Thread by @andrewsweiss

THREAD Collusion or collision? What’s the most important priority now for managing an increasingly adversarial relationship w Moscow? Leaving aside the #MuellerReport fracas, I’d put avoiding military accidents/inadvertent escalation near or at the top of my list. Here’s why: 1/

Since the crisis erupted 5 years ago, the Kremlin has intentionally dialed up dangerous military behavior for signaling purposes and to intimidate the West. That’s led to a great number of very close-calls in #Syria as well as in international airspace & waters. 2/

In Syria our militaries have been operating in close proximity since autumn 2015. I take a close look at the track record of U.S. military commanders and diplomats in a new paper “Collision Avoidance: Lessons From U.S. and Russian Operations in Syria” carnegieendowment.org/2019/03/20/col… 3/

The unsung hero of this story is Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford who has reached out at key moments to tell his Russian opposite number, professionally yet firmly, that the Pentagon means business and will defend our people from dangerous Russian actions. 4/

Threats like that only work when you’re prepared to back them up with force (unlike Trump’s feckless remarks about Russian military deployments in Venezuela yesterday). Dunford was not playing. nyti.ms/2U8h5wQ) 5/

Still, there is no question that Russia’s relatively modest outlay of military power in Syria has paid off handsomely, and that the Russian military has largely run the show. 6/

Russia’s intervention was done on the cheap, with only 30-40 combat aircraft, 20-odd helicopters, several hundred mercenaries, and no more than 4,000–6,000 ground troops stationed inside Syria at any given time 7/

The success of the Russian military campaign in Syria revealed that Moscow understands leverage. From the moment the Kremlin intervened in Syria, it had far more leverage than the United States. 8/

Senior U.S. defense officials prioritized establishing multiple lines of communication with the Russian military to avoid accidents and to make sure that both sides’ operations at any given moment were deconflicted. 9/

That effort fell far short of Putin’s repeated calls for a joint operations and intelligence sharing. Fmr Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s views on that score carried the day with Obama politico.com/magazine/story… @sbg1 10/

The Syrian battlefield has been very messy and crowded. U.S. and Russian forces got much closer to each other than is commonly recognized after Trump accelerated the counter-ISIL campaign in 2017, creating a race for territory. 11/

US diplomats/officers spelled things out for the Russians in stark terms. As @brett_mcgurk recounted, when working w the Russians to “draw lines on the map at the Euphrates River,” the US side said: 'Look, you don’t cross that river. If you cross that river, we’ll kill you.'” 12/

Still, the Russian military repeatedly pushed the envelope, often creating dangerous and near-misses in an attempt to push the U.S. out of regions coveted by Assad or simply to bait U.S. pilots into shooting down Russian jets nytimes.com/2017/12/08/wor… 13/

That brand of dangerous gamesmanship reached its apex in February 2018 when a ragtag group of Russian military "contractors" and pro-Assad militia attacked an outpost manned by U.S. special forces in Deir Ezzor province. 14/

The incident is still shrouded in mystery. The paymaster for the Russian fighters, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, is a member of Putin’s coterie who was indicted by Mueller for his role in organizing the notorious Troll Factory in St. Petersburg. justice.gov/file/1035477/d…
15/

Remarkably, multiple U.S. attempts to use their hotline to Russian military counterparts during the attack were rebuffed. In effect, the Russian military totally washed its hands of 100s of their comrades in arms. No one knows why. nyti.ms/2GMKOj0 @Tmgneff 16/

As Jim Mattis recounted, “My direction to [Dunford] was for the force, then, to be annihilated. And it was.” Upwards of 200 Russians were killed in a wave of devastating airstrikes. The Kremlin learned an important lesson about testing U.S. resolve. 17/

Still, despite Trump’s desire for a speedy exit from Syria, this danger will linger. @AmbJohnBolton insists that a remote Marine garrison at At Tanf w a rather murky mission will be exempt. Moscow has repeatedly tried to force the US to abandon it. politico.com/story/2019/01/… 18/

Both sides have an interest in making sure that the lessons learned from Syria deconfliction are not discarded--even though the Kremlin resists instituting similar efforts in other theaters where the risk of inadvertent escalation or military incidents is perhaps greatest 19/

The stubborn fact remains that such dangers are largely the product of deliberate Russian efforts. It’s incumbent upon the Trump administration to show that it won’t be intimidated. END