I previously noted the opacity of the motives of the US and its allies in bombing Syria and the potential for their actions to unnerve the Russians in the light of previous fumbled efforts at regime change in the Middle East. The Russians now appear to have acted on those concerns, strengthening their base in Tartus, reinforcing their troops there and flying sorties against ISIS and, according to pro-Western sources, other enemies of the Syrian government.
As with the Western governments, the Russians are playing with fire. The risk of a misstep is high.
Given that NATO-Russian relations are at an all-time low, there is a chance of a Cuban missile-type crisis if aircraft belonging to the great powers were to fire upon each other by accident or design.
There is also the unpleasant possibility of the so-far limited air war turning into a rerun of the failed Afghanistan war if Russia felt driven by circumstances to escalate its involvement.
The Syrian government are no angels, and any more bombing raids on an already heavily bombed and traumatised population is unlikely to improve the situation for civilians. However, the American claim that the Russians have a poor record in this respect smacks of hypocrisy, given the US's admitted destruction last week of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Afghanistan at the cost of 22 lives (despite prior knowledge of its co-ordinates and 30 minutes after radio requests to desist).
The Russian move therefore has most of the same moral problems as the Western intervention. On the other hand, Moscow's policy at least has the merits of legality, intelligibility and consistency. Syria has asked it to intervene (much as Iraq invited the US to assist its war against ISIS) and Russia therefore has a legitimate claim to be aiding Syria's self-defence.
The Soviet Union established its naval base in Tartus during the rule of Bashar al-Assad's father in the 1970s, and Russia has maintained that Assad, cruel though he may be, is the best of an unpalatable range of options (the others being anarchy, Jabhat al Nusra (a branch of Al Qaeda) and ISIS).
The US have argued that this is a false dichotomy and accused the Russians of directing their firepower against CIA-backed moderate rebels instead of ISIS. If true, this would suggest pinpoint targeting on Putin's part: only last month, General Lloyd Austin told Congress that just four or five such rebels remained, the others having