Tri-Service
Comment: Could The US And Russia Go To War Over Syria?
Article by Christopher Lee, BFBS Defence Analyst
Think about this: President Vladimir Putin needs President Bashar al-Assad to win his civil war, otherwise Russia will be chased out of Syria. So Mr Putin supports the bombing of the easiest and most telling targets - such as Aleppo hospitals.
The US, with help from the UK and France, says this current Russian tactic amounts to war crimes. That enrages Vladimir and leads him to order the scrapping of a key nuclear warhead agreements.
Then America, operating within the NATO system, reinforces its military assets supporting the Baltic States. Moscow says that amounts to provocation, NATO says it amounts to a sensible precaution and shows its Baltic allies as well as Russia that it will not abandon its obligations in the region. In other words: "Come closer Russia and we will push you back".
What now? Well, Russia moves an Iskander ballistic missile battery, with a kilotonage level nuclear warhead capability, into Kaliningrad - an exclave cut off from the Motherland and surrounded by NATO members Lithuania and Poland.
This, as it is supposed to, raises tensions among NATO states in the region who do not know what next to do and mostly want to do nothing.
Here at the United Nations in New York, to use the diplomatic jargon, Russians and Americans are not nibbling the same canapés. The negotiations over Syrian peace possibilities are abandoned. Even the never-ending marginal meetings of low level diplomats are nothing more than individuals reporting back to the offices of Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry about who said what about whom.
There was a rare weekend meeting at the UN over the weekend. The French (one of the five permanent members of the Security Council) tabled a motion to stop the Aleppo bombing and open a humanitarian aid corridor. It would have gone through if it had not been for Russia.
The Russian delegation had instructions from the Kremlin to veto any ceasefire resolution, whatever the motives. So, Russia vetoed.
The Syrian ambassador Bashar Jaafari got up to speak and in protest at the whole hodgepodge the British permanent representative, Matthew Rycroft led a largely Western walk out. Mr Rycroft turned on the Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin and told him, and thus Putin, that his veto was a death signature on Syrians in Aleppo. Mr Churkin did not even look uncomfortable.
Talk to diplomats who spend their lives at this level and they talk in whispers, not to be secretive but to reflect the seriousness currently facing those governments seeking solutions.
They talk of miscalculation, not in the UN chamber, but on what could become a battlefield. A Russian or American aircraft shot down when both aircrews fly with instructions not to back off. An artillery commander unsure of his own rules of engagement and so a calamity occurs, such as the shooting down of the MH-17 airliner.
There are two truths whispered in the UN corridors: the Russo-Syrian offensive will succeed without hindrance from the US because no President is likely to commit a military action just as the nation goes to vote and anyway, no Congress would support it.
Secondly, Vladimir Putin's shifting of the Iskander launchers into Kaliningrad will frighten most European members of NATO into taking no action.
In the corridors of power within the UN talk is that President Putin can no longer be stopped in his Tsarist ambition to have the fear-driven respect of all the so-called world leaders.
There is a third truth: Tsarism, historically, was so very vulnerable to miscalculation. A Putin on the edge could turn miscalculation into determination and that is when confrontation may become unavoidable.
As of this week the weaponry of war is in place and the diplomacy appears very fallible.
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