As part of his proposal for U.N. safe zones protected by Turkey and other regional governments, Soner Cagaptay engages in some wishful thinking:

Washington must assure Russia that it will have access to Tartus after Assad leaves. Give Russia their warm water port, and they will not veto the resolution.

The obvious problem is that the U.S. cannot guarantee that a future Syrian government will allow Russia access to this base. Even if the U.S. could guarantee that the next Syrian government would agree to this condition, why would the Russians believe our government about this? Assuming that this might have worked before last Saturday, why is the Russian government going to be interested in a proposal from the administration that just denounced them in the harshest terms? The U.S. has a bad habit of telling Moscow that it is committed to doing (or not doing) certain things, and then doing something different from what Moscow expects. Moscow believes it was conned on the Libya resolution, and it recalls similar episodes from the past when the Russian government believed it was being promised one thing (re: NATO expansion, for instance) only to discover that these assurances meant nothing. Cagaptay is at least trying to think of incentives that might change Russia’s position, but this isn’t going to be enough. Drezner floated this idea as a way to push Assad out, but he acknowledged that Tartus is not the only thing determining Russia’s position.

Dmitri Trenin explained Russia’s position in a recent article for Foreign Affairs:

Moscow’s position on Syria is shaped even more by the recent experience of Libya, strong doubts concerning the Syrian opposition, and suspicions about the motives of the United States.

That being the case, does it seem likely that Moscow will believe promises from the U.S. or Syrian opposition leaders that Russia will not lose its base access in the event of regime change? No, it doesn’t. In any case, what Cagaptay misses with his Tartus-for-Assad exchange proposal is that the exchange is premised on Moscow endorsing Western-backed regime change that it has adamantly rejected for the last year. Western-backed regime change is exactly what made Moscow regret its abstention on the Libya resolution, and now it’s going to help facilitate another one? Trenin thinks not:

The Russians themselves have no dogs in these fights, but they do not want to bandwagon on a U.S. regional strategy that they believe is a losing and dangerous proposition.