Where did Stratfor get this 'intelligence' from? The back of a box of Cheerios?
“The United States also knows that Russia's assistance in this fight comes with a price,” Stratfor says. “Russia has already tried, through peace talks and spoiler attacks, to use its involvement in Syria to draw the United States into a negotiation on broader issues — sanctions against Russia over Ukraine and the scale of NATO's military buildup in Europe, for example,” the company further suggests.
Therefore, it says, the White House has been “receptive to a dialogue on tactical coordination here and there with Moscow, but Washington does not feel particularly compelled to make substantive concessions to Russia.”Why would the Russians shoot themselves in the foot, when they're so very intent on winning against the bad guys in Syria? They won't play games with the lives of the Syrians in order to negotiate with Americans about Russian-NATO/Ukraine issues because even if they'd consider doing that, they know such negotiations could take years! Unlike Americans, the Russians have a good sense of the passage of time. They don't want to hang out in Syria for the next 20 years and couldn't afford to do so.
Putin has said that a fight against Islamic State has the best chance of fast success in Syria if it's done in coordination between interested governments. But all that Russia 'wants' from the USA in Syria is to stop its proxy war there, which includes backing of terrorist groups, and to discourage its allies, such as Saudi Arabia, from doing the same.
Yet I feel a little silly pointing this out because surely Stratfor knows all this. Anyone who pays attention to the war in Syria knows.
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