ISIS released a video last week celebrating their attack on a Russian airliner, killing 224 people and inspiring Former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell to say that the event creates the “perception that ISIS is winning.” The U.S. capitol is doing its usual media circus about the entire event, with Former U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary James Rubin saying, “It’s not too late to start fighting the Isis fire before it goes global.”
If that sounds like it might be an indication that some people are seeing ISIS as the likely cause of World War III, don’t worry: UK’s Daily Mail columnist Peter McKay is a step ahead of you, already declaring that “Only ‘evil’ Putin can help us defeat ISIS.” (This just shortly after the British government just finished naming Russia a national security threat on par with ISIS — something the US did last last year.) The parallels between the first two World Wars, in which the U.S., the UK, and Russia came together to fight a common foe, are obvious.
So what does Putin think about all of this?
Putin’s recent speeches have been severely castigating the United States — that’s normal. One theme he has repeated many times, however, is that the entire mess with ISIS is directly attributable to a single source: the United States. In a speech late last year, he said:
“Another threat President Obama mentioned was ISIS. Well, who on Earth armed them? Who armed the Syrians that were fighting with Assad? Who created the necessary political/informational climate that facilitated this situation? Who pushed for delivery of arms to the area? Do you really not understand as to who is fighting in Syria? They are mercenaries, mostly. Do you understand that they are paid money? Mercenaries fight for whichever side pays more. So [the U.S.] arms them and pays them a certain amount…so they fight. They have the arms, you can’t get them to return the weapons of course, at the end. Then they discover somewhere else that pays a little more, so they go fight there! Then [ISIS] goes and occupies the oil fields…they start extracting the oil — and the oil is purchased by somebody. Where are the sanctions on the parties purchasing this oil? Do you believe the U.S. does not know who is buying it? Is it not their allies who are buying oil from ISIS? Do you not think the U.S. has the power to influence their allies? Or is the point that indeed they do not wish to influence them? Then why bomb ISIS? In areas where they started extracting oil and paying mercenaries more, the rebels from ‘civilized’ Syrian opposition forces immediately joined ISIS, because they are paid more.”
This following a leaked document earlier this year showing that the Pentagon knew it was likely that ISIS (or something like it) would arise as a consequence of arming anti-Assad rebels in Syria.
So is Putin going to be willing to fight ISIS alongside the U.S. and UK? He’s already in: Russia committed 150,000 troops to an effort to “wipe out [the] evil Islamic State” late last month.
Featured image courtesy of DonkeyHotey via Flickr, Shared through a Creative Commons license.
