Putin, Trump and the peril of aerial chess

This editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune:

Five feet isn’t a whole lot of space, but Russia apparently thinks it’s just enough to send the U.S. a message. On Monday, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet sidled up alongside a U.S. air force RC-135 reconnaissance plane flying over the Baltic Sea, coming within 5 feet of the American aircraft. The Russian jet lingered for a few minutes, then veered away.

The apparent cause of all this aerial jousting was the downing Sunday of a Syrian warplane by an American F-18 fighter jet. The U.S. says the Syrian Su-22 aircraft had been dropping bombs near members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the U.S.-backed militia of Kurdish and Arab fighters who have begun the offensive to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from the Islamic State militant group.

The Pentagon knew that taking down one of Assad’s fighter jets would infuriate the Kremlin, but it was the right decision. A key to defeating Islamic State fighters has always been to rout them out of their two major strongholds in the Middle East: Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Iraqi forces are well on their way to wrapping up the job in Mosul. In Raqqa, the U.S.backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters stands the best chance of reclaiming that city. When Assad attacks SDF fighters, he makes it that much harder for the U.S. and the international community to achieve victory. But he now knows that if his forces again attack SDF fighters, they risk the same fate that befell the Syrian Su-22.

Achieving victory over Islamic State in Raqqa, by the way, should be as much of a goal for Moscow as it is for Washington. The militant who killed 16 people in an attack on a subway train in St. Petersburg in April is suspected of having links to Islamic State.

The U.S. and Russia have reams of divergent views and goals, but defeating Islamic State shouldn’t be one of them.