25.04.2017HOW U.S. AND RUSSIA CAN STUMBLE INTO WAR IN SYRIA
By Simon Saradzhyan
When U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Moscow earlier this month, he didn’t expect a particularly warm welcome and that was a for a reason. Tillerson’s visit came less than a week after Donald Trump ordered a missile attack on Syria’s Shayrat airfield on April 6 to punish Bashar al-Assad, whom Russia supports, for allegedly ordering use of chemical weapons against civilians.
Whether Trump will follow up on the cruise attack, which has escalated tensions between Washington and Moscow, but which has failed to stop the operational use of Shayrat, with more forceful steps against Assad’s regime is yet to be seen. When deciding whether to do so, however, the U.S. leadership should keep in mind that such strikes increase risks of an accidental U.S.-Russian conflict.
Yes, the Pentagon insists that it had repeatedly warned the Russian military of the pending strikes through the existing deconfliction channel so Russian personnel could be evacuated from Shayrat, but according to the chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Defense Committee, Vladimir Shamanov, these warnings came only two hours before the attacks. What if not all Russian personnel got the word? Recall how the U.S. government tried to ensure that its own planes didn’t fly armed with nuclear missiles during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but its message failed to reach all personnel and such sorties continued. “There is always some son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word,” President John Kennedy exclaimed at that time when he put the odds of a nuclear war “between one out of three and even.” More important, what if no one on the Russian side got the word? After all, the deconfliction channel is, in the words of a Pentagon official, “little more than a commercial phone line” between a U.S. facility in Qatar and a Russian facility in Syria, which could have easily been disrupted just when it was needed the most. One also could not rule out the possibility that one of the Tomahawks could have strayed and hit a Russian asset, especially if it is true, as the Russian Defense Ministry claims that not all of the 59 missiles fired from the USS Ross and the USS Porter in the Mediterranean Sea actually reached Shayrat.
The probability that any of the aforementioned scenarios would have materialized is low and even if one of them did materialize, it would not have necessarily escalated tensions between the U.S. and Russia into a war. However, one should bear in mind that risk equals probability multiplied by consequences: While the probability of an escalation to war is low, the consequences of a conflict between two nuclear powers that can erase humanity from the face of Earth are significant.
The probability of unintended escalation between U.S. and Russia has further increased in the wake of the cruise missile attacks, if only because Moscow responded to them by announcing that it would be pulling out of the 2015 U.S.-Russian agreement establishing the aforementioned deconfliction communications channel to avoid accidents between the two countries’ warplanes over Syria. That’s an unfortunate development and the sides should engage in a dialogue on how to continue using the line, which has helped to avert a number of dangerous incidents between Western and Russian militaries in Syria. Moreover, they should think of ways to upgrade and expand Western-Russian military-to-military communications, given that even the existence of such channels has not prevented incidents altogether. Examples include the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 warplane by a Turkish fighter in 2015 and the Russian bombing of a base used by U.S. special forces in 2016.
In addition to discussing how to avoid an unintended conflict between them during Tillerson’s visit to Moscow, the U.S. and Russia, should join forces other members of the United Nations Security Council, launch an investigation to identify and punish the culprits behind the use of chemical weapons
They should work together not only to rigorously investigate the recent use of chemical weapons, but also to think of appropriate, coordinated responses to any future use, as well as how to deter such use. More important, Moscow and Washington should be working to put an end to the ongoing slaughter of civilians by all parties to the conflict, regardless of what weapons are used to kill the innocent. Notwithstanding their differences, the U.S. and Russia share a long-term interest in preventing Syria from either becoming a terrorist state or falling apart. Given this convergence of their interests, both Washington and Moscow as well as their allies should work to put pressure on the moderate opposition and Assad to negotiate the transition to a secular coalition government, which could then take on ISIS and al-Qaeda while also ensuring Assad’s departure from power. Only a concert of nations led by Washington and Moscow can make Syria, where half a million have already died, whole and at peace with itself.
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