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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So, 128 dead so far, and over 200 injured in multiple attacks across Paris. ISIS has claimed responsibility, though nothing in their communique shows any knowledge not in the news, so it may or may not be them.
In a sense it doesn’t matter who it is. The task of any group which seeks minority support is to “heighten contradictions,” as the old Marxists used to say. You commit atrocities precisely because you want backlash against an identifiable minority. The more they are oppressed, the more they will turn to you, the less they will inform, and so on.
“Terrorists” and western Governments have become co-dependent. Many in the West want further excuses for internal repression (which is usually justified as just being against a despised minority, then spreads), and for more war.
Hollande has used language which indicates he may be about to invoke NATO Article 5. If so, he would presumably want significant Western military action where ISIS is—Iraq and Syria.
This is a potential disaster, given the Russian presence, and given that the Russian presence, in part, was to forestall a NATO “no fly zone.” With public opinion inflamed, the West may tell Russia to “step aside, or else.” What if Russia doesn’t?
Even if Russia does withdraw, welcome to another quagmire, ending in a failed state. (Yes, Syria is a failed state now, mostly, but if you think Western intervention will fix that you haven’t been paying attention.)
Let us hope sanity reigns. And let us remember that attacks of this magnitude are reasonably common in Iraq, Syria, and other failed states. To be sure, it is a tragedy. It is no more of a tragedy, nor less a tragedy, than a similar attack in Baghdad.
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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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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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There is little question that absent the Iraq war there would be no Syrian refugee crisis. The line draws direct between the two.
Germany, today, is closing its borders to refugees after earning the world’s praise (for a change) for its compassionate acceptance of those who needed its shelter, and those whom it certainly can afford to shelter. As the richest European state, Germany can take more refugees, feed and house them and even find work for them.
Ethically, the countries who should be taking most of the Syrian refugees are those responsible for Iraq and who have directly fueled the flames of the Syrian conflict: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, America, Britain and so on.
There is a deadly price for posturing that leads to war: be clear, Assad, however bad he was was not as bad as the Syrian civil war. To be sure, there is often a case for ending the reign of tyrants, but one does need to check the price tag.
And, along with checking the price, one might want to to check the motivation. Wrong ends generally feed back to into wrong means: it is not credible, given their own records on human rights, that most of those who are trying to overthrow Assad actually are acting out of good motives.
This is power politics, not humanitarian action.
There is little more to say about this. We could take care of the refugees if we wanted to, we have the resources, this is not in question. In question is if we want to. In a western world whose baseline policy is austerity—who do not even want to care for their own citizens, the answer tends to be no.
Jeremy Corbyn, who suggests (to mainstream laughter) that the solution to the Syrian crisis is not to bomb Syria more, is the beginning of the repudiation of the nonsense that doing more of what didn’t work in the past is the solution. Let us hope he is Britain’s next Prime Minister, and the beginning of a wave of repudiation of the austerity and war.
Until then the weak will suffer what they must, and powerful will do as they will. And then whine about the results of their actions.
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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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This is a Good Thing™.
I suspect, however, that one of the main reasons for it is to bring Iranian oil back online fully, thus pushing down the price of oil further, which will damage many countries the US wants damaged and will help the US economy (no, the US is not yet an oilarchy itself, low oil prices are still better).
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The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah has said his fighters would expand their presence in Syria, saying the group was engaged in an existential battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged for the first time that his Shia group was fighting across all of Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Picture of Hassan Nasrallah
Years ago, I noted that Hizbollah needed to keep supply lines open to Iran, and thus had reason to support the Syrian government. That was a near-existential reason in itself.
And he called specifically on his fiercest critics in Lebanon to back his intervention across the border, warning that their support for Assad’s opponents would not save them from ISIL.
I think this is accurate. There is a weird idea that if ISIL conquers Syria it won’t move into Lebanon. Of course it will. ISIS is the Caliphate. As a matter of belief and ideology, their legitimacy is tied to expansion, and Lebanon is definitely part of the lands they consider as rightfully belonging to the Caliphate.
To not fight them will not save Lebanon if ISIL wins, and Lebanon is a heck of a lot easier of a target than Iran or Turkey. Thus, former prime minister, and leader of Lebanon’s anti-Hezbolla bloc, Saad Hariri’s criticism of Nasrallah’s speech and his movement’s intervention in Syria is nonsense:
“We in the Future Movement declare publicly that the Lebanese state and its institutions are legitimate and our choice and guarantee,” Hariri said in a statement. “Defending the land and the sovereignty and dignity (of Lebanon) is not Hezbollah’s responsibility.”
Well, I suppose the last part might be true. But it is laughable to suppose that the Lebanese army can guarantee Lebanon’s safety from an ISIL invasion. Lebanese who are old enough will remember how well the Lebanese army performed against the Israeli invasion. I am unaware of any particular reason to suppose they would do better enough this time to matter. (It is also true that Hezbollah is currently mostly fighting the Nusra front.)
These wars are also sharpening fighters throughout the Muslim world. They are becoming tougher and smarter. Hezbollah has already defeated the Israeli army twice, ISIL is fighting very well, and the same can be said of many other forces in the Muslim world. I will be frank: I believe that Western force’s edge now comes down mostly to military equipment, which means air power–open-field battle systems (i.e., shoot them before they are even in range of you) and surveillance systems.
I believe the Israeli military, especially, given its corruption due to being an occupying force whose primary job is to beat up, torture, and kill the effectively defenseless, is not even close to as good as quite a number of Muslim (non-state and ISIL) forces.
One really shouldn’t create the perfect Darwinian learning system for those one considers one’s enemies.
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