Editor, RE: “Can America and Russia cooperate in Syria?” (The New Times, January 6). The author says that, over the last 15 years, President Putin (of Russia) has increasingly relied on the use of military might to achieve his domestic and foreign-policy objectives. How is this any different from what the United States and many of its allies, either singly or collectively, have been doing for much longer and across a much larger swathe of the globe? The list of countries that have been at the receiving end of Uncle Sam’s violent ministrations – both overt and covert – is almost endless. As to whether the two powers can cooperate in Syria, I don’t see how that is possible, even remotely. While the US’s continuing and openly stated goal is regime-change or even the country’s dismembering, Russia has made it clear its own is the very opposite: the Syrian state’s preservation from externally-sponsored destruction or incorporation into a jihadist proto-caliphate. Given these mutually antagonistic positions, cooperation on Syria looks more than unlikely. With all the local, regional and global actors, interests, ambitions and hatreds involved in the Syrian imbroglio, we can only hope that at no point will the major protagonists allow matters to spin so out of control that it pushes the entire world towards Armageddon. Mwene Kalinda
