Russia, U.S. Military Involvement in, 1921–95

Russia, U.S. Military Involvement in, 1921–95. By 1921, the United States had withdrawn its military forces from Russia and entered a long period of official noninvolvement. After opening diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933, the only military involvement was the usual stationing of military attachés and Marine guards at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

In World War II, as a cobelligerent with the Soviet Union against Germany and Italy, the United States provided extensive material military assistance to the Soviet Union under the Lend‐Lease Act and Agreements. And in 1944, some U.S. aircraft flying bombing missions against targets in German‐occupied or German‐allied Central and Eastern Europe landed on airfields in the Soviet Union. U.S. military personnel were thus involved in the military supply effort (by sea in Murmansk, by air through Alaska, and by land through Iran) and to a limited extent in direct support of U.S. air combat operations.

After this cooperative engagement in World War II, as U.S.‐Soviet relations plummeted into the Cold War during the years after 1945, there was again no direct U.S. military involvement in Russia. There was, however, an active U.S. military role in air and sea reconnaissance along the borders of the Soviet Union. Sometimes inadvertently, and sometimes deliberately, such forays transgressed into illegal incursions into Soviet coastal water and air space. There were also some military, as well as Central Intelligence Agency, deep air penetrations. This led to dozens of incidents and the shooting down of thirty‐one U.S. military aircraft along Soviet borders between 1950 and 1970. Some minor accidental collisions of U.S. submarines and Soviet ships took place in or near Soviet waters, and there was one deliberate minor collision between surface warships in Soviet territorial waters in 1983.

In only one instance during the Cold War did the United States engage in direct military combat action against a target in the Soviet Union, and then not deliberately. During the Korean War, in 1950, an American fighter‐bomber by error bombed and strafed a military airfield in the Soviet Union near North Korea.

As the Cold War drew to a close, such incidents declined sharply. Moreover, new forms of cooperative and even collaborative contacts emerged. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987 provided for inspection of intermediate‐range missile facilities in the two countries, and U.S. military inspectors thereafter visited many locations in the Soviet Union. This pattern expanded under the START Treaty of 1990, both treaties going beyond the SALT agreements of 1972 in providing exchanges of military information as well as on‐site inspection.

Following a meeting of Soviet minister of defense Dmitry Yazov and U.S. secretary of defense Frank Carlucci in 1987, a series of bilateral high‐level military contacts took place. The respective military chiefs of staff, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev and Adm. William Crowe, reciprocated visits in 1988–89. Many military exchanges at lower levels, including from respective War Colleges, ensued. Ships of the two navies also carried out courtesy calls.

Such cooperative relations continued between Russia and the United States after the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of 1991. By 1995, perspective collaboration in peacekeeping operations during the Bosnian Crisis was planned with Russian troops under a senior American commander. A new era had arrived.
[See also Russia, U.S. Military Intervention in, 1917–20; SALT Treaties; START Treaty (1982); World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Raymond L. Garthoff