Although Mr. Putin need not worry about domestic opinion, he cares desperately about what the world thinks of him. Foreign critics of his Chechnya policy enraged him to the extent that he once offered to have a French journalist castrated. If he succeeds in imposing peace in Syria, even at the cost of leveling Aleppo, he will try to legitimize his victory. He will do that by giving it the outward trappings of a real, democratic peace process: of a Northern Ireland, or a South Africa.
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