Con Coughlin: Russia Prepares for a Fight with America

Confirmation that the US and its allies are studying their military options for helping the anti-Assad rebels in Syria is a worrying development on a number of levels, not least of which is the prospect of the West becoming embroiled in a direct confrontation with the Russians. As I have argued before, I think the West, and that includes Britain, needs to proceed with great caution before it gets too closely involved in the Syrian crisis. As with the Libya situation last year, we still have no clear idea who the rebels are in Syria, or what their ultimate objective might be. Homs, the center of the anti-Assad rebellion, is a known center for Islamic extremists, and if all Western intervention achieves is the replacement of the Assad regime with an Iranian-style Islamist dictatorship, then we will have scored a monumental own goal. Of deeper concern, though, is the possibility that the US could find itself involved in a direct military confrontation with Russia over the future of Syria's destiny. We have been here before, of course, during the 1980's when, at the height of the Cold War, Moscow and Washington fought a proxy war over the fate of neighboring Lebanon. Even though US President Ronald Reagan deployed thousands of US Marines to Beirut, the Americans were eventually sent packing. During that conflict, Russia backed the Syrians, who in turn used the Iranian-backed Hizbollah militia to carry out a series of devastating terrorist attacks against the Americans, ultimately forcing them to to withdraw their forces from Lebanon.