Wesley Clark: How to defeat Russia's Syria gambit [View all]

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Intervention leaves the U.S. with three alternatives to counter Assad resurgence.

With Russia's intervention in Syria, it is time to skip the blame game, move quickly to take stock of where we are and count our blessings, and then act on the opportunity to recalibrate our regional strategy.

From the start, the rising against Bashar Assad in Syria was a leaderless, popular revolt, driven by economic and social issues, against ‎a despotic leader and his avaricious retinue. It occurred at a time of regional instabilities driven in large measure by Iran's hegemonic aspirations against Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Sectarianism was less a cause and more a motif of the struggle.

And so our friends and allies aided the uprising, using zealous Sunni fighters to combat Iranian-backed Hezbollah and the Assad regime. In a war among the civilian populous, terrorism was a common and often successful tactic.

Along the way, some of the fledgling Sunni resistance transformed Frankenstein-like into the Islamic State, driven by former Baathist generals, sucking in tens of thousands of recruits from abroad and posing a threat not only to its Iranian-backed enemies but also to other Sunni fighters, Sunni states in the region and even beyond.

Russia's forceful intervention last week to assist Assad injects a new and potentially transformative element into the mix.

Naturally, Russia has gone after the strongest threats to Assad's regime first, the non-ISIL Sunni groups near Aleppo and the western, more prosperous reaches of Syria — the very forces the U.S. and its friends are supporting. ‎For Russia, biding its time against ISIL has a certain logic: By eliminating more Western-amenable opponents, Russia can prevent the emergence of any leadership capable of challenging Assad. This will lead to a foregone but ultimately disastrous reinvigoration of Assad's regime.

In such circumstances, the U.S. has three alternatives: >>>

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/10/08/russia-syria-islamic-state-assad-iran-wesley-clark-column/73593886/