What could go wrong for the U.S. in Syria? War with Russia

If the United States goes down this road, the prospects of a military confrontation with Moscow are real. A few thousand Russian military personnel are distributed across Syria’s key military bases. Moscow has also placed some of the world’s most sophisticated air defense systems in Syria, and Russian planes police Syrian skies. So an extensive U.S. campaign aimed at coercing Assad by targeting Syrian air bases and command-and-control facilities would run big risks of killing Russian troops on the ground. The same holds for a no-fly zone, which would likely require targeting Syrian and Russian air defenses and could lead to air-to-air incidents between Russian and U.S. jets. Under any of these circumstances, the prospect of spiraling conflict is enhanced by Moscow’s decision to suspend the “deconfliction” channel between the Russian and U.S. militaries.

Compounding matters, in an effort to generate counter-leverage, Russia and the Assad regime are likely to respond to further U.S. strikes or a no-fly zone by reorienting their integrated air defense network toward U.S. and coalition aircraft engaged in fighting the Islamic State (ISIS), or by attacking opposition areas in northern Syria where nearly 1,000 U.S. troops are currently on the ground. This could derail the counter-ISIS campaign at the very moment when ISIS’s capital, Raqqa, is under assault by U.S.-backed forces. And it could put the lives of American service members in jeopardy.

There are also significant escalation risks even if the Trump administration doesn’t go down this path and sticks to the narrower stated objective of deterring further chemical attacks.