Putin plays chess; there's not one Western "leader" who's even playing checkers

Dominic Sandbrook at the Daily Mail sees the endgame in Russia's aggressive involvement in the Syrian morass:

For a moment, imagine you were one of Vladimir Putin’s advisers, seething with envy and resentment against the Western world, and you were summoned by your master to a meeting in the gilded sanctum of the Kremlin.

Imagine he asked you to devise a scheme that would send shockwaves through the European Union, plunge the Balkans into chaos, push Greece to the brink of anarchy, shove millions of voters into the arms of the xenophobic Far Right and even drive a wedge between Britain and France.

What would you come up with?

Well, here’s a clue: just take a look at the past few days’ headlines.

In Calais, desperate migrants fight pitched battles with armed riot policemen trying to clear the notorious ‘Jungle’ camp. In Macedonia, security forces fire tear gas at thousands of migrants using a home-made battering ram to smash the fences along the Greek border.

In Hungary, the nationalist prime minister announces plans to build a 280-mile razor-wire barrier to seal his country off from its southern neighbours. In Greece, where more than 100,000 refugees have arrived in two months, government ministers thunder against the ‘lies’ and ‘hypocrisy’ of their European partners.

And there is more. Only yesterday, as the president of the European Council pleaded with migrants not to come to Europe, relations between Britain and France sank to a perilous new low.

If Britain pulls out of the EU, warned French economics minister Emmanuel Macron, then Paris will scrap the British border controls in Calais, allowing thousands of migrants to cross the Channel and thereby transferring the Jungle camp to Kent.

Not surprisingly, Mr Macron’s threats drew a blistering reaction from Leave campaigners. But it is the wider picture that is really disturbing.

Even now, I think, we have not yet grasped the colossal scale and toxic repercussions of Europe’s migration crisis. It has become a cliché that this is the crisis that defines our age. But it is, of course, only a cliché because it is so obviously true.

The humanitarian impact is bad enough, from the horrifying conditions in camps such as the Jungle, plagued by rats, crime and disease, to the terrible plight of tens of thousands of migrants stranded in southern Europe without food, water or shelter.

But the political implications are, if possible, even more alarming. Every day, almost every hour, the alliances that bind the West together are coming closer to snapping, from the latest spat between Britain and France to the simmering mistrust that has almost destroyed relations between Athens and the EU.

Now, consider this: Here in post-America, we have the opportunity to elect as president someone who understands this and who would seriously address it. You know who I mean. It most definitely ain't Squirrel-Hair. It ain't Madame Reset.

But just how late in the day is it? We shall see.