Tobin Harshaw, Columnist

Putin's Navy Sends a Shot Across Obama's Bow

Russia can fire big missiles from small ships. Can the U.S.?

October 16, 2015 at 1:45 PM UTC

Tobin Harshaw is a Bloomberg Opinion senior editor and columnist on national security and military affairs. Previously, he was deputy editor at the op-ed page of the New York Times and the newspaper’s letters editor.

U.S. near-shore combat ships are staying very near shore, away from combat.
Photographer: Lockheed Martin via Getty Images

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Russia's attack on Syrian territory last week, using cruise missiles fired from the Caspian Sea, led to a fair amount of chuckling in the West, after U.S. reports that four of the missiles crashed in Iran. But this is no laughing matter. Arguing over the attack's effectiveness misses the point.

If Moscow had only wanted to hit Bashar al-Assad's enemies in Syria, it has plenty of ships nearby in the Mediterranean to do the job. Rather, the Russians launched the 26 missiles from the Caspian simply to show they were capable of doing so. The U.S. and its allies should be warned: Vladimir Putin notched another success.