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Putin Stands by Assad: The Last Battle of the Cold War
(Wall Street Journal) Fouad Ajami - Bashar Assad has Vladimir Putin's Russian autocracy by his side. The Soviet empire has fallen, but defending a Syrian tyranny gives Russia the old sense that it still is a great power. Syria feeds another Russian obsession: Islam. If the Chinese see Tibet everywhere, the Russians are fixated on Chechnya. In the Syrian inferno, the Russians see a secular tyranny at war with radical Islamists, and thus see in Syria a reflection of themselves. The writer is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.