Policy Paper - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Russiahas a long-standing history with the Syrian rulers, which prospered during the authoritarian reign of Hafez Al Assad, the father of the current Syrian president Bashar Al Assad. There is need for the Russian government to support the Syrian Army and government and a plan is needed for this to happen as quickly as possible. The elder Assad’s relationship with the Russian leadership saw him being invited to Russia by Leonid Brezhnev and firmly installed Syria’s position as a defender of the USSR during the Cold War, a tradition that continued with the Russian republic after the breakup of the Soviet Republics. Russia is Syria’s largest supplier of arms, with annual arms sales between the two countries topping more than US$1.5 billion. The countries also have a lot of trade links and have over the years established very strong bonds, based especially on the supply of arms and cold war and post-cold war anti-American stance. This stance saw the Russian Republic - together with China - veto allUN resolutions calling for military intervention in Syria by the international community (Carpenter 3). Russia has also been very vocal in defending the Syrian administration of Bashar Al Assad and taken their side in the conflict with what they refer to as Islamic terrorist rebels. It is on the basis of the longstanding history of the relationship between the two countries that the first reason why Russia should arm the government of Syria. This ongoing relationship has been between the governments that rule the two countries and therefore remain in place no matter which government is in place in Syria. There is need for Russia to arm Syrian and provide a decisive winner in this battle in order to stop the humanitarian and political tragedy that has taken place and continues to take place in Syria today. Russia has to support Syrian in this conflict in order to stem the growth and spread of radical Islamist revolution that has continued under the guise of an America-supported Arab Spring (Tenin 6). Russia also needs to arm Syria in order to stop this spread of Islamist radicalism that Russia had to deal with in Chechnya and to prevent Islamist terrorists using Syria as another from to attack Russia. This plan presented herein is a plan to arm the Syrian government forces by Russia in order to provide a decisive completion to the civil strife in Syria once and for all and to protect the sanctity of the Syrian regime. The first part of this plan is the identification of the kinds and range of weapons that the Russian Republic can supply to Syria to ensure that the tide of the war in that country turns in favor of the Syrian government and to ensure that the region is stabilized and that the Syrian country does not disintegrate into tribal or ethnic enclaves, as has happened in all the other countries where international intervention usually in the form of American and American-aided invasion has taken place. One only has to look at the effect of American intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and most recently Egypt to see how their intervention only results in more complex internal conflict and deterioration of law and order. In Syria, the situation is further compounded ...Download file to see next pagesRead More