Vladimir Putin is a monstrous, ruthless, power-hungry political and military assassin.
Let me get that off my chest immediately.
I find much of what this former KGB agent does on behalf of the Russian people self-servingly repellent.
But when it comes to leadership, he makes Barack Obama look like a naïve, timid schoolboy.
And on the specific issue of ISIS and how to stop the terror group’s surge through Syria, he’s right and Obama’s wrong.
Today, Putin won authorisation from the Russian parliament to throw his full military weight behind Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad, and launch immediate air strikes in Syria against the Islamic State.
He’s decided the time for jaw-jawing about ISIS is over; it’s time to properly war-war.
Ostensibly, this decision was made to protect ‘Russia’s national interest.’
But in reality, it will protect many other national interests too, including America’s and Britain’s.
I was all in favour of taking out Assad when the Syrian crisis first erupted five years ago.
Like Saddam. Mubarak and Gaddafi, he appeared to be a dinosaur despot eeking out the last vestiges of tyrannical power in a country which, as so much of the Middle East, seemed to crave freedom and democracy.
Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people, many of them women and children, was a disgusting abomination which comfortably crossed President Obama’s infamous ‘red line’.
But Obama cried wolf and did nothing, an act of shocking cowardice which has now come back to haunt him and America.
In the five years that the Syrian war has raged, the situation has dramatically changed all over the region.
The overthrow of so many dictators, far from bringing peace and harmony, has simply created a chaotic, violent vacuum through which ISIS has emerged like a fast-mutating virulent virus.
The rebels who won so much sympathy and support in Syria at the start are not the ‘rebels’ we see now.
The new Syrian rebel army has become a hotbed of terrorism, much of it governed by ISIS.
The good guys are now the bad guys, and the bad guys suddenly don’t seem quite so bad by comparison.
It’s a hideously complex and difficult problem for which there is no simple solution.
But the primary job of any world leader is to defend his or her people, and to do so with a clarity of vision and policy.
Frankly, I haven’t got a clue what Obama’s plan is for Syria or ISIS.
As always, he talks a good game, constantly telling us that we can’t beat ISIS with guns, we have to beat them with ideas.
But sometimes in life, guns are the only answer. And I say that as someone whose opinion of guns is fairly well documented.
s never going to be beaten with ideas. He had to be beaten with guns, tanks, planes and battleships.
ISIS is not the IRA, nor even Hezbollah. Its leaders have no interest in negotiating any settlement.
They want to nuke all we infidels into the ether.
Their barbaric thirst for blood and mayhem knows no apparent limits, and their power and membership grows daily.
ISIS thus threatens every one of us.
But Obama seems utterly neutered on how to arrest their charge, muttering meaningless platitudes and putting on his best ‘We have to do something, folks’ face.
Putin is no such shrinking violet.
He understands the very real menace ISIS poses and he knows how best to deal with it.
A couple of years ago, I got talking to President Bill Clinton at a small cocktail party in New York and asked him about his relationship with Putin.
They didn’t cross over as world leaders for very long, but it was enough for Clinton to deliver a pretty good insight into what oils the Russian leader’s wheels.
‘Putin’s very smart,’ Clinton said. ‘And he’s a hard man, a very hard man. But he respects strength. We used to kick everyone out of the room, then go at it with each other. And I mean GO at it! Things would get brutally blunt in there. But we’d get stuff done and agree on things. I think the right strategy with someone like him is to be brutally honest with private, and then, if you want them to help you, try to avoid embarrassing them in public.’
‘Did Putin ever renege on a personal agreement with you?’ I asked.
‘No, he did not.’
‘So he could be trusted?’
‘He kept his word on all the deals we made. But it’s not necessary to trust somebody to take them up on a good offer. You hope for the best and prepare for the worst in this business.’
It was a fascinating insight into diplomacy from one of the world’s greatest exponents of the art.
And one worth bearing in mind as Putin goes into battle with ISIS.
He may be loathsome. So is Assad.
But they’re not as loathsome as ISIS, nor are they as big a current danger to world peace.
Vladimir Putin has backed the right horse in a deeply flawed field, and deserves our support as he puts ISIS to the Russian military sword and seeks to vanquish this vile, devastating mutual enemy.
If he’s successful, he will deserve our deep gratitude too, however much that sticks in our gullets.
Piers Morgan
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