adminMike Whitney Correspondent
Russia doesn’t want to fight a war with Turkey, so Russian generals devised a simple, but effective plan to discourage Turkey from taking any action that could lead to a clash between the two nations. Last week, Russian warplanes intruded into Turkish airspace twice.
Both incidents caused consternation in Ankara and send Turkish leaders into a furore. On both occasions, officials in Moscow politely apologised for the incursions claiming they were unintentional (“navigational errors”) and that they would try to avoid similar intrusions in the future.
Then there was a third incident, a more serious incident, that was not a mistake.
It was clearly intended to send a message to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Here’s a short summary of what happened from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:
“Turkish officials claimed a third incident on Monday, when an unidentified MiG-29 fighter jet locked its radar for four-and-a-half minutes on eight Turkish F-16 jets that were on patrol on their side of the border, in apparent preparation to open fire.” (“US, NATO step up threats to Russia over Syria <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/07/syri-o07.html>“, World Socialist Web Site)
This was no mistake. The only time a fighter pilot adopts these protocols is when he plans to take down an enemy plane.
This was a message, and while it might have been over-the-heads of the politicians and the media but, I assure you, every general in the Turkish High-Command knows what’s it means.
This is a wake-up call.
Moscow is indicating that there’s a new sheriff in town and that Turkey had better behave itself or there’s going to be trouble. There’s not going to be any US-Turkey no-fly zone over North Syria, there’s not going to be any aerial attacks on Syrian sites from the Turkish side of the border, and there certainly is not going to be any ground invasion of Turkish troops into Syria. The Russian Aerospace Defence Forces now control the skies over Syria and they are determined to defend Syria’s sovereign borders. That’s the message. Period.
This is a good example of how “pre-emption” can actually prevent conflicts rather than starting them. By firing a shot over Turkey’s bow, Moscow has dampened Erdogan’s plan to annex part of N. Syria and declare it a “safe zone”.
Turkey will have to scrap that plan now realising that any attempt to seize-and-hold Syrian territory will trigger a swift and powerful Russian retaliation.
Seen in this light, Russia’s incursion looks like an extremely effective way to prevent a broader war by simply telegraphing to potential adversaries what they can and can’t do. Simply put: Putin has rewritten the rules of the game in Syria and Erdogan had better comply or else.
Poor Erdogan. He rolled the dice and came up snake-eyes. He figured he could expand his would-be Ottoman Empire into Northern Syria, and now his dream is in a shambles. Should he deploy his warplanes to N Syria and openly challenge the Russian airforce? No, he’s not that foolish. He’s going to stay on his side of the border, stomp his feet, and lash out at “evil Putin”, but at the end of the day, he’ll do nothing.
And Washington’s not going to do anything either.
Yes, Hillary and McCain have been calling for a no-fly zone over Syria, but that’s not going to happen. Putin won’t allow it and neither will the Security Council.
And, on what pretext anyway? Is Obama really going to request a no-fly zone on the basis that Putin is killing “moderate” terrorists along with the “extreme” terrorists? That’s not a very compelling argument, in fact, even the American people are having a hard time swallowing that one.
If Obama wants something from Putin, he’s going to have sit-down at a bargaining table and hash out a deal.
So far, he has refused to do that, because he still thinks regime change is within his grasp.
So you can see that, even though Putin has thrown a wrench in the works, the Obama team is still moving ahead with its “Topple Assad” plan. Nothing has changed, the Russian intervention just makes the future much more uncertain which is why frustrated geopolitical strategists, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, have begun to pop-up in the op-ed pages of leading newspapers blasting Putin for sabotaging their plans for regional hegemony.
It’s worth noting that Brzezinski is the spiritual godfather of Islamic extremism, the man who figured out how religious nut-cases could be used to foment hysteria and advance US geopolitical objectives around the world.
Everyone knows what’s going on. Barack Obama is not going to initiate a confrontation with Russia to defend a fundamentally immoral CIA program that has gone south. He will, however, do what the US always does when dealing with an adversary that can actually defend itself.
He’s going to hector, harass, threaten, demean, demonise, ridicule, and bully.
He might launch another attack on the ruble, or fiddle with oil prices or impose more economic sanctions.
But he’s not going to start a war with Russia, that’s just not going to happen.
But don’t give up hope just yet, after all, there is a silver lining to this fiasco, and all of the main players know exactly what it is.
It’s called Geneva. Geneva is the endgame. — Counterpunch.
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