How to Roll Back Russia

[bemildred]

The view from NeoconLand. I selected excerpts to show the situation.

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We can rule out the possibility of American aircraft shooting down Russian aircraft. That’s simply too provocative. Even buzzing Russian fighters with our own aircraft or painting them with fire-control radar runs an unwelcome risk of escalation and miscalculation. Perhaps there are electronic-warfare or cyberwar measures that the U.S. could covertly implement to disable Russian aircraft. It is, however, important to keep such action below a kinetic threshold. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union avoided direct combat between their forces because of fears that such hostilities could escalate into World War III. The danger of fighting with another nuclear-armed state remains too great to risk today.

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Slightly less provocative is the proxy option, which Obama has predictably if needlessly already ruled out. Throughout the Cold War both sides fought the other through Third World allies: the Soviets backed North Korean and North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces, while the U.S. backed Afghan attacks on Soviet forces. If we apply this model to Syria, the U.S. and its allies (e.g., Turkey and Saudi Arabia) would supply arms and training to Syrian fighters who would be delighted to take a shot at the Russian forces which are battling to keep the oppressive and bloodthirsty Assad regime in power.

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The most effective and most risky option would be to supply Stingers or other portable air-defense systems to the rebels so they could shoot down Russian aircraft as the mujahideen did in the 1980s. Of course the American experience in Afghanistan, when we indirectly backed Islamist groups like the Haqqanis that later came to fight us, shows some of the risks of this approach. This is all the more risky in Syria because of the close links between “moderate” rebels and the al-Nusra Front, the -alQaeda affiliate in Syria: We do not want Stingers to wind up in the hands of terrorists who would use them to shoot down a civilian airliner.

Nevertheless, this is an option worth exploring if safeguards could be instituted to control access to the missiles and if the ultimate source of the missiles can be disguised. Risky as the Stinger option might be if carried out by the CIA, the risk would grow greatly if the Saudis or Qataris decide to do it on their own, because they would be likely to support Islamist groups.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/europe/russia/how-to-roll-back-russia/

And then there is stirring things up in Ukraine or the Baltics, let's heat that war up again. More guns. Those are his solutions to Putin's move into Syria. No need to wonder why these guys fail. His idea is that we have to goad Russia some more, somehow, anyhow, for .... What? It's infantile.