Russian Consistency on Regime Change (and odds and ends)

Russia is warning the US about a push for regime change in Syria (LINK).  I think that Russia's policy has always been consistent in this regard. And their position has been borne out in the chaos that enveloped Egypt, Libya, and Iraq in the absence of strong leadership.  Democracy promotion is fine and good, but there has to be some semblance of political order and institutional ability (or social capital) to be able to develop it.

The lesson from Iraq is that any regime change imposed from the outside needs to be accompanied by very strong planning for the post-regime period.  Organic changes to leadership from popular uprisings may also be shaky.

We have given Putin's Kremlin plenty of ammunition in its offensive against democracy promotion by supporting regime change irresponsibly.

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This is an interesting article on the shake up of the Baltic Sea Fleet.

Clearly, for the purge to be so large and so open, the misconduct in the Baltic Fleet had to be very serious and very widespread. Yulia Nikitina and Irina Tumakova from Fontanka.ru have published a long article documenting the faults attributed to the fleet’s now-former leadership. The condition of the fleet under Viktor Kravchuk had supposedly declined when compared to how it was under his predecessors, who received much less financing than he did in the last four years. 

In other words, the Baltic Fleet purge appears to be a signal to other Russian military commanders (including mid-level ones) that corruption that has a negative effect on combat readiness will not be tolerated and will result in punishment far more severe than the usual honorable retirement given to senior officials who misbehave.

 Russia's military readiness has become political.