One of the maxims in military principles is that nothing ever seems as it should be, and always consider the unseen actions of your adversary.
As Written By Allen B. West:
Such it is when dealing with the very savvy former KGB Colonel, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Just yesterday, Putin made an announcement – a proclamation — that some will see as a victory but the jury is out on that assessment.
As reported by Fox News, “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial pullout of the Russian military from Syria on Monday, after saying his troops largely achieved their combat goals in the country.
He also ordered the country’s diplomatic efforts be stepped up to secure a peace deal in Syria. The move was announced on the day U.N.-backed peace talks on Syria resumed in Geneva.
Announcing his decision in a televised meeting with Russia’s foreign and defense ministries in the Kremlin, Putin said the Russian air campaign has allowed Syrian President Bashar Assad’s military to turn the tide of war and helped create conditions for peace talks.
“With the tasks set before the Defense Ministry and the military largely fulfilled, I’m ordering the Defense Minister to start the pullout of the main part of our group of forces in Syria, beginning tomorrow,” he said.
Putin didn’t specify how many planes and troops should be withdrawn. He emphasized that the Russian airbase in Hemeimeem in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia and a naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartous will continue to operate. The number of Russian soldiers in Syria has not been revealed.”
The last sentence is what we should learn from here in America: “the number of Russian soldiers in Syria has not been revealed.” That is what we call operational security, and therefore no one knows exactly what the level of this “pullout” entails.
Here’s what we can ascertain from the announcement by Putin. Russia had limited objectives in deploying to Syria. Their goal was not to go in and delve into a nation-building operation. Their objective was to tip the balance of the combat operation back towards Bashar Assad with their additional combat power. What Vladimir Putin has just done is let President Barack Obama know he was just defeated in a place where he supposedly drew a red line and declared “Assad must go.”
If we are to learn another lesson from Vladimir Putin, it is not to be engaged in nation-building. Putin and his forces were focused on ….
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