Putin Makes the Case For Dictators With UN Speech

Vladi­mir Putin’s the­ory of how to cre­ate a stable world is simple enough: Peace comes through main­tain­ing strong states, strong lead­ers, and stable na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. At his ad­dress be­fore the U.N. Gen­er­al As­sembly on Monday, Putin made this point by point­ing to the world’s most press­ing in­ter­na­tion­al crises: the war against IS­IS in Syr­ia and Ir­aq and the refugee crisis spread­ing across Europe.

“Refugees un­doubtedly need our com­pas­sion and sup­port, but the only way to solve this prob­lem on a fun­da­ment­al level is to re­store the state­hood where it has been des­troyed, to strengthen the gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions where they still ex­ist,” Putin said through a trans­lat­or.

He traced the ori­gins of the Syr­i­an crisis and IS­IS to what he sees as the fail­ures of the Ar­ab Spring re­volu­tions. “Rather than bring­ing back re­forms … it has res­ul­ted in a brazen de­struc­tion of na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions and the life­style it­self,” he said. “It is now ob­vi­ous that the power va­cu­ums cre­ated in some coun­tries in the Middle East and Africa led to the emer­gence of an­archy areas, which im­me­di­ately star­ted to be filled with ex­trem­ists and ter­ror­ists.”    

Pres­id­ent Obama spoke be­fore Putin at the Gen­er­al As­sembly, but his re­marks may as well have been a dir­ect re­sponse to Putin. “In ac­cord­ance with this lo­gic, we should sup­port tyr­ants like Bashar al-As­sad, who drops bar­rel bombs to mas­sacre in­no­cent chil­dren, be­cause the al­tern­at­ive is surely worse,” Obama said. “Let’s re­mem­ber how this star­ted: As­sad re­acted to peace­ful protests by es­cal­at­ing re­pres­sion and killing that, in turn, cre­ated the en­vir­on­ment for the cur­rent strife.”

Putin may have a shared in­terest with the United States in de­feat­ing IS­IS, but his vis­ion for how the world should look post-IS­IS dif­fers greatly from the pres­id­ent’s. In re­cent weeks Putin has upped the amount of mil­it­ary aid it is send­ing the As­sad gov­ern­ment, build­ing up aer­i­al de­fense sys­tems and con­struct­ing a base that can hold 2,000 Rus­si­an mil­it­ary per­son­nel, ac­cord­ing to The New York Times. It’s the po­s­i­tion of Pres­id­ent Obama that As­sad should be re­moved from power in the res­ol­u­tion of the con­flict. (Re­call the U.S. Con­gress came very close to a vote over wheth­er it should bomb the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment for its stock­pile of chem­ic­al weapons). Also over the week­end, Rus­sia an­nounced an in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing agree­ment with Ir­aq, Ir­an, and Syr­ia in the fight against IS­IS, fur­ther ce­ment­ing the idea that Rus­sia seeks to bol­ster the Ir­a­ni­an and Syr­i­an gov­ern­ments.

“We think it is an enorm­ous mis­take to re­fuse to co­oper­ate with the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment and its armed forces, who are fight­ing ter­ror­ism face to face,” Putin said.

Putin com­pared the fight against IS­IS to the fight against Hitler dur­ing World War II—ex­plain­ing how Nazism in­spired a di­verse co­ali­tion of coun­tries to unite for a com­mon good. “It could unite a broad range of forces,” Putin said. Per­haps the com­par­is­on is apt, even though it bor­ders on hy­per­bole. After World War II, the al­lied powers of the United States and the U.S.S.R were united in vic­tory but at odds with their vis­ions of what the world should look like post Hitler. A po­ten­tial de­feat of IS­IS could open up yet an­oth­er con­flict: What should take its place?

“The United States is pre­pared to work with any na­tion, in­clud­ing Rus­sia and Ir­an, to re­solve the con­flict,” Obama said in his re­marks. “We must re­cog­nize that there can­not be, after so much blood­shed, so much carnage, a re­turn to the pre­war status quo.”