Mark Galeotti: What could possibly go wrong in Russia’s Syrian gambit?
A picture taken on October 22, 2015 shows a Syrian woman talking on her mobile phone in front of a pro-Bath party and President Bashar al-Assad billboard, in Damascus.
Modern wars tend to start well, with deceptive techno-thriller ease. The pre-planned air strikes, mapped in cockpit camera video; the cruise missiles slashing trails of smoke and fire through a blue sky. They quickly tend to degenerate in messy, unpredictable ways that favor the desperate, the unpredictable, the insurgent and the unseen. With the Kremlin’s new adventure in Syria, it is likely soon to find itself losing the initiative and faced with a series of dangerous and unpalatable options.
