Red lines and mushroom clouds

The United States has no red lines; it is free to subvert, bomb and invade at will in order to advance its interests. Russia, by contrast, cannot act to secure its interests beyond the red line.

Ukraine is a state that is historically divided between east and west, and a sort of post cold war modus vivendi existed between Moscow and Washington regarding how this was to be managed. Critical to this understanding was the recognition of Russian strategic interests in Ukraine, expressed through Ukrainian neutrality and Russian control of the Black Sea fleet in Crimea.

This understanding was broken when the US moved to assist the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, who hailed from the east, as President of Ukraine by right wing nationalists from the west, who at once declared an intent to break this modus vivendi.

Naturally, Moscow feared that Ukraine would be incorporated into NATO upon the extension of the red line to the borders of Russia. Vladimir Putin immediately moved to annex the strategically significant Crimea, although historically a part of Russia and populated by Russians its annexation breached international law and treaties, and supported a revolt by the population of eastern Ukraine against western domination.

A very important consideration for Moscow was pushing the red line back away from Russia's borders.

Despite what may be the case on the ground the most important strategic affect of the Ukraine crisis is the official extension of the US red line to the borders of Russia.

The imposition of sanctions, the isolation of Russia politically, and the significant freezing of US-Russian relations means precisely this. To be sure Putin's actions mean the red line de facto has been pushed back to the historical fault line between western and eastern Ukraine, however Moscow would prefer that the red line be pushed officially back to where it currently sits de facto if not back to where it was prior to the ouster of Yanukovych.

That is why, in part, it has militarily intervened in the conflict in Syria in a way that props up the Baathist regime of Bashar al Assad. By supporting Damascus Russia encroaches upon a US red line, namely the Middle East, where no other great power hitherto has dared cross. Moscow hopes that its intervention in the Middle East will give it leverage to push the red line back at home.

In Syria we see the deployment of military firepower by both Russia, US allies such as Turkey and, of course, the United States itself. These deployments seek to establish and maintain red lines, as demonstrated by Turkey's shooting down of a Russian military aircraft, a dangerous precedent, and Russia's deployment of firepower to prevent anti Assad forces from crossing red lines in the internal conflict. The United States has also set red lines in Syria which Assad dare not cross.

All of this, of course, poses the risk of a wider conflict through miscalculation and accident.

The scramble to set red lines also occurs in the Asia Pacific as witnessed by the interplay between China, the United States and Japan. China is setting red lines a little bit beyond its borders in strategically and economically significant islands.

However, as with Russia, the United States has set its red line on China's border as evidenced by its efforts to counter what it calls Beijing's strategy of "anti access/area denial," which is designed, we are told, to deny the Pentagon access to China's red lines namely her borders.