Western strategic failure plays into Putin’s hands in Syria and Europe

It is now accepted by most independent commentators: Russia, or rather Vladimir Putin, has achieved an easy geopolitical coup in the Middle East. It has been allowed to do so primarily because of Washington’s weakness. Leaders of the most powerful country in the world have bottled out, albeit for understandable reasons.

The US, and the west in general, has now come under a devastating battering by one of its leading counter insurgency and counter terrorism advisers. 

In Blood Year, published this week, David Kilcullen, frankly admits to serious strategic errors in countering terrorism . After ditching the problematic but unifying concept of a “War on Terrorism”, the west treated each problem as a stand-alone crisis. In contrast, Russia was treating Syria, Iraq, Crimea, Ukraine, the Baltic states and, even the Arctic, “simply as different facets of one strategic issue set”, writes Kilcullen.

It isn’t just Isis- al-Qaida has emerged from its eclipse and is back in the game in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, he warns. But it is Isis which is pulling in large numbers of “foreign volunters”, many of them with no knowledge of Islam.

There is a risk of what Kilcullen calls “an Isis blitzkrieg” in Afghanistan next year that could “take us back to square one”, the kind of “terrorist safe haven” that existed there before 9/11.