The U.S. and Global Security Review - Blog by Michael Novakhov

"As Russia understands it, the "American leadership" that U.S. President Barack Obama and others talk about is a plot to isolate Russia. This means that in Syria Russia has decided to strike a blow not so much against the Islamic State or the enemies of Syrian President Bashar Assad as against "American leadership" in the Middle East. The plan is for Syria to become a proxy war in which Russia and her allies demonstrate the end of American leadership, and the United States is forced to seek new allies and spend valuable resources proving the opposite... The Russian System will continue to find places to operate across the world and to project Russian geopolitical and symbolic influence beyond its borders. It will do so as long as the world has crises that ask for a military response and the other services the Russian System provides." Russia's System of Managed Chaos (Op-Ed)   by By Gleb Pavlovsky  U.S. and Kurdish Commandos Said to Raid