Josh Rogin, Bloomberg: Russia's Syrian Air Base Has U.S. Scrambling for a Plan
The Barack Obama administration and the U.S. intelligence community have concluded that Russia is set to start flying combat missions from a new air base inside Syria, but there’s disagreement inside the U.S. government on what to do about it.
Thursday at the White House, top officials were scheduled to meet at the National Security Council Deputies Committee level to discuss how to respond to the growing buildup of Russian military equipment and personnel in Latakia, a city on the Syrian coast controlled by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Obama has called on his national security officials to come up with a plan as soon as possible, as intelligence reports pour in about the Russian plans to set up an air base there. The options are to try to confront Russia inside Syria or, as some in the White House are advocating, cooperate with Russia there on the fight against the Islamic State.
WNU Editor: Here is an easy prediction .... the U.S. is going to do nothing. But what I do see is a third party intervening to coordinate U.S./allied and Russian air operations so that they do not end up firing on each other.
1 comment:
It is hard to believe that they haven't developed various scenarios and possible responses for those scenarios. Certainly such responses would require fine tuning when and if the scenario actually came about but you would think that before approving any involvement in another country's affairs, particularly one that is embroiled in a civil war, the person or committee that provides approval would ask questions to ensure that all possible scenarios had been considered. In a perfect world that is.
Perhaps they have and the rushing to develop a response is in fact the process of fine tuning.
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