As a smug, myopic A-hole once said: The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back.

This isn’t just humiliation for the sake of humiliation. This is Putin expecting there’ll be no American reprisal and knowing that Sunni countries around the region will calculate accordingly about how much they can trust the U.S. to defend their interests against Russian incursions in the Middle East. At least for the next 16 months.

U.S. officials said Russia’s targeting of its allies on the ground was a direct challenge to Mr. Obama’s Syria policy. Underlining the distrust, the Pentagon decided against sharing any information with Moscow about the areas where U.S. allies were located because it suspected Russia would use that information to target them more directly or provide the information to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“On day one, you can say it was a one-time mistake,” a senior U.S. official said of Russia’s strike on one of the allied rebel group’s headquarters. “But on day three and day four, there’s no question it’s intentional. They know what they’re hitting.”…

The first strike on [CIA-backed Tajamu al-Ezzeh] came at 9 a.m. on Sept. 30, catching its fighters off guard. Seventeen more strikes were launched against the group over the first three days of the Russian campaign, injuring 25 of Ezzeh’s fighters. Some of the injured had received CIA training, according to their commander, Maj. Jameel al-Salih. Four strikes on the first day targeted Ezzeh’s headquarters…

Members of the [rebel] brigades said in interviews they believed they were being targeted by the Russians to weaken the moderates, without whom the West would have to accept Mr. Assad’s continued rule. The other rebel groups on the battlefield are too radical for the West to work with, they said.

Both U.S. officials and rebel leaders say the White House hasn’t done a thing yet to help them defend themselves against Russian attacks. One possibility would be Manpads, but given the recent history of jihadis seizing American-supplied weapons from U.S. allies in Iraq and applying them towards sinister ends, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles seem like a bad, bad, bad idea. (Show of hands: Which commercial airlines want to use Middle Eastern airspace once the Saudis, say, start shipping Manpads into Syria?) Also, if we’re refusing to share information on rebel positions with Russia for fear that they’ll use the information for targeting, presumably Russia’s also refusing to share information on its own positions, including air routes, with us for fear that we’ll share that information with the rebels. How can we engage in “deconfliction” with Russia when the two sides are in fact now locked in a conflict, albeit a proxy one?

I continue to think the proper theater for a reprisal here isn’t the Middle East but in eastern Europe. If attacking CIA-supported rebels is that important to Putin, make him understand that the price is a better armed, better supplied pro-western force in Ukraine and the Baltic states. He’ll recalculate. Meanwhile, here’s a fascinating analysis from Spiegel about why Assad is suddenly so eager to outsource his war to Russia rather than sticking with his old pals in Iran and Hezbollah. It’s not just a matter of needing a more powerful military to help secure western Syria for a new Assad-led Alawite statelet. It’s a matter of Assad feeling buyer’s remorse about the steep price of Iranian patronage. Turns out if you invite a revolutionary fanatic Shiite regime into your house to protect you, they expect some devotion in return for their kindness.

Just as in Damascus, Latakia and Jabla, increasing numbers of hosseiniehs — Shiite religious teaching centers — are opening. The centers are aimed at converting Sunnis, and even the Alawites, the denomination to which the Assads belong, to “correct” Shiite Islam by way of sermons and stipends. In addition, the government decreed one year ago that state-run religion schools were to teach Shiite material.

All of this is taking place to the consternation of the Alawites, who have begun to voice their displeasure. “They are throwing us back a thousand years. We don’t even wear headscarves and we aren’t Shiites,” Alawites complained on the Jableh News Facebook page. There were also grumblings when a Shiite mosque opened in Latakia and an imam there announced: “We don’t need you. We need your children and grandchildren.”…

Talib Ibrahim, an Alawite communist from Masyaf who fled to the Netherlands many years ago, summarizes the mood as follows: “Assad wants the Iranians as fighters, but increasingly they are interfering ideologically with domestic affairs. The Russians don’t do that.”

Even if Assad “wins” the war by preserving western Syria for his ethnic allies, Alawite culture may well slowly disintegrate over the next few generations under Iran’s fundamentalist influence. Which means we’re headed for a revolutionary Shiite state and a revolutionary Salafist state, i.e. ISIS, sharing a de facto border. That sounds like a recipe for greater Middle Eastern stability over the next few decades, don’t you think?

Oh, by the way, Russia has also repeatedly violated the airspace of Turkey, a NATO ally, over the last few days in conducting operations in Syria. The west is showing Putin an awful lot of patience lately. I wonder if he’s smart enough to quit while he’s ahead.