ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)

newguy02 said:

I can definitely see China sending advisors to Syria, however I don't know if China will be willing to send actual combat troops into Syria, nevertheless if this is true, it'll be exciting to see Chinese troops being deployed into an active war zone for the first time in nearly 35+ years.

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dtulsa said:

They are not there to drink vodka or cook their meals for them we are looking at a bad situation that could blow up in a hurry and not in a good way

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plawolf said:

Putin ... ... If he proposed this initiatives to the Chinese with that aim, it may well be enough to sway Beijing to commit money, and maybe even troops to that project.

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Xi said China and the Arab world should try to broaden their economic relationship beyond the dominance of oil, and look at sectors such as nuclear power, satellites and manufacturing

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U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, warned Monday of the potential direct threat to the U.S. military from Russia’s buildup in Syria, even as he backed talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ease the crisis.

Breedlove said Putin’s claim that the buildup was aimed at ISIS was bogus.

“I have not seen ISIL flying any aircraft requiring SA-15s or Sa-22s,” Breedlove said, referring to Russian anti-air missile batteries sent to Syria and using another term for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS (also known as ISIL).

In a roundabout way, Breedlove, who doubles as head of U.S. European Command, suggested to a forum at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C., that Russia’s

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, anti-air missile batteries, troops and tanks to Syria could only be seen as an effort to prop up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Is this really about ISIL? We see some very sophisticated air defenses going into those airfields” in Syria, he said. “We some very sophisticated air-to-aircraft,” Breedlove said.

The commander said the Russian buildup could best been seen as aimed at the U.S. and others who have called for Assad’s ouster.

“These very sophisticated air defense capabilities are not about ISIL, they’re about something else. High on Mr. Putin’s list in Syria is preserving the regime against those that are putting pressure on the regime and against those that they see who might be supporting those putting pressure on the regime,” he said.

Breedlove said he also was concerned about Russia developing a defensive “bubble” of so-called anti-access, area-denial (A2AD) anti-ship and anti-air missiles around the naval base of Tartus that Russia has maintained in northeastern Syria for decades.

“It’s one of the things we are beginning to watch (them) develop in the northeast Mediterranean as we see these

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beginning to show up in Syria,” Breedlove said. “We are a little worried about another A2AD bubble being created in the eastern Mediterranean.”

Breedlove spoke hours before President Obama was to meet Putin in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session.

Despite his concerns about Russia’s intent, Breedlove said the meeting of the two leaders was “incredibly important. We need to have dialogue, we need to have communication with Russia.”

The opposite tack was taken by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a harsh critic of the Obama administration’s strategy and tactics in the Mideast and elsewhere.

“President Obama’s decision to meet with Vladimir Putin is as misguided as it is unnecessary,” McCain said in a statement. “It plays right into Putin’s hands by breaking his international isolation, undermining U.S. policy, and legitimizing Putin’s destabilizing behavior – from dismembering Ukraine to propping Bashar Assad in Syria.”

Prior to their meeting, Obama and Putin both addressed the General Assembly, and both appeared to set terms for little compromise on Syria.

Obama said he welcomed working with Putin to end Syria’s civil war but called for a “managed transition” as part of a political solution that would result in Assad’s ouster.

“We must recognize that there cannot be, after so much bloodshed, so much carnage, a return to the prewar status quo,” Obama said.

Putin rejected a solution that left out Assad. “We believe it’s a huge mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian authorities, with the government forces, those who are bravely fighting terror face-to-face,” Putin said.

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Jura said:

wonder how it'll fit in this Thread ... but since I read it ...
Russia’s Military Buildup in Syria Targets US: NATO Chief

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Jura said:

wonder how it'll fit in this Thread ... but since I read it ...
Russia’s Military Buildup in Syria Targets US: NATO Chief

source:

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In keeping with its increasingly aggressive behavior over the past two years, Russia is deploying lethal and long-ranged anti-aircraft defenses to keep Western forces out of three key regions: the

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, the

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, and, now, the

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. From where NATO’s top commander

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sits, the Russian forces flowing into Syria don’t look like counter-terrorists out to stop the Islamic State, which Vladimir Putin has said is his highest priority. They look like the first pieces of a layered “

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” system that could complicate US and allied operations in Syria and well beyond.

“Anti-access/area denial, or A2/AD, is

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,” Gen. Breedlove told the German Marshall Fund this afternoon, speaking just hours before Putin’s teeth-clenched meeting with President Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The northernmost danger zone or “bubble” is the oldest, based out of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania. “Kaliningrad is a large platform for A2/AD capability,” Breedlove said. His subordinates

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and

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have warned taht Kaliningrad-based missiles reach well into Polish airspace and could shut down NATO reinforcements to the Baltics in a crisis.

To the south, by contrast, Russia lacked a suitable forward base — until last year. “[Since] their

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, Russia has developed a very strong A2/AD capability in the Black Sea,” Breedlove said. “Essentially, their [anti-ship] cruise missiles range the entire Black Sea, and their air defense missiles range about 40 to 50 percent of the Black Sea.”

Now, it seems, comes Syria. “As we see these very capable air defense [systems] beginning to show up in Syria, we’re a little worried about another A2/AD bubble being created in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Breedlove said. “We see some very sophisticated air defenses going into these airfields. We see some very sophisticated air-to-air [fighter] aircraft going into these airfields.”

The Islamic State has no air force that Russia might use such sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons to counter, Breedlove continued. “These very sophisticated air defense capabilities are not about ISIL,” he argued, despite Putin’s publicly stated priorities.

Based on the military forces Russia is actually putting in place, Breedlove said, he believes Putin’s top priority is to protect Russian access to airfields and warm water seaports in the Eastern Mediterranean. The second priority, in service to the first, is to prop up Russia’s host, the Assad regime. Then third, he said, “After all of that, I think that they will do some counter-ISIL work to legitimize their approach to Syria.”

So what can NATO do about these expanding bubbles of no-go zones? First of all, in the Baltic and the Black Seas today, the alliance’s force can just go there, Breedlove said “to contest that they are not forbidden spaces” but international airspace and waters. Second, in case the shooting starts, it needs to invest in forces that can break the bubble.

“As an alliance, we need to step back and take a look at our capability in a military sense to address an A2/AD challenge,” Breedlove said. “This is about investment. This is about training.”

That investment must be across the board, Breedlove emphasized. “We have made great progress since Wales [i.e. the alliance’s

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],” he said. “We have increased the readiness and responsiveness of our NRF [

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] and certainly the VJTF [

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]. We have given the SACEUR back authorities to alert and stage forces, etcetera….. but it’s not enough.”

“What really deters, I think, that is we increase the readiness and responsiveness of the entire

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force structure,” Breedlove said, not just elite quick-reaction units like the NRF and VJTF. “We have to get to these investments, exercises, and training scenarios that

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.”

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Jura said:

wonder how it'll fit in this Thread ... but since I read it ...
Russia’s Military Buildup in Syria Targets US: NATO Chief

source:

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Obama and Putin both want to defeat ISIS. But their visions for how the world should look after its defeat don't match up.

Vladimir Putin’s theory of how to create a stable world is simple enough: Peace comes through maintaining strong states, strong leaders, and stable national institutions. At his address before the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, Putin made this point by pointing to the world’s most pressing international crises: the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq and the refugee crisis spreading across Europe.

“Refugees undoubtedly need our compassion and support, but the only way to solve this problem on a fundamental level is to restore the statehood where it has been destroyed, to strengthen the government institutions where they still exist,” Putin said through a translator.

He traced the origins of the Syrian crisis and ISIS to what he sees as the failures of the Arab Spring revolutions. “Rather than bringing back reforms … it has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself,” he said. “It is now obvious that the power vacuums created in some countries in the Middle East and Africa led to the emergence of anarchy areas, which immediately started to be filled with extremists and terrorists.”

President Obama spoke before Putin at the General Assembly, but his remarks may as well have been a direct response to Putin. “In accordance with this logic, we should support tyrants like Bashar al-Assad, who drops barrel bombs to massacre innocent children, because the alternative is surely worse,” Obama said. “Let’s remember how this started: Assad reacted to peaceful protests by escalating repression and killing that, in turn, created the environment for the current strife.”

Putin may have a shared interest with the United States in defeating ISIS, but his vision for how the world should look post-ISIS differs greatly from the president’s. In recent weeks

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the amount of military aid it is sending the Assad government, building up aerial defense systems and constructing a base that can hold 2,000 Russian military personnel,

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The New York Times. It’s the position of President Obama that Assad should be removed from power in the resolution of the conflict. (Recall the U.S. Congress came very close to a vote over whether it should bomb the Syrian government for its stockpile of chemical weapons). Also over the weekend, Russia announced an intelligence-sharing agreement with Iraq, Iran, and Syria in the fight against ISIS, further cementing the idea that Russia seeks to bolster the Iranian and Syrian governments.


“We think it is an enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces, who are fighting terrorism face to face,” Putin said.

Putin compared the fight against ISIS to the fight against Hitler during World War II—explaining how Nazism inspired a diverse coalition of countries to unite for a common good. “It could unite a broad range of forces,” Putin said. Perhaps the comparison is apt, even though it borders on hyperbole. After World War II, the allied powers of the United States and the U.S.S.R were united in victory but at odds with their visions of what the world should look like post Hitler. A potential defeat of ISIS could open up yet another conflict: What should take its place?

“The United States is prepared to work with any nation, including Russia and Iran, to resolve the conflict,” Obama said in his remarks. “We must recognize that there cannot be, after so much bloodshed, so much carnage, a return to the prewar status quo.”

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