Russia’s Catastrophic Syrian Defeat By kicking Putin out of Syria, Sharaa deprives Russia of a 70-year investment in its most important forward base, and cripples its ability to project power across the Mediterranean and North Africa. Last month, wheat and cement began arriving at a berth in Tartus that had served Russia’s military for decades. In sight of the pier, Russian personnel were packing up equipment to move out of their building. Ahmed al-Sharaa is finishing what he started. Syria has been a stalwart Soviet and later Russian client since the mid-1950s. In more recent years, the country cozied up to Iran as well, joining the mullahs’ “Ring of Fire.” The sudden December 2024 defeat of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad and Sharaa’s victory in the Syrian Civil War ended all that, and broke Russian and Iranian power over Syria. Even worse for Putin, Sharaa announced Russia’s eviction from its most important overseas bases. Russia wasn’t wrong (other than morally) to bet on Assad: they’d been betting on both him and his father since the elder Assad helped lead the 1963 coup and then seized power for himself in 1970. The Baathists (same party as Saddam Hussein’s) were gleeful participants in the spread of Soviet power and terror proxies, to a degree that even their pro-Soviet predecessors had not been. But Russia’s power isn’t what it used to be, and wasn’t enough to prevent Assad’s collapse and subsequent flight into exile in Moscow. Seventy years of Russian investment have come to this: bargaining with the men Moscow bombed for permission to keep a foothold in a country it once dominated. The August 9 agreement finalizes the return of facilities at Hmeimim Airport and the port of Tartus. The military installations are to become joint training centers, with a three-month transition. To allow Putin to save face, a small number of Russian personnel will be allowed to remain. But gone forever are the forward bases from which first the Communists and then Putin supported operations across the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Sahel. The Kremlin described the August agreement as an improvement in bilateral cooperation. Which was a bit like Iran claiming it had sunk the USS Abraham Lincoln three times. A Very Long Way From Home Russia is by far the largest country on Earth, and by some measures one of its most powerful. It certainly was during the Cold War. But good luck getting a Russian warship into the Mediterranean. From the Black Sea, it must pass through the Bosporus and Dardanelles, both controlled by NATO ally Turkey. From the Baltic, it must sail past Finland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Denmark — NATO countries all — just to enter a North Sea also surrounded by NATO allies. Murmansk is better, but it’s north of the Arctic Circle. Getting from there to Syria means sailing around Norway, past Britain and Iceland (or Greenland), through the British and U.S. controlled Strait of Gibraltar, and then past more NATO allies all the way across the Mediterranean. Few Russian ships have the range for that trip without a port call. Then once there, the Russians have to keep it supplied somehow, thousands of miles from home. Putin can’t intimidate anyone off the Syrian coast with a warship that has to go back to the Arctic for repairs. Tartus (and Latakia before it) spared the Russians that trip, and in the process, greatly extended their reach. Syria provided naval and air bases sufficient to refuel and replenish their ships, make repairs, and threaten the Suez Canal and NATO’s southern flank. Without it, Russia’s ability to project power beyond its own “near abroad” dries up. In Pat Frank’s legendary Alas, Babylon, published in 1959, the incident that sets off the nuclear war takes place off a Soviet submarine base at Latakia. The Russians have depended on these forward bases for a very, very long time. Putin added Hmeimim when he intervened in the civil war in 2015, giving Russia a new forward air base to complement and protect his naval foothold. In 2017, he renewed Russia’s agreement for Tartus with a 49-year lease. Moscow expected to stay forever, long after all its other Soviet-era bases, from Lourdes, Cuba to Cam Ranh Bay, had been lost. And it built its strategy accordingly. The African Empire Syria Enabled Few in the United States have paid as close attention to the African situation as have the French. For decades, France stealthily maintained its African empire by other means, through economic rights, a Paris-dominated common currency (the CFA Franc), basing privileges, a legal right to militarily intervene, and countless other ways. France didn’t leave Africa. It pretended to leave Africa. Colonies became de facto protectorates, but nothing real changed. By the mid-2020s, though, the Russians were rolling up the old French Empire in West and Central Africa, mostly through coups spearheaded and then reinforced by its officially private Wagner Group. Syria made that possible. Most Americans know Wagner as the mercenary army that fought in Ukraine and then briefly turned on Putin in 2023. But its African business was an important part of the operation, and it survived the mutiny. Russia’s Defense Ministry has since taken over much of that business through its Africa Corps. The Wagner Group offered rulers a fairly straightforward deal: we’ll help keep you in power, and you’ll make it worth our while. Gold, uranium, lithium, diamonds, oil, and many other minerals supplied much of the payment. The Russians made money, expanded influence, and pushed out the French, all on the cheap compared to Ukraine. But even mercenaries need ammunition. And replacements. And spare parts. And a way to get home. Hmeimim gave Russia a base from which to move men and cargo into Africa, with Libya serving as a further stop on the way south. Tartus supported the naval side. Assad’s dependence on Moscow allowed the Russians to operate this far-off system without much concern for what the Syrians thought of it. This arrangement also let Moscow attack European interests without attacking Europe directly, a pretty useful tactic while those same Europeans opposed them in Ukraine. Paris lost access and influence in countries it had dominated for generations. The people who like to describe Russia as a victim of Western imperialism might want to have a look at what their favorite victim was doing in Africa (ditto for China). You may have wondered why the Russians got involved in the Syrian civil war in the first place. That’s an awful lot of why. It’s also why all that Russian blood and treasure is so ruefully lost now. Without Syria, the Russians are scrambling to salvage what they can. They’ve expanded facilities at Libyan air bases, and flight tracking through July shows that they’ve been able to continue supplying their African deployments…barely. But Libya doesn’t give Putin another Assad. No facility in Libya can replace Tartus, nor can Russia’s strained budget easily build a new one, especially in a country at least as unstable as Syria became. A Libyan airfield can help airlift cargo into the Sahel. It can’t repair a warship, much less support a fleet (if Russia still had one worthy of the name). Moscow spent decades building the Syrian position because it needed the whole enchilada, including a government whose survival depended on Moscow. That’s gone. Putin will have to pay for losing Syria long after the last handover. Up to a point, he can pay with money, with concessions, and by accepting a smaller role in places where he once expected to dominate. But this is no new beginning: it’s the death rattle. The Long Goodbye Sharaa could overthrow Assad faster than he could get rid of Moscow. The Russians built much of the military he inherited. Their troops pulled back to the coast, but they still had equipment to remove and facilities from which to decamp. Sharaa also needed to keep a shattered country functioning while he found other sources of support. Perhaps above all else, Syria needs money for reconstruction, and Sharaa needs his independence. Erdoğan doesn’t just want to replace Russian domination: he wants to rebuild the Ottoman Empire, of which Syria was always a key province. Multiple patrons seem to be Sharaa’s answer. This puts him in bed with the Saudis, perhaps the Israelis, but certainly the United States. For the former terrorist’s own private reasons, he is rapidly locking himself in as a Western ally, or at least in opposition to the status quo ante bellum. Trump gave him the room he needed. By lifting U.S. sanctions, the President opened the way for Syria to attract investment from America and the Gulf, and to trade its way out of its wreckage. Already, U.S. companies are flowing in, even to the extent that Chevron is reconstructing the damaged oil pipeline from Iraq to Baniyas on the Syrian coast. The Saudis pitched in: despite their “friends close, enemies closer” defense pact with Ankara, they have no desire to see Turkish power restored. And as he always does, Trump conditioned much of what’s to come on Syria joining the Abraham Accords, a prospect no doubt distasteful to a new strongman with origins in the Golan Heights, but likely necessary if he wants to end the Israeli security zone in his south. All of this adds up to a new order. Meanwhile, every ruler buying Russian protection can see what happened to Assad. Moscow had a longer relationship with Damascus, and a greater stake in keeping it, than it has with any of its new African “friends.” Those men hired Russian troops to guarantee their power vis-a-vis Paris. A dacha beside Assad’s near Moscow would be a poor substitute. When Putin rescued Assad with direct Russian intervention in 2015, he meant to cement Russia’s return as a great power. Instead, Russia spent nine years defending a regime that collapsed anyway, and lost the bases it went to war to preserve. For all his talk of restoring Russian greatness, Putin has managed to lose what even poor Boris Yeltsin was able to keep. [If you appreciate geopolitical analysis like this, subscribe on my site -- link in bio -- to get it daily, better formatted, with more illustrations and links.]