Tag: Syria

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 #2, 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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Putin’s Secret Intent and How It Relates to Syria

By Ian Welsh

On November 13, 2015

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Apparently Putin is difficult to understand:

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

By Ian Welsh

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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Is Russia About to Send a Thousand Troops to Syria?

By Ian Welsh

On September 5, 2015

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Perhaps:

Russia is building a military base in Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s heartland, according to American intelligence officials, in the clearest indication yet of deepening Russian support for the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The anonymous officials say Russia has set up an air traffic control tower and transported prefabricated housing units for up to 1,000 personnel to an airfield serving the Syrian port city of Latakia.

Why would they do that?

Syria is already home to Russia’s only base outside the former Soviet Union – a naval station in Tartus.

The humorous part is that Russia is claiming that they want to expand their role to “fight terrorism” and “ISIL.” Everyone claims whatever they’re doing in Syria is to fight ISIL and terrorism, of course, including the Turks, who are bombing the Kurdish forces who are the only people to consistently win against ISIL.

Of course what Russia is really doing is supporting its interests, which don’t include allowing a loyal client state to be overthrown by Islamic forces which are hostile to Russia and supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Or to lose a warm water port it cannot easily replace.

Or to be shown to let down a loyal ally.

Everyone else seems to think they have the right to bomb Syria in the guise of “bombing ISIL,” why not the Russians?

As for the morality of it, well, I see no “good” actors in Syria. However, it is a simple fact that Syria was a better place to live before the civil war and those who have encouraged that civil war either: a) shouldn’t have, or; b) should have applied the necessary force to end it quickly. (At which point, Syria would have probably become a failed state, like Libya.)

As anyone was unwilling to do either, and then rebuild properly (which, again, no one is willing to do), perhaps Assad, as nasty as he is, should have been left alone?

Just a thought.

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As Palmyra Falls to ISIS, What Are the Syrian Government’s Prospects?

By Ian Welsh

On May 21, 2015

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So, yet another city falls, and the city has some very nice ancient architecture, which we will no doubt soon see sledgehammered. Some Palmyrans apparently thought the international “community” might protect them since they’re a great cultural site. I’d laugh if it wasn’t so sad.

ISIS has fought well and fought smart, and came into a regional war which had been going on for years. (One can argue, in Iraq, since the first Gulf War.) They have a huge ideological advantage in claiming to be the Caliphate reborn, and they have made ground. I keep hearing speculation that Syria’s government is on its last legs, but I have no feel for whether this is true or not. In large part, they appear to have been giving back gains.

One advantage the Syrians have is that they have to fight in their core areas; if they lose, there will be no mercy from ISIL. Everyone knows what they do to prisoners. A second advantage is that Hezbollah can’t afford for Assad to fall. If he does, their supply routes to Iran are cut off.

Back in 2008, I was in Las Vegas, and I sat at a table with a wealthy Syrian merchant and his beautiful wife. We talked about what we did, and he thanked me for what I did at the time, because he understood that I got paid shit in order to work against events like the Iraq war. I thought that was awfully gracious, given how little success those of us who oppose such stupidity as Iraq or arming the dissidents in Syria have had.

It’s not that I have any mandate for Assad; he’s a truly horrible man who appears to personally delight in torture. But war and anarchy have huge costs, and the early opposition were always very dubious people–perhaps not quite as bad as ISIL, but certainly no great improvement over Assad and without the saving grace of competence, meaning that they couldn’t necessarily expect to win the war quickly.

And Assad proved to be a lot more determined than most observers expected, the Syrian army, under Iranian and Hezbollah tutelage improved, and so on.

I’m not against all war, or against all violence. Sometimes they are the least worst option. But Syria never passed that test.

I wonder what happened to the gracious Syrian merchant I met. Are he and his wife and children alive? Being wealthy, did he get out? It’s not that he was more deserving of life than any other Syrian just because he happened to play blackjack with me.

But he was kind and gracious, and I remember him. And I wonder how many kind and gracious Syrians and Iraqis have died, men and women I would have liked, in the Middle East.

With no Iraq invasion, there is no ISIS. Saddam was a bastard, but again, the status quo was better than what the invasion caused.

The barrier for “just war” is high, and it is both pre- and post-facto: Fuck it up, and it doesn’t matter how wonderful your intentions were. Idiots used to go on about the Pottery Barn rule: “If you break, it you own it.” They didn’t mean “You then have to fix it.” Japan and Germany were rebuilt, but the preparations for Iraq made it clear that such rebuilding would never happen there, and the aftermath of Libya has been a clusterfuck.

Perhaps George Washington, whom I believe (with those who lived at the time) was the greatest of America’s Founders, was right. Not just for America, but for all nations, when he advised avoiding all foreign entanglements, and to be a friend to all nations.

Perhaps not always right, but perhaps you really do need to pass the “Nazi” test, and Saddam, Assad, and Qaddafi were never Hitlers, despite the rhetoric used to justify each war or intervention or “aid.”

Leave people alone. If they want to overthrow their rulers, great, but that’s their business and not yours. Short of actual genocide (which we never intervene against anyway–see Rwanda or Cambodia), war is almost always worse than the status quo, and outside intervention rarely seems to make the situation better. (See the Ukraine for this also–and yes, Maidan was an intervention by outside forces.)

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

Tag: Syria

Examining Turkey’s Shoot Down of a Russian Jet

Putin’s Secret Intent and How It Relates to Syria

Some Interesting Things About the Russian Coalition’s Syrian Campaign

Is Russia About to Send a Thousand Troops to Syria?

As Palmyra Falls to ISIS, What Are the Syrian Government’s Prospects?