On Thursday, NATO member nation defense ministers are meeting in Brussels, and high on their list of things to discuss is Russia's unwelcome military intervention in the Syrian conflict. On Wednesday, Russia said, it fired 26 medium-range cruise missiles from warships about 1,000 miles away in the Caspian Sea, an escalation that worries experts who don't want the Syrian war to provoke a conflict between NATO and Russia. Still, despite the increased tensions and risks of accident, "the Russians are seeking greater cooperation, and frankly we don't want that greater cooperation," a senior defense official told The New York Times.
On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter made a similar point. "We are not prepared to cooperate on strategy which, as we explained, is flawed, tragically flawed, on the Russians' part," Carter said in Rome, before heading to Brussels. He characterized nascent U.S. and Russian efforts to stay out of each other's way in the air "basic technical discussions on safety procedures for our pilots over Syria," adding pointedly: "That's it." Before Wednesday, The New York Times notes, U.S. officials used the word "deconfliction" when discussing U.S.-Russian efforts to not shoot each other's fighter jets down. The Wall Street Journal explains the U.S.-Russia dynamic in greater detail in the video below. Peter Weber
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