New Afghanistan

Putin risks a new Afghanistan, Obama warns

The president predicts the Russian leader will have to change his strategy in Syria to avoid a quagmire. 

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

Vladimir Putin's leadership evokes Soviet-style politics and posturing. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama suggested he take lessons from Soviet military history, too.

For years, Obama has followed a "laissez-fail" policy for Syria's Bashar Assad--a hands-off waiting for him to fall from power--that has been driven by what he considered the wrongheaded, and costly, American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under George W. Bush. Similarly, Obama said, when Putin weighs his decision to intervene to support Assad in Syria, he should keep in mind the Soviet Union's own no-win intervention in Afghanistan, which began in 1979 and lasted nine long and bloody years.

That’s how Obama described his big takeaway from his two brief meetings with Putin in the past two weeks—one after the Russian commercial plane explosion in Egypt and the terrorist attacks in Paris and the second here on Monday on the sidelines of the international climate conference--all during a month of stepped up Russian military involvement in Syria that included last week’s downing of a Russian fighter jet by the Turks.

“I think Mr. Putin understands that, with Afghanistan fresh in the memory for him, to simply get bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict is not the outcome that he’s looking for,” Obama said at a press conference wrapping up his visit to the French capital.

It was the latest chapter of Obama and Putin reading each other, or making a show of reading each other, in an ever-icy relationship. Obama successfully isolated Putin after his annexation of Crimea, but the Russian leader has barreled his way back into play internationally by launching a bombing campaign in Syria.

According to the White House, Obama in his Monday afternoon meeting with Putin expressed his regret for the downed jet, talked about the political transition process for Syria that Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been overseeing and reiterated that he wants Assad out. But they also discussed Ukraine, and rolling back economic sanctions imposed after Putin's annexation of Crimea. The White House said Obama held firm in saying no until Putin starts backing out of the country he all but tried to claim as his own last year.

In the two weeks since the attacks on his capital, French President François Hollande has tried to broker a kind of arranged marriage between Obama and Putin aimed at joining forces against ISIL -- a partnership neither side seems to want. They’ve still not agreed to the terms, especially given Russia’s long history of propping up the Assad family and weeks of bombing that Obama’s accused Putin of being more about killing forces rebelling against Assad than anything to do with ISIL.

“I don’t expect that you’re going to see a 180 turn on their strategy in the next several weeks. They have invested for years now in keeping Assad in power,” Obama said. “That’s going to take some time for them to change how they think about the issue.”

Russian and Iranian military forces have both moved into Syria in recent weeks, though some European intelligence reports have described tension between the two that’s led the Iranians to scale back.

Obama said that he doesn’t think Putin’s ready to recalibrate his strategy to avoid another Afghanistan or abandon Assad quite yet, or that he’s actually focused on fighting ISIL, despite his talk.

But the president added that he’s sure his strategy is right and that the Russians will eventually have to follow his lead.

“Too much blood has been shed, too much infrastructure has been destroyed for us to anticipate that it’ll be a smooth transition,” Obama said. “I’m confident that Russia’s going to recognize the threat that ISIL poses to its country, to its people is the most significant, and they need to align themselves with those of us who are fighting ISIL.”

Obama’s not the only one who sees the situation shifting around Putin, with the military engagement in Syria broad and slow-going and, in the wake of the downed military jet, sanctions against Turkey that will only constrain the already struggling Russian economy more.

“The reality on the ground for Russia has already changed, and hopefully Russia will start looking for an exit,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. “The price to Russia for their invasion in Syria just keeps going up and up. And ultimately it may be just as important to Putin to end the conflict in Syria as it is to Obama.”

The president seemed reluctant to get distracted from discussing the climate change conference that was supposed to be the purpose of this trip. He used the news conference to argue that a successful agreement coming out of this two-week U.N. conference, though non-binding and likely of limited initial impact, could spark a process of private sector innovation and government action all over the world that would move more quickly than the current best-case estimates in curbing the effects of global warming.

An agreement would create “the architecture that’s needed,” Obama said. “We will have established a global consensus, and the we can successively turn up the dials.”

That’s actual American leadership in the world, Obama said, of the kind he’s flexed in the run-up to this climate summit, in his fight against ISIL and beyond.

“For some reason, too often in Washington, American leadership is defined by whether or not we’re sending troops somewhere, and that’s the sole definition of leadership,” Obama said.

Describing American power and influence, Obama said, “our role is central, but on large international issues like this, it’s not going to be sustainable.”

After tying together the climate consensus to the ISIL coalition, Obama drew a link between fighting ISIL and combating mass shooting at home as he discussed the attack on the Planned Parenthood facility last Friday, though he stopped short of using the word “terrorism” to describe what happened in Colorado.

“We devote enormous resources, and properly so, to rooting networks and debilitating organizations like ISIL,” Obama said, “and yet in the United States we have the power to do more to prevent what is just a regular process of gun homicides that is unequaled by multiples of five, six, 10” in other countries.

Obama said he’d keep pressing the case to do more on gun control. But as has been the case in the past when he’s talked about gun control, and is the case with his ISIL strategy, he didn’t offer any details or real goals of what that would include.

And just like Obama predicted Putin would come around to his way of thinking on Syria, he said all the people running to succeed him—Republicans included, though he said “I’m confident in the wisdom of the American people” that they’ll elect a Democrat—would follow his lead on climate change once in office, no matter what they’re saying on the campaign trail.

As president, “you now are in fact at the center of what happens around the world, and your credibility and America’s ability to influence events depends on taking seriously what other countries care about,” Obama said. “Everyone else is taking climate change really seriously. They think it’s a really big problem. It spans political parties.”