide ground forces to the effort, but we have been down this road before and we know that Western forces must be heavily involved if we want to win.  To that end, we should watch Russia’s conduct of operations in Syria.  We should have learned from our own past mistakes, but the Russians example is a reinforcement – go big or go home.  The next time we target a radical Islamist group for “degrade and eventually destroy” we should forget the "degrade and eventually" part and move right onto destroy.

Just so this pondering of the world situation is not blind to Russia’s physical territory, we should also beef up our defenses in the Baltic states.  Our NATO obligations should not be ignored, but we should rely more heavily on our European partners to affect these defenses.  We can provide additional technology (like more missile defense systems in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) but Europeans need to increase their military spend and their troop presence in Eastern Europe.  We should also demand participation of the Europeans in our Middle Eastern obligations.  However, we should not use their usual lack of enthusiasm as an excuse for us not to act.