So if local help is off the table, maybe the United Nations can, after almost a year of anarchy, bring its substantial power to bear? Not likely. The love of tyranny does not end in the Middle East. The Russian Federation, ruled over by Tsar Vladimir, has tirelessly worked to block anyone outside of the Middle East from interfering with Assad’s Arab Spring holocaust. Military ties between Russia and Syria are strong. Russian-made bullets and mortars are being used to massacre the Syrian protesters, so continued existence of the Assad monarchy is in the best interests of the nascent Putin monarchy.
Again I maintain that, at the root of it, economics are just a sliver of the real reason men like Putin want Assad to remain in power. Russia’s utter disregard for her own people is the stuff of legend, but even Putin must secretly be gushing over the world’s tolerance of Assad’s heavy-handed punishment of the unruly Syrian peasantry. Dictators appreciate the ability to conduct their internecine power plays in private, so when outside influences like the United States, which has a pesky penchant for objecting to genocides, and internal groups like the press, which shine a light on violations of basic human rights, are allowed to freely observe and act it becomes difficult to murder your enemies in the open.
Since Assad took care of dissenting news and political groups years ago, Russia will continue to aid Syria in the bigger arena of international politics. I have always believed that the Russian Federation should never have been given the Soviet Union’s old seat on the Security Council. However, I do cede that a case may be made on the basis that the modern Russian state is so similar in ideology to its former Cold War self (albeit stripped of economic and military might) that the Russian transition from monarchy to faux-communism to faux-democracy only constituted differing coats paint on the same decrepit and deeply corrupt string of despots stretching back to the Middle Ages.
