Wow! This Syrian civil war seems to be made to order for Putin. I’m surprised he stayed out of it so long. The ME is his/Iran’s now.
“I’m surprised he stayed out of it so long.”
Russia is brittle, with a declining population. I don’t think he is there because he wants to be, but because he feels he must. As it stands, the EU and Washington D.C. are ideologically committed to erasing nation states as anything beyond administrative units, as our fifty states are now. Their strategy seems to be to erase the ME nations and make some ersatz Caliphate.
The only two remaining nation states that can possibly resist such a juggernaut are Russia and China. China hasn’t weighed in very heavily, yet. But they will.