I wish we mount a massive/covert/elaborate IO against Russia...but the enemy of my enemy of my enemies... huh?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37507207
snippets from the article:
"But it is US-Russia relations that have been most profoundly influenced by Moscow's intervention in Syria.
At one level, Syria can be added to Ukraine as a dossier where the US and Russia are failing to find common ground.
But Russia's military role ensured that the Assad leadership was not going to be removed from the chessboard.
This made Washington revise its own approach and pursue what has largely proved an illusory effort, to develop some kind of partnership with Russia.
The United States was compelled not just to deal with Russia as a diplomatic equal but also to shift its own stance towards the Assad government to one - that for all the obfuscation - falls well short of its long-time insistence that President Assad had to go, as the essential pre-condition for any negotiated settlement."
"Russian information operations, which insist upon presenting their Syrian campaign as a struggle for civilisation against terrorism, may convince few but pro-Russian trolls.
They do, though, further complicate a story that is already so complex that many in the West, sceptical about their own governments' records, seem unwilling to get excited about what Russia is up to.
The importance of information operations was most clearly illustrated by the extraordinary concert mounted in the ruins of Palmyra after its recapture from so-called Islamic State (IS) by Syrian forces.
This, though, may have been directed as much at public consumption in Russia as at audiences abroad. "
"By its own standards, Russia's intervention in Syria has been a success on several levels.
The real question is whether this situation can last."