Last month, there were multiple instances of Russian aircraft harassing American aircraft in Syria—sometimes by flying dangerously close, and in two instances by firing flares that damaged U.S. drones. Andrew Tabler argues that Moscow’s aggressive behavior is retaliation for Washington’s support for Ukraine, and suggests how the U.S. might respond:
July’s . . . incidents come immediately in the wake of the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s suppression of the mutiny in Russia of Wagner forces, whose operations in Syria, reports indicate, have been taken over by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
American Syria-policy decisions that have changed the political context in Syria certainly have not helped. Following a devastating earthquake on February 6 along the Turkish-Syria frontier, the U.S. Treasury Department issued General License 23, which allowed for transactions [exempted] as “earthquake relief” from current U.S. sanctions on Syria. While the license was justified in the face of the scale of destruction and humanitarian need in Syria, the license language was particularly broad.
Official U.S. policy opposes normalization with Bashar al-Assad, but U.S. regional allies read the license as permission to normalize relations with the Assad regime, leading to Syria’s readmittance to the Arab League at its latest summit last May in Jeddah. . . . Moscow has [also] read the license as . . . the latest indication that Washington cares little about Syria policy, and it believes the time is ripe to push U.S. forces out of Syria.
The best way to deter Moscow from escalating with Washington over Syria is to change the political context there. Washington should show in deeds and not just words that it is opposed to the Kremlin’s client in Damascus.
Read more on Al Majalla: https://en.majalla.com/node/296786/politics/deterring-russias-horizontal-escalation-syria