(from the series “Trump’s America in the New World Order”, part 3)

When the active phase of the world’s transition to a new system of world relations begins, some events begin to acquire a vivid symbolic meaning.

The collapse of Syria and Assad’s flight to Moscow, the gathering of the leaders of the Catholic world in Paris for the opening of the restored Notre Dame Cathedral and the arrival of the atheist Jew Zelensky in rather strange costume at the Catholic service, elections as manifestations of political crises in Moldova, Romania, Georgia and the self-inflicted removal from power of the president of South Korea…

Of all these events, the fall of the Assad regime was the most significant, the most important in terms of consequences not only for the Middle East, but also for Europe, Africa, the Caucasus and Central Asia, China and Russia, and it was the upcoming rise to power of Donald Trump in the United States that played an important role in triggering the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

              From States to Civilizations

The election of Trump as President of the United States, the formation of his new team, fundamentally different from those political parties, clans and groups that are now in power, including in the EU states, Turkey, Russia and other countries of the former USSR, is increasingly accelerating not only the transformation of the system of international relations, but also the reformatting of states, entire regions, even subcontinents.

The world is preparing for Trump’s arrival in the White House, and actors in international politics are now forced to do what they could have postponed for months or even years. It is the upcoming arrival of Trump and his team in the White House that determines the timing and direction of actions, and the intensity of the transformation processes. The actors try to do what must be done and that will be much more difficult to do after Trump’s inauguration. And events are happening very quickly.

The fall of the regime in Syria happened so quickly that many players were not ready for it, although the anti-Asad opposition began preparing for an offensive on Damascus six months in advance, and the information about upcoming offensive of the pro-Turkish opposition, the crisis of the Syrian economy, the inability and unwillingness of the Syrian army to defend the Assad regime and the state as a whole were well-known.

This was known not only to Erdogan and Western intelligence services, but also to the Russian military command in Syria, Russian intelligence services, Iran and Assad himself. Moreover, Erdogan personally warned Putin about the upcoming offensive, and the Kremlin in advance suggested to Assad and his family to leave Damascus and move to Moscow, understanding the inevitability of his defeat.

Moreover, Assad’s family began moving to Moscow before the opposition offensive began, and Assad offered no resistance and flew to Moscow when the opposition troops were only halfway. He left without warning his government, the military command, or even many of his closest relatives. Moscow forbade him from taking risks. Assad knows too much, and the Kremlin needs his knowledge, money and connections for the upcoming Great Game.

The collapse of Syria was predetermined. The regime could not offer any resistance. However, officials and many departments of Russia, Iran, including their foreign ministries, as well as allies inside Syria, were unprepared for the rate of the Asad’s regime fall, and therefore the picture of what was happening turned out to be a “landslide”.

The speed and ease with which the Assad regime collapsed was unexpected also by Western politicians and Middle Eastern governments. For many of them, it was a pleasant surprise.

The reason for this unpreparedness of politicians, officials and the public for the coming changes is rooted in the lack of understanding of the essence of the ongoing processes. This essence is determined by several main factors, and one of these factors, which has manifested itself in Syria, is the growing process of forming civilizational macro-regions.

The current stage of technological development has sharply increased the importance of moral, ethical factors, cultural and intellectual potential of states and peoples. As a result, not state, bureaucratic and political factors, but civilizational factors have begun to play an increasing role.

States and peoples that have failed to create civilizations, unable to exist independently and interact equally with the world civilizations. They have faced the problem of choice to join and integrate into one of the macro-regions forming around the centres of world civilizations.

Syria found itself at a crossroads: to be absorbed or to undergo a path of transformation into the civilizational centre of the Arab world.

On the one hand, Syria found itself at the crossroads of civilizations, being a state undermined both economically, financially, politically, morally, and ideologically. However, on the other hand, Syria has been a sacred and central place for civilizations that have the same roots and based on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for many centuries. Syria has enormous potential for revival as the centre of the Arab world, the Arab civilization.

Civilizational choice: To be or not to be?

For more than a decade, Assad’s Syria had only Russia and Iran as allies, the civilizations different to the Syrian people. Assad had to choose which civilizational centre to join, and which to reject. First, he rejected Iran that treated Assad as a subordinate, and a few years ago, relations between Damascus and Tehran began to cool.

For some time, Assad chose between the Russian world, Russian civilization, and the Arab world, the most powerful actors of which are the monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

Regardless of the preferences of Assad himself and his family, Syria in the form and with the cultural and religious heritage with which it approached 2024 could not become part of the Russian world. It was too difficult to integrate Assad’s Syria, which turned out to be religiously, nationally and ethnically divided, into the Russian world. It was too difficult to adapt its people to the Russian mentality, and it was too difficult to integrate the Syrian army into the Russian Armed Forces.

Assad refused the political reforms that Russia proposed, including the adoption of a new Constitution, the transition to a federal structure of the state, and the granting of autonomy to peoples and national minorities. Assad refused these reforms, as did Kyiv, when Moscow proposed to carry out similar reforms that were even enshrined in the Minsk agreements, which, as it later turned out, Kyiv and the Western leaders who supported it were not willing and planning to implement.

And Assad refused to follow the path that Russia proposed, thereby blocking his path of development as part of the Russian world. He chose the Arab world.

On the one hand, he was promised political, financial and economic support not only by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also by the US that stood behind them. However, the main reason for the choice was the civilizational closeness of the Syrians to the Arab world.

The ideological basis for the rise to power in Syria of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father, was Baathism, which was a synthesis of Arab socialism and pan-Arabism. Bashar al-Assad departed from the ideology of Baathism, replacing it with a system of government based not on pan-Arabism, but on nepotism and clannishness, disintegrating Syrian society and the people, making corruption a system-forming factor.

In 2023, after Assad chose the Arab monarchies as his main allies, Syria was returned to the Arab League, and Assad began to actively distance himself from Russia, which was bogged down in Ukraine, as well as from Iran, whose confrontation with the West and Israel was growing.

However, it turned out that the Arab world cannot ensure the preservation of Asad’s Syria. It turned out that the Arab world itself was in the process of transformation. It had no political and financial centre, no military-technical power capability of ensuring the security of Syria and the Assad regime.

Moreover, behind the Arab monarchies there are forces that are interested in gaining full control over Syria as a territory, and Assad was not needed by these forces. For example, Syria is needed for the transit of gas from the UAE to Turkey in the interests of not only Istanbul, Europe, but also the USA and Israel. Assad had been opposing this project for many years. In 2024, he was forced to agree, but that did not make him a reliable ally to the main actors.

The Kremlin and Assad

Faced with Damascus’s inability and Assad’s refusal to reform the state and the Syrian armed forces, the Kremlin has realized the finiteness and hopelessness of Assad’s Syria.

For the Russian military, the Syrian army became a crowd, mass of Arabs who did not want to fight and serve, and that caused no emotions in the Russians except irritation and anger. Those units of the Syrian army that were trained by the Russian military and the Wagner PMC and effectively operated in 2017-18 against the opposition, ISIS and other anti-Assad forces were disbanded and liquidated, and their commanders were dismissed by Assad, who replaced them with his relatives. These kinsmen-commanders did not know how to fight, did not want to, they were not interested in anything except bribes and extortions, and they could sell themselves to anyone anytime.

Syria became a poor and ungovernable state, the only value of which for Russia was the naval and air force bases, as part of the military-logistical structure in the Mediterranean on the route from Russia to Africa, which was becoming increasingly important for Russia, China and India. Syria had some natural resources, such as phosphates. Its geographical location, the territory of the intersection of transit and trade routes, was of great importance. However, these routes were of greater importance for Iran, India and China than for Russia.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that the Wagner PMC, the most combat-ready and effective part of the Russian ground forces that operated in Syria and ensured the preservation of the Assad regime in 2017-2018, was transferred to Ukraine in 2022, and the Syrian non-state military units and formations created and operating under the control of Wagner were also destroyed by Assad.

In Ukraine, the conflict between the Wagner PMC and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defence that began in Syria, escalated to such an extent that it led to the “Prigozhin mutiny,” the liquidation of both the PMC leadership and Wagner itself, as well as purges and a change in the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defence. The purges are far from over today.

It should be noted that one of the reasons for the conflict between Wagner and the Russian Ministry of Defence, between Prigozhin and the PMC commanders, on the one hand, and Shoigu, Gerasimov and the top command of the Russian group in Syria, according to Prigozhin himself, was the refusal of Shoigu, Gerasimov and the top command of the Russian group to support Wagner in their offensive against the positions of pro-American groups of the Syrian opposition with the aim of capturing oil and gas fields controlled by American corporations in the interests of Assad and Wagner.

Thus, the Russian army refused to help the Russian PMC and Assad to return control of the oil fields to Damascus, solve financial problems and get a reliable and huge source of income for the development of both the PMC and the Assad regime.

In Syria, the Russian Defence Ministry leadership was too often on the side of the West, as it seemed to Prigozhin, Utkin and other Wagner commanders. Once in Ukraine, they saw that the Syrian situation was too often repeated on the Ukrainian front. This led to the mutiny.

In 2024, the Kremlin does not have a force capable of doing what Wagner did in Syria in 2017-2022. The closure of the Wagner project, its reformatting and the fear of a new “mutinity” led to a strategic mistake. And Assad’s unwillingness to reform the regime, state structures and the army made the destruction of Syria inevitable.

The Kremlin began preparing for the collapse of Syria in advance, although it did not expect that this collapse would happen so quickly. Trump’s rise to power accelerated events and processes. This has become an important lesson for Moscow.

The Kremlin will inevitably be forced to return to the project, which in essence will be a modernized project of the “PMC Wagner”, taking into account the Syrian, African and Ukrainian experience. This means that the new non-governmental military-industrial group will be international in nature and will protect the interests of not only Russia, but also its allies, who will take direct part in the project. It is not for nothing that a special forces unit commander with the call sign “Kim” has appeared in the Kursk region. I do not rule out that in a month we will learn about a commander in Syria with the call sign “Saladin” or “Hafez”.

And this means that Assad, with his capital, connections and information, may also have a role in the ongoing transformation of Syria and the entire Middle East, albeit from the Kremlin’s shadow…

On the path of absorption

Israel, Turkey and the US were better prepared for the collapse of Syria than other actors and used the situation to their advantage. However, winning at the first stage does not ensure or guarantee winning in the long term. The civilizational factors continue to operate, and their impact will increase in the era of chaos.

Now the biggest winner from the collapse of Syria is Israel, which has captured huge strategically and economically important territories, including all of the Holland Heights. Israeli army units continue to form a “security zone”, but this not only causes protest from the new Syrian authorities, but creates a situation of inevitability of a new conflict.

The Israeli Air Force destroyed almost all of Syria’s military potential in the southern and central parts of the country. But Assad’s army was written off. And the new government will create a new army, taking into account new technologies and types of weapons. This is inevitable.

Moreover, the Israeli Air Force has come out on the side of Turkey and bombed some Kurdish strongholds that resisted the Turkish invasion. This means that there is a risk of conflict between Turkey, which is supported by Israel, and the Kurds, who are backed by the US.

And Trump’s arrival is coming and going to change a lot…

(To be continued)