How the Syria strike flipped the U.S.-Russia power dynamic

This was classic Russia, but it was also the only thing left to Russian decision-makers in the face of such a stunning and unexpected reversal. Taken by surprise, Lavrov had to steer everything back onto the playing field in which Russia excels: bureaucracy. If a terrible thing occurred, who could be against an investigation? Don’t you want to know the truth? Of course you do. But Russia means something very different than its Western counterparts do when it says “investigation” and “truth,” as it did when it insisted on an investigation after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. That investigation took years, during which the memory of children’s toys and vacation guides and limbs scattered among sunflowers faded, and years during which Russia conducted its own investigation anyway, which predictably absolved it of any blame.

And if America claims that it stands for international law and order, why not take the matter to the international legal bodies, like the United Nations, who can adjudicate this fight? You are for law and order, aren’t you? But Russians are bureaucratic ninjas—their strongest rulers, Putin and Stalin, were strong in large part because of their bureaucratic prowess—and they will find every way to slow down, obfuscate, and slowly bleed of life any initiative. A Russian journalist once told me of reporting from the European parliament in Strasbourg, where the Russian emissary—not a member of the parliament himself—ground the proceedings to a halt by pointing out that, because different copies of the resolution were printed on paper of different colors, it was impossible to go forward, because how could anyone know that the pink copy and the yellow copy had the exact same wording?

The point, in other words, is to freeze Trump’s unexpectedly hot temper by herding it into a labyrinth of procedure for procedure’s sake, where, while it dies a slow and frustrating bureaucratic death, Russia will have the time and breathing room to continue giving Assad cover to reconquer Syria. “Our current goal is to end the civil war, and to get the terrorists anyway while we’re there, so there’s a single, secular Syria,” says Korotchenko. “We’ll never leave Syria. We have two bases there. We’ll be there for the nearest 50 years, at least.”