Russian president signals he will take action if America strikes at Assad as US counterpart admits relations have hit a wall
Putin, in an interview publishedon Wednesday, said it was too early to talk about what Russia would do if the US attacked Syria but added: "We have our ideas about what we will do and how we will do it in case the situation develops toward the use of force or otherwise. We have our plans."
He then said Russia might restart Syria's suspended S-300 air defence missile contract. Describing the weapon as "very efficient", he said: "If we see that steps are taken that violate the existing international norms, we shall think how we should act in the future, in particular regarding supplies of such sensitive weapons to certain regions of the world."
The statement could also be a veiled threat to revive a contract for the delivery of the S-300s to Iran, which Russia cancelled a few years ago under strong US and Israeli pressure.
It's not possible to know just how serious Putin is about this, but it is definitely something that he has the realistic option of doing. This is quite a bit different from direct military conflict between the US and Russia. It is very much reminiscent of the cold war when the two powers played the endless game of arming each other's opponents. The arms supplied to the North Vietnamese by the USSR were a major factor in that debacle for the US.
Militarily there are limits to what Russia can do to help the Assad regime by supplying military technology. However, they can most definitely up the ante for the US. A missile shield defense could force the US to resort to the use of aircraft which could be shot down by ground defenses. Any loss of US military personnel would greatly increase the domestic political liabilities for Obama.
The US is a sufficiently strong military super power that no nation state is going to attack it directly. But over and over again it is brought face to face with the reality of the limits in imposing its power on the rest of the world.