U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton charged Tuesday that the Russians have been lying about weapons deliveries to Syria, including the provision of attack helicopters. In a speech delivered in Washington, she said, "We have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to Syria. They have, from time to time, said that we shouldn't worry, that everything they're shipping is unrelated to actions internally. That's patently untrue. And we are concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria, which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."

There are multiple reasons why Russia is acting as it is, and it is important to understand the Kremlin's thinking regarding the conflict. First, the Russians do not like that the United States and its allies assume the right to intervene in countries over human rights issues. Moscow dislikes political orchestrations and is certainly opposed to military interventions. 

In the Russian view, such interventions and threats of interventions are motivated by Western regime change goals. Their point of departure on this topic is the Kosovo war in 1999. The Russians believe the United States and others intervened on the pretext of preventing a human rights catastrophe invented by the West in order to justify the further weakening of a Russian ally, Serbia. Since then, from the Russian point of view, numerous interventions have taken place that served Western interests — a claim reinforced by the West's selectivity in their interventions. Opposing such interventions has become a principle of Russian foreign policy.

Second, the Russians (and the Chinese) are uneasy about their own security interests. The Russians believe that United States used non-governmental organizations as agents of regime change in Ukraine during the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution. The Russians (and Chinese) are wary of that precedent. For the Kremlin, the experience of the color revolutions taking place around its periphery was that of an extended covert operation designed to surround Russia with hostile states. With Syria, Moscow regards the opposition as another contrivance of the United States and the West and opposes intervention for the same reason as in Kosovo. Syrian President Bashar al Assad is a Russian ally, and his fall would damage Russia's own credibility.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the Russians benefit from the United States being bogged down in the Middle East, which limits possible U.S. pressure on them. With the war in Iraq over and the war in Afghanistan winding down, the United States could become free of major military commitments in the region, which is not in the Russian interest.

As we have said many times, Iran will become the dominant country in the region if the al Assad regime survives. The Iranian sphere of influence will spread west through Iraq, Syria and ultimately, via Hezbollah, Lebanon. In this scenario, the United States would not have time to worry about Russian activities in Central Asia. 

Therefore, it makes sense for the Russians to give helicopters and other weapons to the al Assad regime. Washington, on the other hand, has decided that al Assad must fall, but bringing him down would require either the provision of massive supplies and training for the opposition or a direct military intervention.

The Russians would be quite pleased to see an American and Western intervention, which would potentially draw the United States into another uncertain Middle East war. Thus, the advantages of providing weapons to al Assad double. First, it helps a Russian ally survive. Second, it might cause the United States to respond militarily. In either case, the Russians benefit. 

For Clinton's charges against the Russians to make a difference, the United States will need to use levers against the Russians that make the risks of supporting al Assad outweigh the benefits. But any significant lever carries substantial risk and is therefore unlikely to be used. In the meantime, if Clinton is correct, al Assad now has more attack helicopters.