Thread by @FPRI_Orbis

Since @RadioFreeTom tagged me in a post on Cold War history, and he has been having spirited debates on his feed about managing escalatory risks with Russia over Ukraine (the no-fly-zone won't lead to nuclear escalation argument), I thought I'd develop a🧵on Cold War rules. 1/

And @RadioFreeTom, @20committee, @MinerPhD, @andrewfacini and others, feel free to jump on in. Starting premise: as restated by many senior U.S. officials, U.S.-Soviet confrontations could never rise to the level of open combat between U.S. and Soviet units. 2/

That, of course, did not mean "do nothing." The U.S. and Soviets would engage in proxy conflicts all over the world during the Cold War. But what happens if one side was directly engaged in hostilities? What were the "rules"? 3/

First step was covert provision of weapons. In the Afghan operation, step 1 was to find replacement weapons for the Afghans from their existing supplies, which meant WWI British Enfields, among others. We graduated to going to China, Yugoslavia, Egypt and Israel to either get 4/

existing stockpiles of Soviet weaponry or to buy weapons manufactured under Soviet license. This was to maintain the plausible fiction that the Afghans were taking weapons captured from the Soviets. In Latin America, Soviet-sponsored guerilla movements fighting against 5/

U.S. backed governments with American military advisors would receive shipments of U.S. equipment that had been captured in Vietnam. The next step was to escalate to provision of weapons that clearly could not be disguised as to their origins (e.g. Stingers to the mujihadeen).6/

But here too there were unwritten rules. The Soviets could not threaten escalation against the U.S. for Afghan weapons, but the U.S. could not threaten counter-escalation against Soviet efforts to sabotage the pipeline in Pakistan or to attack weapons shipments once they 7/

crossed into Afghanistan. The next step after that would be to embed advisors or support personnel. Covertly--as in pretending to be locals (feasible in some cases, harder in others). Or to try and carefully stress their non-combatant role. But this raised risks on both sides. 8/

When the U.S. directed air and naval gunfire into Lebanon in 1983, an ever-present concern would be if fire hit Syrian units that had embedded Soviet advisors--and what the Soviet reaction might be. 9/

The Korean war represented some of the most ambitious efforts to test the line of what might draw reactions. Decision of the Chinese to intervene (but with consequences falling on China, not the USSR, if that went wrong), use of KMT forces from Taiwan, undeclared and disguised10/

Soviet pilots flying North Korean aircraft. But that represented the outer limits of the rules set. It also imposed a set of what some commanders felt were artificialities. Why was Vladivostok (for the Soviets) or Japan (for the Americans) off limits to attack? Self-imposed 11/

limits. Tested in Vietnam and Nicaragua with the mining of harbors where Soviet ships could have been damaged, but otherwise these limits held. 12/

And, of course, the Cold War was fought in a pre-internet, pre-digital age, so managing the plausible deniability was a little easier. END

And to add @ColdWarTA to this as well.

Following up: this, via @SlawomirDebski ... intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Kremlin isn't going to like but this doesn't cross the Cold War "rules" ... 1a/

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1499455037726248967

Also, per our NFZ discussion yesterday, NATO aircraft patrolling right at the borders. Also not grounds for any counter-escalation. 2a/

https://mobile.twitter.com/FPRI_Orbis/status/1499145144351797252

UPDATE: And now we have U.S.-NATO - Russia deconfliction line being set up.

https://twitter.com/carolelee/status/1499451600229875719

3/4 UPDATE 1: NATO rules out NFZ over Ukraine--but will contain conflict from spreading to NATO states, per @jensstoltenberg ... and U.S. is limiting intelligence to Ukraine to avoid actual battlefield targeting (cont.)

Brief by Biden admin. to Congress shared sentiment that “It’s one thing to give somebody a rifle, and it’s another to tell him where to shoot it" & they are concerned about crossing a line that could give Russia a pretext to retaliate against the U.S. Per @KenDilanianNBC @NBCNews