Raising the most important issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, 85-year-old former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev worried about prospects of war with the United States. With the U.S. and Russia on opposite sides in Syria, President Barack Obama backed the Saudi proxy war over the last six years to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin started air strikes Aug. 30, 2015 to defend al-Assad, the Saudi-U.S.-Turkey funded proxy war to topple al-Assad’s Shiite government turned the corner. In Saudi-U.S.-Turkey rebels’ last stand in Aleppo, Syria and Russia have launched an all-out assault hoping to break the Saudi-U.S.-Turkey funded insurgency. Gorbachev worries that if Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gets elected Nov. 8, the Syrian war will escalate into a U.S.-Russian confrontation.
Hillary backs Sen. John McCain’s (R-Az.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, call for a no-fly zone with warnings to shoot down Russian and Syrian warplanes. Obama, while backing the Saudi proxy war against al-Assad, can’t explain why the U.S. should topple another Mideast dictator, given the disasters in Iraq, Egypt, Libya and now Syria. Putin made his feelings known Aug. 28, 2015 telling the U.N. General Assembly that toppling al-Assad would repeat the same mistakes in Iraq, spreading more death, destruction and terrorism to the region. Gorbachev worries that if Hillary continues her belligerent rhetoric toward Russia, it will eventually lead to WWIII. “I think the world has reached a dangerous point,” Gorbachev told RIA Novosti, Russia’s state news agency. “But I do want to say that this needs to stop,” referring to saber rattling on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mired in scandals and salacious details in the 2016 campaign, voters haven’t considered the all-important war-and-peace issue. Under Obama, U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated to the lowest point since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Gorbachev’s old enough to recall how close the U.S. and Russia came to nuclear war when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy backed down from a nuclear standoff. Gorbachev worked hard with President Ronald Reagan on détente and perestroika, reducing nuclear arms, and, at the same time, improving U.S.-Russian relations. During Obama’s eight years, the opposite happened. When Secretary of State John Kerry suspended Syria peace talks with Russia Oct. 3, it raised the specter of military confrontation between the two superpowers. Once thought unthinkable, it’s now a real possibility under U.S. policy.
Diverting voters’ attention to Hillary’s email problems or recent accusations of Trump’s sexual misconduct camouflages the most dangerous state of U.S.-Russian relations since the height of the Cold War. Once Kerry walked out on peace talks, Syria and Russia escalated its campaign in Aleppo. Whether admitted to or not by the U.S. or European Union, Saudi-U.S.-Turkey-backed terrorist groups have occupied Aleppo since 2012. Escalating the war on terrorists in Aleppo, al-Assad and Putin see an end to the nearly six-year-old conflict. Despite U.N. Geneva-based peace efforts led by Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura, Saudi’s 56-year-old U.S.-educated Foreign Minster Adel al-Jubeir said March 5 there will be no peace in Syria until al-Assad leaves Damascus. With Russia and Iran backing Syria’s sovereignty, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. stubbornly cling to their proxy war.
Over the Syrian stalemate, Putin deployed Russian Iskander missiles to a base in Kalingrad, wedged between Poland and Lithuania. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeir wrote in the German newspaper Bild that it was more dangerous than anything during the Cold War. Steinmeir sees the deployment as related to developments in Syria where saber-rattling by Hillary and McCain has put Putin into a defensive mode. “The idea is to intimidate the West. Because Russia does not have any other tools to fight for its competitiveness in the international arena but psychology. Even the Russian military are comparatively weaker than NATO forces,” said Igor Sutyagin with London-based Royal United Services Institute. Sutyagin forgets, that unlike NATO, Putin’s ready and willing to deploy his military assets. Whether NATO as more assets or not, Putin uses the Russian military often.
Heading into Nov. 6, voters need to assess carefully the military positions of Hillary and GOP nominee real estate mogul Donald Trump. Trump’s made clear he has no interest in confronting Russia or toppling more dictators in the Middle East. Gorbachev worries that Hillary’s stated views of defending Syrian civilians could lead to a confrontation with Russia. With accusations flying about alleged Russian cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee, National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper ramped up the Cold War rhetoric. “We believe, base on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” said Clapper’s office. Calling the accusations “anti-Russian hysteria,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the White House was using “dirty methods” to smear the Russian Federation.
