THE JOURNAL OF POLITICAL STUDIES
VOL. 1
DECEMBER 2013
NO. 1
OPPOSITE THE EDITORIALS
'SALAM, VLAD': THE SILVER LINING OF INCREASING RUSSIAN
INVOLVEMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
David Gioe*
*David Gioe is a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is a member of Corpus Christi College, and a former CIA Operations Officer with Middle East Expericenc.
Russian involvement - diplomatic, military, and covert - in the Middle East is nothing new. Indeed, the Soviet Union was extremely active in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and others during the Cold War. There is thus historical precedent, as well as contemporary political imperatives, to explain Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent diplomatic power play to avert US missile strikes against Syria. Given American weariness of war, and wariness of the region, if Putin wants to shoulder some of the burden of trying to manage the unmanageable, perhaps he should be permitted to 'fish his wish', so to speak. This, of course, assumes that America really
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