Syria Civil War: Is Russia Supporting Syria Just to Troll the U.S.?

Once again, we see the causative effect of contemporary Israel hate. Although it's a separate issue from the pervasive anti-Semitic mentality within Russia itself, Russian foreign policy has recently angered the U.S. and baffled several other nations as well with its support of the Syrian regime. Having had high hopes for an alliance with Russia, American politicians were deeply disappointed when the Russians provided Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad with military weapons.

Why has Russia chosen to support an Arab despot, particularly when Syria could use these weapons against Israel, the U.S.’s only ally in the region? The answer may conjure many nostalgic memories of the Cold War ideologies, the Communist scare, and the many sentiments that led up to this conflict. The fact is that, although Russia has become more capitalist in recent years and has even strived to mimic the United States in some ways (such as implementing democracy), the Russian government is still quite wary of U.S. power as well as American ideologies, and wishes to disassociate itself from the latter whenever possible. As international affairs are basically a game of who will support whom, Russia has selected to indirectly oppose the United States by supporting an anti-America regime and one that also targets Israel, the Middle East’s sole democracy and ally to America. Thus, the foreign-affairs playing field demonstrates the little tricks nations play against one another for purposes of indirect resistance.

Now what might all this mean for Israel? Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has become more or less a scapegoat for whatever disasters take place in the Middle East but also bears the brunt of the wrath of whichever countries decide to hate on America. That being said, with powerful countries such as Russia and Iran supplying Arab dictatorships such as Syria with dangerous weapons, a battle of ideologies has suddenly become a battle of arms — with Israel in the dead center.