The chemical weapons attacks in Syria occurred in the context of modern day tribal horrors. We have seen this movie: Serbia and Bosnia, the Hutu and Tutsi, Iraq and Afghanistan. How would the remote bombing by the US fix the horrors viewed on YouTube?
This week President Obama is in Russia for the G-20 Summit. Since American leverage is limited and severely so, these questions need to be asked and answered: for decades, Russia's foreign policy in the Mideast has been to disrupt US influence there. But Russia has also had its full share of domestic terrorism: shouldn't Russia realize that the disintegration of the Mideast, succumbing to inhumanity and desperation of millions of refugees, is against its own interests?
The following ought to be clarified: that only China is capable of controlling its own populations to suppress threats to civil order. At the end of visible conflicts, Russia and the United States both lose significantly more than China, if disorder and failed nation states prevail in the Mideast.
Putin believes the United States is still Russia's great enemy. We are not. Times have changed since Putin's KGB days.
The disorder and barbarism emerging from the Mideast are problems as big for Putin as they are for Obama. Like the forest fires in the American west, what both Russia and the United States need to prevent is the combination of fires, the acceleration and formation of their own ecosystem of violence. This point should be front and center, this week in St. Petersberg.