First of all, Russian air strikes against terrorists in Syria and now the visit of Syria’s president have ignited severe criticism and a flurry of impotent rage in western capitals. The White House has strongly condemned a visit to Moscow by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, criticising Russia for putting on a “red carpet welcome”. It was Mr Assad’s first overseas trip since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011. On Thursday, a team of Russian parliamentarians met with President Assad in Damascus. While in Moscow, Mr Assad made a point of expressing his gratitude for Russia’s military intervention in the conflict. Mr Putin said that Moscow’s hope was that a “long-term resolution can be achieved on the basis of a political process with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups.” By hosting the Syrian leader, President Putin was sending a clear message to the west: Moscow is a key player in the Middle East and there can be no solution to the Syrian conflict without Russia’s involvement. A US state department official said that the main US concern was Russia’s continued military support, which he said had emboldened the Assad government, something that would only serve to lengthen the civil war. Putin is painfully aware of NATO’s and the west’s encirclement, and Russia’s humiliation of the last few decades. This explains the current posturing of Russian military muscle. Putin has outmanoeuvred NATO and the US in Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine and now in Syria. Western sanctions have turned out to be toothless and have only ended up increasing Putin’s popularity within Russia. Confident of his strength, the Russian president has decided to challenge the US on the world’s stage, choosing Syria as his main field of operation. He did this by ensuring the world media remained focused on him during his appearance at the UN, his public appearance with the US president and a well-publicised handshake — though not a very warm one. Putin’s objective was to probe the intentions of the US president before acting. For him, the main aim was to keep Assad in power as a reliable Russian ally and to halt the advance of the Islamist rebels who were getting ever closer to the main areas of Assad’s support in the west and Russia’s bases there. Putin’s intentions were resolute and unambiguous. That gave him an appearance of strength. The Russians initially reinforced their bases with helicopters, jet fighters and ammunition, and simultaneously increased shipments to the Assad regime. This was followed by a series of devastating bombing raids targeting Islamic State (IS) and other Islamist groups as targets. The launch of missiles from the Caspian Sea over the Iranian and Iraqi territory was an exhibition of Russia’s military might. Unlike the US bombings, Russian bombardment has been deadly. The effect on a world scale was the equivalent of a political earthquake leaving US intelligence agencies in oblivion of the scale and objectives of the Russian intervention in Syria. It appears to be the case that most of the recent fighting has been concentrated in Hama, a central province with a majority Sunni capital that has remained in the hands of the regime since the start of the war. It is the key to Assad’s strategy of cementing control over major population centres in a strip of territory from Latakia in the north, through to Homs, Hama and Damascus. Islamist rebels recently attempted to seize control of the strategic al-Ghab plain in Hama’s countryside, drawing closer to Assad’s coastal strongholds. The Russian strategy seems primarily aimed at securing this territory from further incursions. Jaish al-Fateh, a coalition of Islamist rebel factions, conquered most of Idlib province in a spring offensive, forcing the regime to abandon it. Russian airstrikes have repeatedly targeted the province over the past week with the Syrian army on the offensive to recapture it. However, the protests of the US reek of hypocrisy. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been arming and financing the plethora of deadly Islamists groups in western Syria instead of fighting IS in the east. Washington and many other western world capitals are openly complicit in this with their intelligence agencies deeply embedded amongst these groups. The fact is that all the groups fighting Assad are reactionary Islamist fanatics of one kind or another. The so-called ‘moderates’ are acting as a bridgehead to channel arms sent by the Americans to al Qaeda. The Americans announced that they were going to form a fighting force of 5,000 moderates but now admit that there are only five left. Late in the day the Americans have realised that this was a very bad investment and have now cancelled this expensive and rather farcical operation they blundered in. Ideologically, however, these moderate pro-imperialist opposition groups represent the same warped and reactionary ideas as IS. The so-called “moderate anti-Assad forces” are in reality extreme jihadis whose differences with IS are merely tactical and not of substance. They are just as enthusiastic about imposing sharia law, oppressing women, cutting off hands, legs and heads, and reducing Syria to a state of barbarism. The Russian air campaign is clearly coordinated with a Syrian army advance in northwestern Syria against the above-mentioned Islamist rebels. The Syrian regime’s army’s chief of staff, General Ali Abdullah Ayoub, announced “a vast offensive to defeat the terrorist groups” and restore control over opposition-held areas. Syrian troops, their morale boosted by the Russian intervention, have launched a ground offensive backed by Russian airstrikes and with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militias. Not since the Second World War have international relations been so fraught with tensions. The aggressive expansionist tendencies of US imperialism since the fall of the USSR have created a chaotic situation everywhere: in the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan and lately also in Africa. Now the chickens have come home to roost. The instability in world relations is a reflection of the impasse of capitalism on a world scale. The unbearable situation that exists on will produce one explosion after another; we have entered a new period, a period of wars, revolution and counterrevolution. Only a fundamental change in the social order can provide a solution. Sooner or later, in one country or another, the working class will succeed in taking power into its own hands. The derailment of the Arab revolutionary movement of 2011 ended up in this barbarous episode throughout the region due to the lack of a revolutionary leadership and party. Foreign aggression, fundamentalist wars and negotiations with despotic and imperialist states cannot end this mayhem and devastation. It is now a historical challenge for the youth and workers of the region to rise in a revolutionary revolt on a much higher plane than that of the 2011upheaval to overthrow this rulership of tyranny, black terror, foreign aggression, exploitation and human deprivation. The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at lalkhan1956@gmail.com