One may wonder why Russian President Vladimir Putin has so much obsession with Syria!

The country lies in tatters and its President Bashar Assad stands before the world community with a cruel image; a leader that presides over massacres of his own people.

Assad is responsible for the emergence of nasty forces like Daesh and in turn the unprecedented exodus of the people from the region that caused a humanitarian crisis in much of the European world.

But in this world of much upheaval, Putin is putting a stake in the ground, which is definitely not without a price.

I think Putin’s current policies are driven partly by an urge to reclaim the past glory of being a superpower and partly by the current situation when there appears to be a vacuum in the world leadership.

The United States under President Barack Obama has taken a completely different posture in world matters. And this is clear from his recent statement at the UN when he said that the US has no solutions to all the problems of the world. This is certainly a regressive aspect of US foreign policy.

But Putin is venturing into a dangerous territory that may lead to an armed confrontation on a large scale.

When it comes to the Middle East, he is playing with words and thus allowing the situation to get into a more complicated condition than the one, which is already prevailing in the region due to a questionable policy that has been adopted by the United States in relation to Israel.

So US has been pampering Israel for decades and now Russia has decided to take a unilateral approach on Syria, helping Iran by default, and which is creating confusion in the region, as also causing much heartburn in the Arab world.

This boils down to a simple conclusion that the Middle East needs to redefine its whole policy vis-a-vis the region and the world in general.