Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn: We Are Moving Toward a Major War

A warning of “major war” involving Russia and the United States has come from Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Defense Intelligence Agency head who was fired by Obama after his agency submitted a 2012 assessment that U.S. policy was leading toward a “Salafist caliphate” in Iraq and Syria (i.e., what became ISIS). Lt. Gen. Flynn was interviewed by Russia’s Kommersant Vlast magazine on Dec. 30.

The interview is wide-ranging and combative, and includes Gen. Flynn’s assessment that there are “5-10,000 Russian citizens fighting [for ISIS—ed.] in Syria,” making it a strategic necessity for Russia to be fighting the terrorists in Syria “so that they don’t return to Chechnya, Dagestan, Uzbekistan, Moscow.”

But the general says it is urgent that the Obama Administration stop arming groups. And he warns where that policy is heading. “When I look at what’s going on—how things are—I can see that a huge threat hangs over us,” Flynn told Kommersant Vlast. “The direction in which we are currently moving leads to a widening of the conflict—to a major war. The closer we are to it, the higher the risks, the higher the price, the more limited our choices.

“So now it is important that we work together, the United States and Russia, to determine whether we can develop more opportunities together to stabilize the situation,” Flynn concludes.