Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Russia and Eastern Europe Page 13 of 17

Examining Turkey’s Shoot Down of a Russian Jet

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On November 24, 2015

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First, the ostensible reason for this incident is the Turkmen rebels in Syria. Erdogan summoned the Russian ambassador earlier this week to warn against strikes against the Turkmen in Syria.

Second, it’s worth considering that much of this is about Turkish domestic politics. Erdogan is playing to the crowd, in the same way done by jingoistic politicians all over the world.

Then there is Putin’s statement:

This event is beyond the normal framework of fighting against terrorism. Of course our military is doing heroic work against terrorism… But the loss today is a stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists. I can’t describe it in any other way. Our aircraft was downed over the territory of Syria, using air-to-air missile from a Turkish F-16. It fell on the Syrian territory 4km from Turkey.

…

We will analyse everything, and today’s tragic event will have significant consequences, including for Russia-Turkish relations. We have always treated Turkey as a friendly state. I don’t know who was interested in what happened today, certainly not us. And instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from Nato to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours.

So, Putin is saying that Turkey is the “accomplice of terrorists.” Because the preponderance of evidence is that Turkey has been keeping supply lines open for ISIS, I would tend to agree. But something being true, and something being stated by the leader of a Great Power are two different things. Putin calling Erdogan an accomplice of terrorists is a big deal.

Russia can retaliate in a number of ways, from the obvious (shooting down a Turkish jet in a “tit-for-tat”), to the brutal (cutting Turkey off from natural gas this winter) to the subtle (taking the Turkish PKK under wing and becoming their new sponsors, while providing the Turks in general with equipment such as man portable anti-air missiles and anti-tank weapons).

Bear in mind that the Turkish military is very large, with a pile of tanks. They have, however, spent their recent history mostly in anti-insurgency efforts (burning Turkish villages, rape and torture, the usual), and anti-insurgency tends to degrade militaries.  It is also an open question how much the purges of the officer corps have affected the military.

NATO and President Obama have both made supportive sounds, so Russia and Putin are likely to lump in the West with Turkey in this matter.

I feel I should point out the obvious, once more. Russia is still a nuclear armed state with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world multiple times over. A confrontation between NATO and Russia is not acceptable to anyone even remotely sane.

Finally, there is the question of whether or not the Russian jet was in Turkish airspace. The Turks claim it was (for a few seconds), the Russians claim it wasn’t. I certainly don’t know which is true.

But over-fussiness about a few seconds strikes me as absurd. The US routinely violates virtually every country in the world’s airspace. Turkey and everyone else in the region routinely violates Syrian airspace, while Russia actually has permission to be there.

I believe that countries should not violate each other’s airspace. And I would be willing to support that principle in a world where that was the practice, but it is not.

That said, the real rule of airspace is: “Can you shoot me down?” And Syria’s answer is: “No.” But Russia’s answer Russia is: “Yes,” and Russia could decide to defend Syria’s airspace from Turkey at the request of the Syrian government.

All of this is vastly complicated by geography. Turkey can close off the Black Sea from the Mediterranean any time it wants. This means that Russia’s supplies to Syria must go through either Iran and Iraq, or it must come the long way around from the Baltic Sea.

By and large, however, this entire exercise stinks of hypocrisy. The fact is that despite all the screaming and the rhetoric almost no one actually wants to defeat ISIS. Turkey definitely doesn’t want to, the US doesn’t want to because its allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Israel in varying degrees support ISIS, and the West in general doesn’t want to (as with France bombing empty depots in response to the Paris attacks; sound and fury accomplishing nothing.)

Russia wants to support the Syrian government, and the first thing Russia wants to do is seal the Turkish border in order to cut off ISIS’s main supply line and source of recruits.

That is what this is really about. Turkey wants what remains of the Syrian state to collapse or to become a puppet (thus “Assad Must Go”).  The goals of the two states are in direct opposition. And Erdogan has just made it clear in how much direct opposition.

This particular incident is about ISIS only indirectly, but be clear: The only people who really want to defeat ISIS are Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, the Kurds, and Iraq. No one else of significance does.

Your deaths in Paris and elsewhere, children, whatever hypocrisy Western leaders like Hollande may spew, are acceptable collateral casualties to your masters. They will turn Europe into a police state in an attempt to root out ISIS cells (and because they wanted a police state already and this is a great excuse), but they are not actually serious about defeating ISIS.

(Addendum, Obama’s statement:

President Obama noted that it was important to ensure that Russia and Turkey continue to talk to each other, but went on to say: “This points to an ongoing problem with the Russian operation, in the sense that they are operating very close to the Turkish border and going after moderate opposition supported by Turkey and a wide range of countries.”

Anyone who says “moderation opposition” is either abysmally stupid or lying. (Again, no Western country is serious about defeating ISIS.))

(Addendum , Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoy:

Now the General Staff is elaborating additional security measures for the Russian airbase.

First: All the activities of the attack aviation will be carried out only under cover of fighter aircraft.

Second: Air defence will be reinforced. For that purpose, the Moskva cruiser equipped with air defence system Fort analogous to the S-300 one will go to the shore zone of Latakia. Russian Defence Ministry warns that all the potentially dangerous targets will be destroyed.

Third: Contacts with Turkey will be terminated at the military level».)

Ouch. AKA, “Don’t try that again unless you want an actual fight.”)

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Turkey Shoots Down Russian Jet

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On November 24, 2015

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Turkey claims it was in Turkish airspace, Russia claims it was in Syrian airspace.

Remember, ISIS gets a lot of its supplies and recruits through the Turkish border, which the Turks have kept open for them.  Remember also that Turkish air strikes in Syria have primarily hit Kurds fighting ISIS.

Turkey is not “anti-ISIS,” quite the contrary.

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Putin’s Secret Intent and How It Relates to Syria

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On November 13, 2015

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Apparently Putin is difficult to understand:

Vladimir Putin Official Portrait

Vladimir Putin

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created in 1949 to contain the Soviet Union, said it’s not sure what Putin is trying to achieve with either his actions in Ukraine or his weapons program.

“We cannot fully grasp Putin’s intent,” the alliance’s top military commander, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, told Congress in April, according to the Defense Department’s website. “What we can do is learn from his actions, and what we see suggests growing Russian capabilities, significant military modernization and an ambitious strategic intent.”

I first studied economics back in the early eighties. The discussion of trade was perfunctory; trade was not considered particularly important to the US economy because, with the exception of oil, the US could produce pretty much everything it needed, and–just as importantly–most of what it wanted.

Modern orthodoxy maintains that trade makes one strong. This is fundamentally incorrect. Trade is necessary at times as a bootstrap up for industry, or to get things you truly cannot make yourself, but it can make you weak. The more you trade, the more vulnerable you are.

Russia is vulnerable. Putin turned Russia around by concentrating on hydrocarbon production and selling it to foreigners.

Commodity production is always a bad deal. No matter how rich it makes you, commodity prices are always boom or bust, and are always subject to technological obsolesence.

So, Russian defense spending:

Defense and the related category of national security and law enforcement now eat up 34 percent of the budget, more than double the ratio in 2010.

…

Putin signed documents creating what he called the “industrial battalions” program, which will give thousands of draftees the option of working in defense enterprises instead of joining the regular military.

After years of chronic funding problems for weapons makers, Russia has started to prepay for the goods and services it buys from the more than 1,300 organizations and 2.5 million people that make up the defense industry.

This is not hard to understand.

What part of Russian industry is most technologically advanced and does the world demand the most?

Weapons.

Russia needs to diversify what it exports. Military goods are the obvious market for which to do so. Really, there are only three sources for military goods: the West, China, and Russia.

Russia appears to have begun this strategy about 2012, before the oil price crash, the Ukraine, and so forth, but their vulnerability to oil price crashes was obvious. That the US was continuing to try to destabilize Russia’s near abroad and draw it into NATO was obvious as well.

Now, Syria.

What’s the problem with buying your weapons from the US?

Unless you’re a core US ally, the US is unreliable. If your government changes in ways the US doesn’t like, or if you are an enemy of  US core partners (Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.), they will cut you off from parts and ammunition at the drop of a hat, as well as canceling pre-paid orders.

But: The US was able to say that they had the best equipment. No one could compete.

What is happening in Syria is a demonstration that Russia can be counted on to help its allies—meaning its customers. It is a demonstration that Russia’s new weapons, and particularly its cruise missiles and airpower, are comparable to US product, and maybe, even in the case of its most advanced fighter/bomber, better.

It is a demonstration that if you buy Russian you aren’t buying crap that US-supplied forces can roll right over any more.

The Syria issue is a trade policy issue.

That is not to deny the geopolitical element to it, there certainly is one. But most analysts are not catching that this is also economic policy in action.

Shove Russia against a wall, impose sanctions, drive down the price of oil, and of course they will reach for what else they do well, and can sell.

The failure to anticipate this, the failure to understand this at the highest possible levels of NATO, when Putin had been telegraphing his strategy for years, is a terrible indictment of our “leadership”‘s competence.

Now, add to first class armaments and reliable supplies, a proper payments and banking system with China’s aid. Add China’s industrial goods and willingness to build infrastructure, and you have a second vertical capable of supplying virtually everything the West can do, and one which doesn’t care about the internal politics outside its near-abroad.

That new world isn’t quite here yet, but it’s almost.

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Some Interesting Things About the Russian Coalition’s Syrian Campaign

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On October 16, 2015

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Notice that one of their major initial objectives is to seal the border with Turkey.

This is because Turkey is the major supply route for the various factions in Syria (and Iraq). And that is Turkish policy.

Note, also, just how effective Russian air support, backed by coalition ground forces, has been. Air power without decent boots is great for destruction and not much else, but it really is a force multiplier if you have the troops to exploit it. This is Russia giving its ally an air force, in the same way the US has so often done.

Finally, note that Russia has just given itself a major presence in the Middle East by becoming a strong ally of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and (downstream) Hezbollah. Don’t think they’ll forget who bailed them out on this.

I’ll have a longer guest post up on Russian strategy in historical context posted soon, I hope.

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Ukraine and the perils of lack of commitment

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On February 23, 2015

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The Ukrainian government has essentially admitted that their military is defeated.  The separatists (with Russian backing) are in the ascendent.  NATO countries are being mealy-mouthed about whether or not to send arms.  For now, Putin and Russia appear to have won, and any deal will have to be on their terms.

The protests which caused the crisis by engendering a coup were heavily backed by America, and to a lesser extent by the Europeans (much lesser, Europe was aware of the potential for disaster.)

America spent decades trying to get the Ukraine into the Western, NATO orbit, as a way of making sure that Russia could never rise as a European power again.

Then, having finally gotten a government which would do what it wanted, they blinked (or one hopes they have.)

Why?  Because the Ukraine is far more important to Russia than it is to the West.  They were right: Russia can’t afford to have Ukraine fall into Western hands, let alone join NATO.  Leaving aside the “empire” issue, it would put troops far too close to Moscow.

So Russia gave the separatists the necessary aid to win and America did not give the government the aid it needed.

Hung out to dry.

The game is not over, however.  In particular the results of the coming presidential election in America will matter a great deal.  Hilary Clinton is even more of a hawk than Obama, and has repeatedly insulted Putin.  She is much older than Obama and she grew up in the Cold War.  She seems to genuinely fear the rebirth of a modern version of the USSR or the Russian Empire, and she’s been playing a hawk for so long that I believe she now really is one.

Many of the potential Republican candidates are little better.

I don’t regard this is as necessarily a good thing, both because Russia is unlikely to blink, and because the antagonists are nuclear armed.

But there is a window to make a deal: Ukraine not in NATO, and federalized, with some sort of economic arrangement which acknowledges its dependence on Russia.  Ukraine’s window for this is closing not just because of the possibility of American intervention (which might be in the interests of the government, but is unlikely to be good for the actual population: war on your own soil rarely is), but because Russia is moving to reduce its dependence on pipelines thru the Ukraine to Europe.  Once they no longer need Ukrainian pass-through, they can simply shut the pipelines off.

Ukrainian winters are very cold.  Very.  And much of their industry needs those hydrocarbons.  Getting them from anyone but Russia will be much more expensive, and will come at the cost of massive IMF austerity and foreign buyouts of everything the Ukraine has worth owning.

Let us hope a deal is made, for everyone’s sake.

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Why We Should Want the Return of a Two World System

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On February 16, 2015

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Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a two-world system. If you didn’t like the deal that US was offering you, you could go the USSR.  If you didn’t like the deal Russia was offering you could go to the US.

While the US probably offered a better deal, especially in later years, you could have a pretty decent life as a client state to the Soviets.  Cuba under Castro had a higher standard of living in practically every way than it did pre-Castro, when it was an American client state.

Equally, you could play the two off against each other, looking for the best deal.  This made it harder for them to screw you over.

As the USSR weakened, the deals became worse.  The USSR of the 80s could not offer what the USSR of 50s could.  Still, the ability to tell the superpower of your choice, who feared and hated the other superpower, that they had to treat you at least slightly right had benefits.

I certainly don’t want to romanticize the cold-war period.  There were ugly coups, torture regimes and wars.  There was famine.  But while we have less of that today, we don’t have less of it because of the end of the cold war.  Indeed, we have more failed states than we did during the cold war, because it is in no one’s particular interest to pick them up.

So one of the events that I have been tracking since the early 2000’s (as has Stirling) is when a viable second bloc would emerge.

To be viable, a bloc must be able to:

  • Provide relatively high technology;
  • Provide development: power, roads, railways, etc;
  • Provide the consumer goods people want;
  • Provide credit;
  • Feed countries which need food;
  • Provide energy (which still means oil and other hydrocarbons, though that’s changing);
  • Provide some sort of credible military aid or umbrella.

Yesterday I wrote about Russia creating its own bank payments system to compete with the West’s SWIFT. This is important, because since the fall of the USSR, the West (or more accurately, America) has increasingly used this to punish those nations it does not like.  Piss off Washington and they will shut down your ability engage with global credit markets, and even the ability of your citizens to use credit cards.  Pretty soon you can’t buy what you want, even if you have the money, or you pay a huge premium.

So the creation of a Russian SWIFT, while woefully inadequate by itself, was a first step towards meeting one of the needs of a new bloc with rivals the West.

The linchpin nation in any new bloc would be China.  China can credibly provide development, credit and consumer goods (they make much of them anyway.)  But China will also need countries which can supply oil and raw materials: Russia, Venezuela, Iran,  Argentina, and so on.  Much of South America would rather sell food and raw materials to China (or Russia, or whoever) than to the US, because they remember, well, not being treated very well by America during and after the Cold War.

Russia’s military technology, while not as good as America’s, is good enough for most purposes, and China, as is usually the case, has vast amounts of shipbuilding capacity for those who want a navy.  America’s space program is charging forward (mostly privately) but Russia still has plenty of lift capacity for satellites, and China is working hard on its space program.

The BRICS have created their own development bank, as well, so combined with an expansion of the new SWIFT, credit which can be used to buy almost anything you want, or need, will be available.

This, my friends, is the configuration in which the unipolar moment (which has lasted two and a half decades so far) ends.

It was always going to end, for all things do, the question was how soon.  American actions have accelerated what should have taken a couple decades more, significantly, by marginalizing too many countries.  Marginalizing or destroying the occasional country was acceptable, but the number marginalized is just too high, and they have too many resources.  Combined with a great manufacturing nation, they have essentially everything they need: they don’t need the West.

And they may be wondering why they are paying intellectual property taxes (that’s what they are) and interest fees to the West, when the West clearly isn’t acting in their interest.  Why have America and Britain gain all this, when they can reap the money themselves.

Oh, there are still some areas where the West is clearly ahead, from turbines to aerospace.  But they tighten by the year, and they aren’t anything necessary any more. Virtually everything you want, save a few luxury items, you can get without America or Europe being involved.

The question now, then, is the timing and the exact events.  But the broad outline is visible and will accelerate, because it is in too many countries self-interest.

The Great Game, the Great Game never ends.

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Russia Creates Its Own Payment System

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On February 15, 2015

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This is important:

Almost 91 domestic credit institutions have been incorporated into the new Russian financial system, the analogous of SWIFT, an international banking network.

The new service, will allow Russian banks to communicate seamlessly through the Central Bank of Russia. It should be noted that Russia’s Central Bank initiated the development of the country’s own messaging system in response to repeated threats voiced by Moscow’s Western partners to disconnect Russia from SWIFT.

Much of the West’s power comes from our financial hegemony. Our ability to cut people off from loans, payments and so on.  Since this new system is Russian only, it isn’t, right now, that big a deal.

But start connecting other countries to it, say China, Iran, India and so on, and it becomes a way of breaking financial blockades.  Include some calculable financial law (less of a challenge than it used to be as New York and London courts make increasingly punitive decisions), and start lending in Yuan (with which one can buy much of what one needs in the world, since the Chinese make so much of it), and you have a fully credible financial system.

The key is to get one major manufacturing country in.  Most of the nations the West is punishing these days, financially, are oilarchies ( Venezuela, Iran, Argentina).  They need the ability to buy manufactured goods.  The obvious country is China.  If China agrees to go in, Western financial hegemony is broken.  Japan could work; India could almost work, and Japan or India have a lot more to gain from it than it might seem (as we watch the Japanese economy implode.)

Even before then there are deals which can be cut.  Say Greece wants to buy Russian oil.  Russia can lend them Rubles, the use those rubles to buy Russian oil, in exchange Russia gets use of Greek ships and ports and access to the EU.

This is, then, in one sense, not a big deal.  As long as its only Russia, it’s a defensive move of somewhat limited utility.

But if it expands beyond Russia, well then, it’s earth-shaking.

Get out the popcorn and watch it develop.

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So, the Separatists are now on the offensive in the Ukraine

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On January 24, 2015

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Granted, I think the evidence points to significant Russian support.  Nonetheless, the Ukrainian army is just embarrassing at this point.

Back in 2008 I wrote that Crimea and the Ukraine would be the next likely flashpoint, and that Russia would never tolerate any possibility of losing Sevastapol.  The serious people who know how the world works told me how wrong I was—that the Ukraine and Europe and Russia were in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

But arrangements change, and Russia has always been a country with a clear view on what its strategic interests are.

So now we have an economic war against Russia and a shooting war in the Ukraine, encouraged by the Russians (and by the Americans: the first big Ukrainian offensive occurred after CIA chief Brennan visited.)

Sanctions did little to the Russian economy, but crashing oil prices did.  Russian currency dropped almost exactly in concert with the drop of oil.  Given the consensus that dropping oil prices so precipitously was a Saudi decision, meant in part to take out high cost unconventional oil production, but also in part to damage Russia and Iran, this can only be seen as hostile foreign action by the Russians.

Russia’s vulnerability is due to mistakes made by the Russians.  The lack of diversification of the economy, and the vast corruption made Russia a petro-state, reliant almost entirely on oil revenues.  Countries which need to import a great deal are always vulnerable to foreign economic action.

The question, then, is this: how threatened does Putin and the rest of the Russian leadership feel?  Putin is unlikely to survive a leadership change for long unless it is his hand-picked heir who takes over, and maybe not even then.  Many others in his government would similarly be in danger.

If they feel endangered, then the traditional thing to do is start a war.  This proxy-war in the Ukraine may not be enough.

Keep an eye on the security of Putin’s leadership.  If it starts looking insecure, the Americans will think they are close to getting what they want: a new leader, who will understand he rules only so long as they are kept happy.  But it will also be the point Russia becomes most dangerous.

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