What Paul Craig Roberts and other pundits fail to grasp is the plan being worked for a global civilization may be Russian communist from the days of Stalin on. What is the best way to conquer a planet? International institutions and agreements and war. Who is best to blame but the Western financial and deep state elites. Who benefits the most? Russian Chinese integration and not Atlanticist integration.
So look at Syria and the pipeline politics.
The objective of the West is scorched Earth. Israel remains intact. Syria, Iraq collapse and refugee flows go to Turkey then Europe . Russia is boxed in to combat escalation. Gazprom wants a pipeline and the West wants another game instead that enables swifter collapse.
Inventing ISIS the West has a surrogate army fighting a colonial war. Russia enters combat to enable Assad to survive the Western combat. Now after the last round of events NATO is the air wing and the official army on the ground.
ISIS may develop capability for ABC warfare thanks to her allies. The Russian homeland may be a target of terror by ISIS and the response and reprisal could not extend to war.
Russia will have no choice other than to accept vassal status as the price paid for global order over nuclear war with the West who launches first.