Status diminished?
The fall of Assad and Putin’s great-power ambitions for Russia
The lightning-fast collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has sent shock waves across the Middle East. The disposal of the dictator whose family had ruled the country with a brutally iron fist for more than half a century has triggered a potentially seismic shift in the balance of power in the region. But there are also important repercussions beyond Syria and its neighbourhood—with Russia one of the more significantly affected powers.
Back in 2015, Assad’s regime had been on the brink of collapse and was saved first and foremost by a Russian intervention, with support from Iran and Hezbollah. Launched in the context of a growing threat from Islamic State, Russia enabled Assad’s regime to push back other rebel forces as well and, over the years that followed, consolidate control over the capital, other key cities, and in particular the coastal region where Russia had two military bases whose future is now uncertain.
The Russian naval base in Tartus, which dates back to Soviet times, an air base at Khmeimim, established southeast of Latakia in 2015, were vital assets for Russia to project military force in the Mediterranean sea and bolster the Kremlin’s claim to Russian great-power status. Given the importance of the bases for Russia, and the significant investments made over the years in propping the regime, Assad’s fall reflects badly on Russia’s capabilities to assert credible influence on the global stage.
Even if Russia somehow manages to negotiate a deal with Syria’s new rulers over the future of its military bases, the fact that Moscow was unable to save a key ally like Assad exposes critical weaknesses in Russia’s ability to act, rather than just talk, like a great power. There are clear intelligence failures that either missed or misinterpreted the build-up of anti-Assad forces by Qatar, and Turkey’s tacit support of this. These failures were then compounded by diminished Russian military assets in Syria and an inability to reinforce them at short notice—due to Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine.
The depletion of the military capabilities of two other Kremlin allies in the region—Iran and Hezbollah—further compounded the difficulties for Assad and exacerbated the impact of Russia’s overstretch. This also raises the question of whether Russia strategically misjudged the situation and underestimated its vulnerability in Syria. But even more so, it highlights Russia’s own dependence on allies who do not simply acquiesce to Moscow’s demands—as Assad did when he provided Russia with basing rights—but who actively support a want-to-be great power that lacks some of the means to assert its claimed status—as Iran and Hezbollah did in 2015.
Missing from this equation is China. While Beijing had sided with Assad after the start of the Syrian civil war, this support was mostly of the rhetorical kind and aimed at preventing a UN-backed, western-led intervention akin to the one in Libya that led to the fall of Gadafi and has plunged the country into chaos ever since. A high-profile visit of Assad to China in September 2023 resulted in a strategic partnership agreement and seemed to signal another step towards the rehabilitation of the Syrian regime. But when push came to shove a year later and Assad’s rule was under severe threat, China did nothing to save him.
While this may raise questions about Chinese judgement of the Syrian regime and the evolving crisis, there is also a broader point here regarding Russian great-power ambitions. For all the talk of a limitless partnership between Moscow and Beijing, China ultimately did nothing to save Russia from an embarrassing defeat in Syria. Where Russia needed a military presence to bolster its claims to great-power status, Chinese interests in the Middle East are primarily about economic opportunity and the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. This has clearly limited Beijing’s appetite to become more involved, let alone to bail out Assad.
Russia’s position in the Middle East now is in serious peril. Moscow has lost a key ally in Assad, and Iran and Hezbollah are significantly weakened. Israel and Turkey, with whom the Kremlin has not had easy relations over the past few years have been strengthened. This exposes the hollowness of Russian claims to great-power status and likely further diminishes Moscow’s prestige and the standing that it has in the eyes of other partners—be they China or North Korea, members of the BRICS, or countries in the global south which Russia has tried to woo recently.
The consequences of that for Ukraine—arguably the main source of Russia’s over-stretch—are likely to be ambivalent. On the one hand, the ease with which Assad was deposed demonstrates that Russia is not an invincible ten-foot giant and that its support of brutal dictatorships has limits, not least in the popular, if externally funded, local resistance to them. On the other hand, there should be no expectation of anything but Russia doubling down in Ukraine. Putin needs a success that restores domestic and international confidence in him—and fast. After all, Donald Trump does not like losers.
An earlier version of this article was published by The Conversation on 12 December 2024.
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