Russia announced that it is preparing to deploy troops to police the borders of planned "de-escalation zones" in Syria after finalizing an agreement with Turkey and Iran. The word came from Russian negotiator Alexander Lavrentyev following the latest round of ongoing talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana [16]. (Reuters [17], July 4) We've noted that the so-called "de-escalation zones" or "safe zones" could become kill zones [18], where Russia and Assad will be able to bomb with (even greater) impunity—as they will officially not be "safe" for ISIS, and Moscow and Damascus have long used the propaganda trick [18] of conflating all rebel forces with ISIS. Now, with the US also sending ground troops [19] to join the forces fighting ISIS, American and Russian soliders could find themselves in close proximity, with greater of odds of ending up shooting at each other—potentially leading to unparalleled catastrophe [20].
The US is already practically at war with Iranian-led forces in Syria [21]. June 19 saw a fourth engagement [22]in which the US fired on pro-regime forces in Syria. The fifth came the very next day, when a US warplane for a second time in less than a month shot down an Iranian dorne near the flash-point town of al-Tanf [23]. (Fox News [24], June 20) Just hours later, there was yet another [25] unnerving incident over the Baltic Sea as NATO and Russian warplanes came close to open confrontation. (BBC News [26], June 21)
Hours after that, Russia threatened to shoot down aircraft flown by the US and its allies west of the Euphrates—that is, outside the area where all the Great Powers are more or less unified against ISIS, and in the area where Russia and Iran are backing the Assad regime in its war on the Free Syrian Army and other rebels. (NYT [27], June 19)
President Trump [28] is to sit down for an extended meeting with Vladimir Putin this week on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Hamburg. (LAT [29], July 4) Perhaps they will arrive at a modus operandi for respecting each other's spheres of influence in Syria—which will not be particularly good news for the Syrians, but could at least contain the conflict from becoming further internationalized. Or, they may not...
There have been signs of both collusion [30] and breach [31] between Trump and Putin in recent weeks—each with dangers of their own. But we have noted how every "ceasefire" or "peace plan" in the Syrian war has actually presaged a massive escalation [32]...
