[LINK] "What is Putin thinking? How Russia could shake up Syria crisis."

[rfmcdonald]

Christian Science Monitor staff writer Peter Grier describes the profound uncertainty regarding Russia's intervention in Syria.

Russian airstrikes are expected to turn up the dial of Syria’s civil conflict, intensifying the chaos that has uprooted millions and split the nation into warring cantons, while complicating Washington’s efforts to find a political solution. The possibility of United States and Russian warplanes operating for different purposes in the same space is similarly unsettling.

And at the moment, there doesn’t appear to be much the Obama administration can do. The US strategy of building a force of moderate Syrian rebel fighters has flopped, and Russia has real national interests in Syria – including a naval base.

US policy appears to have created an opening for Russia to intervene in Syria, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has strutted through it.

The question is whether Putin has a vision of what’s supposed to happen next, or whether he’s winging it. In the answer to that question could come a stinging rebuke to Russian adventurism or an American reappraisal of its own strategy.

But for now, Russia’s endgame is not at all clear.