Global hot spots in the news

 We live in interesting times, to say the least.

Let's start with Syria. When I started crafting my post, this was a map showing the position of a faction of Syrian rebels in relation to the remaining territory under Assad's control. That map has become very outdated since then. When I was reading that intelligence had predicted that Assad's regime would collapse in 5 to 10 days, I knew it looked grim for that particular barbaric dictatorship. If reports that a faction of rebels has now not only succeeded in taking several major cities but also now is in control of the Damascus International Airport, the regime is officially over. This is a dictatorship that the Russian Federation and Iran have propped up in earnest since the initial heady days of the Arab Spring. We know how opposition to Assad's regime got decimated, and how Russia bombed the city of Aleppo into the Stone Age. Syria has been in a civil war since 2011. Granted the territory held by various rebel factions has remained largely the same since late last decade. But something clearly shifted in the past couple weeks. For one, it has become obvious that Russia and Iran are too distracted with other wars and simply do not have the muscle they once claimed to command to keep Assad's regime propped up. The Syrian military barely even put up a fight over the last week or so especially. It was a sight to behold. The faction that has taken back Aleppo, Homs, and now apparently Damascus is Islamist, though presumably moderate, whatever that might mean. There are other Turkish backed groups, as well as Syrian Kurds who want to form their own nation, as well as the remnants of ISIS all still around. I would not expect a lot of peace anytime too soon. A protracted civil war after the Assad regime is vanquished seems highly probable. Whether or not Putin's regime in Moscow can craft a deal with whoever fills the vacuum left by the fall of Assad's regime in order to maintain its warm water port in the region is questionable. If the Russians lose that port, it will be a blow for Putin's regime, which is just fine by me. I am not about to predict Syria's future post-Assad. There are too many unknowns and we're still in a "fog of war" phase. 

Now let's turn to the republic of Georgia. This South Caucuses nation has been rocked by turmoil this past year. The ruling party's legislation as of late has looked like a near carbon copy of laws the Russian Federation has passed in recent years, which had led to protests during the summer. Then there was the parliamentary election which appeared to defy exit polls in a way where either the pollsters had very badly botched their one job or some heavy-duty election tampering was happening. I would bet on the latter. I've seen exit polls get it wrong - but we're talking by a few percentage points rather than missing an apparent electoral landslide for an incumbent party in an era in which incumbent parties are uniformly being voted out. For something like 10 nights now there have been massive protests all over Georgia, including cities where protests do not normally occur. The biggest protests are in the capital, Tbilisi, but it is not alone this time. There is a lot of police brutality as well as arrests of opposition party leaders at this time. The future is difficult to figure out here, quite honestly. We know what often happens when people without guns face uniformed men with guns and official orders to use them. I see the situation as going one of two ways. One is that we witness something akin to the Maidan protests that rocked Kyiv in the winter of 2013 and 2014. That prolonged protest led to the collapse of the ruling regime and party and began Ukraine's current embrace of democracy (albeit not without plenty of hiccups). Another possibility is that we get another Belarus scenario circa 2020. It took the Lukashenko regime a couple weeks to snuff out the uprisings that occurred after some obvious election fraud by the ruling regime, meaning that Belarus remains a vassal state for Russia. Note that the populations in each of these countries are arguably much more European facing than the governments in charge at the time of their respective mass protests and uprisings. In the case of both Ukraine and Georgia, there is a decision by a ruling party to pull out of talks with the EU - a decision that did not sit well with the citizens of each nation. In each case, mass protests with increased intensity have resulted. Ukraine's story ended up relatively happily (if we ignore the war Russia has waged on Ukraine since 2014). Maybe Georgia's story ends well. We will probably know soon enough. Russia is distracted with its war against Ukraine right now, so I would imagine overt military options are far from probable. How well the Kremlin can prop up the ruling Georgian Dream Party using soft power tactics remains to be seen. I am personally rooting for the people who are on the streets each night in Tbilisi and elsewhere in Georgia. 

There are plenty of other conflicts ongoing, but these two hot spots are ones that could change the course of history. Russia's ruling party's contention that Russia is still a major world power is based in part on Russia's Middle East footprint. Losing Syria could make Putin's pronouncements of Russian power look even more pathetic than they already had. Losing Syria costs Iran some of its influence in the region as well. If the Georgian people can run their ruling party out of the capital, that also does not bode well for Russian power in its own backyard. Russia already looks weak in the South Caucuses, especially its handling of the on-going low-grade conflict that is simmering between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Losing Georgia would be a black eye for Putin. I'm all for that. None of those events in themselves would portend a collapse of the current Russian regime, but probably will push Putin's regime closer to the precipice. As I said, we live in interesting times.