This Russia
conflict scenario would make operations in Syria look like a round of croquet.
The story of astronauts Nick Hague and
Alexey Ovchinin careening back toward Earth in a daring and successful escape
from a failed space mission was stirring to be sure. Even as Russian intrigues
swirl around every corner in Washington, some of the “best and brightest” of
both countries have engaged in a joint, high-tech endeavor for the most
honorable goal of exploring the scientific mysteries of space and Earth. Leaders
in Moscow and especially Washington may want to study this exemplar of
Russian-American cooperation under pressure.
The sad
reality is this extremely crucial bilateral relationship is in dire
straits—even worse than many likely imagined. As the current U.S. president is
excoriated on a daily basis for being “pro-Russian,” the chances of great-power
conflict in either Syria or Ukraine have escalated precipitously. When, in
February 2018, a group of U.S. special forces killed a large number of Russian mercenaries
in Syria, Moscow warned Washington starkly “not to play with fire.” A couple of
months later, U.S.-built Javelin anti-tank missiles arrived in
the volatile Ukraine situation. The Obama administration had steadfastly
refused to give Kiev such lethal aid, knowing that escalation of the conflict
would benefit no one, least of all Ukrainians.
Yet,
Trump’s myriad hawkish advisors have prevailed and thwarted the president’s
attempts to improve relations with the Kremlin. If the anonymous
opinion piece of Sept 5 regarding “internal resistance” to the
president is accurate, then the total demolition of U.S.-Russian relations
seems to be a major thrust of this defiance to the president’s authority.
Perhaps these hawks will be finally sated when Americans and Russians are
killing each other in earnest? Let’s all hope that the bloodbath would stop before
an exchange of nuclear weapons .
Unfortunately,
most Americans are too obsessed with the workings of Facebook and
Twitter—discussed in connection with Russia with nauseating regularity in the
conventional press since 2016—to know what is actually going on in U.S.-Russian
relations. Thus, few Americans and hardly any international relations scholars
seem to be aware that U.S. Army tanks and armored vehicles have deployed beyond the confines of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and directly into Georgia earlier this year,
while U.S. Air Force planes will be operating from an airfield inside of
Ukraine over the next month as part of NATO Operation
Clear Sky .
Most
American international relations specialists have eschewed the idea of either
Ukraine or Georgia joining NATO—a prudent choice given the risks. But it is
evident that American military forces are determined to operate in these
countries, whatever the hazard. There was justified concern in the early summer
of 2018 that if the Javelinscaused significant Russian casualties
in east Ukraine, then the Kremlin would once again intervene decisively, as it
did for example in the Debaltseve battle of February 2015. For good
measure, Russia obviously did not want the Ukraine crisis to explode during the
World Cup. Now, things could be different and tensions are building ominously,
especially in and around the Sea of Azov.
Signs of
imminent trouble are apparent everywhere. At the end of August, the rebel
leader Alexander Zakharchenko was killed in a bomb blast. As usual, Moscow and
Kiev traded blame for the killing. To state the obvious, such assassinations
hardly bode well for permanent stabilization through a negotiated settlement.
In September, the Ukrainian President was in America to speak at the United
Nations. He visited Baltimore to take
possession of two aging U.S. Coast Guard cutters. While these
ships are hardly likely to tip the military balance in the tense Black Sea
area, they come at a time when the Russian military press is rather hotly discussing Kiev’s intention to “take
steps to increase its military presence in the Sea of Azov [мероприятий по усилению военного присутствия в Азовском море].”
Hopefully, Ukraine will have better luck operating old U.S. Coast Guard cutters
than has the Philippines . Washington seems to think
that such “gifts” will help the morale of various beleaguered friends, but these
symbolic steps also inevitably provoke the ire of neighboring great powers
without actually providing any genuine deterrent power. In other words, such
policies make for good public relations stories, but little else.
Russian
reports discuss Ukraine’s apparent plan to build a new naval base at Berdyansk
about thirty miles west of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. Any glance at the map
reveals that all ships transiting into the Sea of Azov, whether Russian or
Ukrainian or flying other flags, must transit the Kerch Strait and thus pass
under Russia’s new
bridge that was completed earlier this year. Two
Ukrainian Gyurza-M armored cutters [бронекатер] are said to already be in the Sea of Azov. Two
other Ukraine Navy ships had passed under Russia’s
Crimean Bridge without incident at the end of September. A Russian article noted that the ships were
under close observation by the Russian Coast Guard, but that they passed the
tense strait “quietly [спокойно]”
and “without a battle [без боя].”
The latter remarks seems to have been sarcasm. It was noted that the larger of
the two Ukrainian Navy ships was nearly fifty years old.
But lest
anyone feel calm about this sparring, people are killed every day in the fighting in
eastern Ukraine and civilians are suffering horribly . Moreover, there is more
than enough spy intrigue going on to set neighbor against neighbor. About a
week ago, yet another Ukrainian ammunition dump went up in flames under mysterious
circumstances. It is into these volatile circumstances that U.S. combat
aircraft (F-15s) from the California National Guard have flown into. True, the
air base they are operating out of is well west of Kiev, but still just a few
hundred miles from the tense Sea of Azov. Nevertheless, a Russian
perspective holds that NATO exercises in
western Ukraine “are connected with a different exercise undertaken by the
Ukrainian armed forces . . . near the Russian border in the waters of the Sea
of Azov from October 9–12 [будут связаны с другими учениями украинских войск, которые пройдут вблизи российской границы в акватории Азовского моря с 9 по 12 октября].”
That
article claims that Russia is at “zero-hour” and the subhead maintains: “The
U.S. and NATO are preparing Ukraine for a local war with Russia [США и НАТО готовят Украину к масштабной войне с Россией].”
It goes on to say that very large-scale NATO war games involving forty-five
thousand troops will be held in October and November 2018 in northern Norway.
If one sees
Russia as a deeply paranoid and relatively weak country (albeit endowed with
many good writers and composers) with defense spending amounting to a paltry
sum against the NATO aggregate, these exercises seem ill-advised, to put it
politely. Newresearch in the journal World
Politics confirms what we all long suspected—great powers are
especially prone to undertake aggression after suffering significant
humiliation. Conducting major NATO military drills along Russia’s sensitive
borders and in highly unstable areas of the former Soviet Union is the opposite
of wise restraint.
Related
Lyle J.
Goldstein is a research professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute at
the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI. In addition to Chinese, he
also speaks Russian, and he is also an affiliate of the new Russia Maritime
Studies Institute at Naval War College. You can reach him at goldstel@usnwc.edu. The opinions in his
columns are entirely his own and do not reflect the official assessments of the
U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. government.
Image: Reuters
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