{"id":76430,"date":"2018-04-11T22:29:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T04:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=76430"},"modified":"2018-04-11T15:15:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T22:15:46","slug":"possible-us-uk-france-israel-saudi-alliance-verses-russia-iran-syria-military-showdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/04\/11\/possible-us-uk-france-israel-saudi-alliance-verses-russia-iran-syria-military-showdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Possible US-UK-France-Israel-Saudi Alliance Verses Russia-Iran-Syria Military Showdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kumar Moses<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Western regimes (without evidence) have alleged Syrian government used\u00a0chemical weapons<\/strong>\u00a0and threatened military action. Russia and Syria at the emergency UN Security Council meeting demanded UN chemical weapons inspectors carry out an investigation immediately. USA, UK and France vehemently opposed any such investigation! Syria is facing Iraq’s\u00a0WMD<\/strong>moment. Unlike Iraq 2002, Syria 2018 is backed by Russia and Iran.<\/p>\n

Game of threats and counter threats<\/strong><\/p>\n

USA, UK and France have threatened to carry out military strikes against the civilian Assad regime. Israel has already carried out limited air attacks on Syrian military killing over a dozen Syrians. Saudi Arabia as expressed willingness to join them. Interestingly\u00a0Saudi Prince MbS<\/strong>\u00a0recently conceded the right of Israel to exist as a nation, as it is, and allowed Indian and other airlines headed to Israel to overfly Saudi Kingdom. Israel now has the Sunni Kingdom at their feet.<\/p>\n

In turn Russia has promised dire consequences for the US lead alliance if any Russia is harmed intentionally or not. Iran has a continuing threat to close the\u00a0Strait of Hormuz<\/strong>\u00a0if it is attacked. This will be a windfall for Russia and Iran in their petroleum exports as Saudi and Qatar petroleum exports will be disrupted.<\/p>\n

Across the globe, China is accused of staging military drills mocking the invasion of rebellious Chinese province of Taiwan. USA raised tensions in Taiwan after it lifted a travel ban on US officials to Taiwan and agreed to sell weapons hitherto withheld from selling. If war breaks out between USA and Russia in and around Syria, China will grab the good opportunity to assert its influence in the western Pacific.<\/p>\n

Military build-up<\/strong><\/p>\n

USA is preparing to strike Syria with the guided missile destroyer\u00a0USS Donald Cook<\/strong>\u00a0armed with\u00a0Tomahawk<\/strong>\u00a0cruise missiles. April 2017 saw Tomahawk missiles attacking Syrian airfields and the same warship attacked Libyan air defences before taking on\u00a0Kaddafi’s<\/strong>\u00a0forces. USS Donald Cook is now in the Eastern Mediterranean close to Syria. Russian military base\u00a0Latakia<\/strong>\u00a0in the Syrian western coast may also be a target.<\/p>\n

US aircraft carrier\u00a0Harry S Truman<\/strong>\u00a0along with a Carrier Strike Group has left\u00a0Norfolk<\/strong>\u00a0heading to the Middle East to engage Syria. USA already has one carrier battle group stationed in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

France and UK have sent their own warships to the region.<\/p>\n

An armed Russian warplane harassed French frigate\u00a0Aquitaine<\/strong>\u00a0in the region after using advanced electronic warfare jamming mechanisms to shut out the French frigate’s defences. Electronic warfare of Russian troops also saw action against US surveillance and attack drones in Syria recently. Just a month ago Iranian troops in southern Syria shot down an Israeli\u00a0F-16<\/strong>fighter jet with a 1960s Russian\u00a0S-200<\/strong>\u00a0missile system.<\/p>\n

Quiet escalation or noisy chicken-out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In most likelihood parties will chicken out with some noise as USA did in April 2017. US Tomahawk missiles, 59 of them, failed to cause real damage to Syria but they made a lot of noise convincing some people to believe they won the encounter! In reality the opposite happened \u2013 Syrian troops won a number of battles against US funded terrorist groups and reclaimed territory occupied by them. Both sides quietly shared wins \u2013 publicity wins for the democratic camp and actual military gains for the other camp.<\/p>\n

This will be the same in most likelihood. However, there is some probability of escalation, if the parties stick to their public threats. Trust between NATO and Russia is at all-time low, lower than during the Cold War. Since April 2017, the parties have worsened their ties by expulsion of diplomats, economic sanctions, military drills, new weapons development and deployment and tit-for-tat disruption of UN Security Council resolutions.<\/p>\n

During the Cold War USA and the Soviet Union didn’t have aggressive leaders at the same time. When the US was ruled by an aggressive leader, the SU was ruled by a pacifist leader; when the SU was ruled by a relatively hawkish leader, the US was ruled by a relatively pacifist leader. This ensured de-escalation of tensions. However, this is not the case today. Both near peer rivals are ruled by powerful leaders. Even China is ruled by a powerful leader with little room for compromise. This makes a US-Russia confrontation far more likely today than during the Cold War.<\/p>\n

Even if they walk out of total war with some casualties this time, it will not be the last of their confrontations. They will clash again in the near future.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kumar Moses Western regimes (without evidence) have alleged Syrian government used\u00a0chemical weapons\u00a0and threatened military action. Russia and Syria at the emergency UN Security Council meeting demanded UN chemical weapons inspectors carry out an investigation immediately. USA, UK and France vehemently opposed any such investigation! Syria is facing Iraq’s\u00a0WMDmoment. Unlike Iraq 2002, Syria 2018 is backed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kumar-moses","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}