Despite a week of Russian aerial and sea-based bombings, a new ground offensive and a near collision in mid-air, the United States is still insisting that no change is needed to the low-key U.S. approach to Syria’s four-year-old civil war.
The Syrian army, backed by Russian airstrikes and cruise missiles launched from warships in the Caspian Sea, attacked rebel forces in western Syria on Thursday as U.S. officials continued to insist that Moscow’s intervention would backfire on the regime of President Vladimir Putin and waved off opportunities to confront his forces.
In a speech to NATO defense ministers in Brussels, Defense Secretary Ash Carter called Russian behavior “unprofessional.”
“They’ve shot cruise missiles from a ship in the Caspian Sea without warning. They’ve come within just a few miles of one of our unmanned aerial vehicles. They have initiated a joint ground offensive with the Syrian regime, shattering the facade that they’re there to fight ISIL,” he said. “This will have consequences for Russia itself.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon admitted Wednesday that U.S. jets conducting strikes against the Islamic State in Syria were altering their flight paths to avoid getting too close to Russian planes. And on Thursday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest, when asked if the U.S. would act to protect Western-backed rebels targeted by Russian airstrikes, dodged the question, noting only that it would make it harder for those groups to take part in the political transition the Obama administration is seeking.
“That’s why we have raised fundamental questions about the strategy Russia is pursuing,” he said.
But to many experts and lawmakers, what the administration calls Russia’s strategic “mistakes” appear to be a calculated plan by Moscow to take advantage of U.S. strategic incoherence. And it’s working, not only in Syria but elsewhere as well.
“However this conflict ends, it must not involve Vladimir Putin shoring up his partners, crushing ours, destroying our remaining credibility in the Middle East and restoring Russia as a major power in this vital region, as Putin wants,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz. “We cannot shy away from confronting Russia in Syria, as Putin expects.”
News surfaced Wednesday that Russia had secretly taped discussions with military officials as they tried to avoid conflict in the sky over Syria, and then put the recording on YouTube. And the naval strikes from the Caspian Sea have been taken as an overt statement of Russia’s combat strength. All these developments point to Russia thumbing its nose at the U.S., and not getting a response beyond official statements of concern.
President Obama has resisted calls for a reassessment of his administration’s policy toward Syria, as well as toward Russia itself in the wake of dramatic changes sparked by Moscow’s intervention in that country, arguing that Putin is making a strategic “mistake” by shoring up embattled President Bashar al-Assad that will become a “quagmire” for him.
In Brussels, Carter laid out the U.S. plan to deal with the situation, which involved continuing to strike against the Islamic State, continuing to support the opposition, contact Russia over safety procedures and “leave the door open” to Russia circling back to the idea of regime change in Syria.
U.S. officials insist that Russia’s intervention is a sign of weakness, not strength, and say they will stay the course and keep trying to get the Kremlin to realize it should take a more reasonable approach against both Assad and the Islamic State. But many experts and lawmakers say the administration’s reliance on persuasion could do significant harm to U.S. interests.
“I think there’s been too much talk and not enough action on our side,” retired Marine Gen. James Jones, who was Obama’s national security adviser from 2009-10, told the Armed Services Committee on Thursday.
Russia’s intervention may fail, but “in the course of failing it may do a great deal of damage both in Syria and beyond,” Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations told the panel.
He said attempts to engage Moscow in a dialogue over Syria will be ineffective unless the Russians see that Washington has a coherent strategy and is willing to defend its interests there, including by military means. He noted that the administration has made a “strategic mistake” of its own by trying to engage Russia in dialogue as a substitute for U.S. action.
“I think the Russians have felt that they do not have to take seriously what we say about Syria because we’re not playing,” said Sestanovich, who was the State Department’s ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union during the Clinton administration.
