Answers on Turkey for Claire
Thanks for inviting this conversation, Claire. Those are all good questions in your post -- apologies for not being succinct enough to answer in a comment.
It wouldn't matter for NATO not to name Iran, although the US, UK, and France very much want the language precisely to throw the gauntlet down as part of their broader effort to restrict Iran's nuclear program. But your point is exactly right: West Germany was always squeamish about calling East Germany a threat, towards the end of the Cold War the Germans were uncomfortable naming the Soviets. In 1991, the SACEUR, General Jack Galvin, designed a military strategy for defending northern Norway and Eastern Turkey because the operational demands were sufficient to keep NATO forces ready to fight the Soviets. But if you don't designate the threat and there's no internal agreement, it makes deciding where to put the radars problematic. Which is a long way to saying you’re right, committing to the system without publicly naming Iran is a good solution.
On command of the system, it’s not all that clear what the Turkish PM was asking for. It sounded to me as though he could be making a reasonable request for a Turkish officer to be the equivalent of post commander for the radar sites or headquarters in Turkey. But he could also have been asking for more. The system’s not designed to wait for a political decision – commanders would have standing orders to shoot down any ballistic missile in flight on certain trajectories. So the rules of engagement necessitated by short ballistic flight times would prevent politically-motivated impediments to functioning of the system.
I’m not an engineer, but the testing is pretty far advanced and gives credence to the viability of the system. Here’s where it connects to identifying the threat, though: the main constraint on ballistic missile defenses is target acquisition. Radars that know where to look make the system much more effective. The purpose of putting a radar in eastern Turkey is to focus the search capability into Iran and maximize response time for destroying the missile. As to how much protection the system would provide, it could be overwhelmed by a large-scale strike – hundreds of missiles – but would likely be very good against smaller barrages.
On the diplomatic opportunities, I’ve been struck that the Administration let itself be played into publicly rejecting the Turkish-Brazilian-Iranian nuclear deal. Not that they should have accepted it (it would have left Iran plenty of material for weapons), but that they should have worked with the Turks to ensure they knew what deal we would accept so that they could have the splashy success they wanted. Turks complain – with reason – that the EU worked with former eastern European and Soviet states to help them get into the EU but are only sullenly responsive to Turkish efforts. The Obama Administration’s policies feel like a parallel. We keep rejecting Turkish initiatives but don’t help them to be successful in the way we do with Russia, India and other states.
Erdogan and Davutoglu have a lot to be proud of and look to be craving respect. We should work to give them that: praise their accomplishments in settling disputes with their neighbors, quietly help them find a way out of their deepening acrimony with Israel, applaud their economic growth and increase our bilateral trade, encourage them to help Iraq get on its feet, invest in their gas pipeline and emphasize its importance to preventing EU over-reliance on Russian gas, include them in our diplomacy on Iran (why not let the next round of negotiations occur in Turkey and get Davutoglu mediating – the Iranians really don’t understand us, and he could be extraordinarily helpful if we’d put some topspin on the ball).
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Comments :
Nov '10
Re: Answers on Turkey for Claire
Personally I like the stuffing done in the turkey rather than done on the stove top. Waiting, isn't that the turkey question? Only a week away. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun.
;-)
Edited on Nov 17, 2010 at 2:30pmRe: Answers on Turkey for Claire
Well played :)
May '10
Re: Answers on Turkey for Claire
As for not naming Iran, why "name" anyone at all? Or, if necessary, announce that the radar is there to protect Europe from the mounting threat from Armenia. The goal is to get the radars in place. Forget making "statements" to people who aren't listening. Just do what you need to do.
This administration seems so concerned with it's posturing yet it regularly gets the message wrong, as you point out. I can't imagine they are skilled chess players. They don't seem able to see more than one move ahead.
May '10
Re: Answers on Turkey for Claire
Target acquisition in the terminal phase is the toughest because a) the IR rocket signal is burned out (it is nice and hot in launch phase) and b) you simply don't have that much time to make course corrections if the launcher locations are mobile so that you don't know where they are originating- that's why the military uses high-rate air defense artillery in local operations. Fill the sky with a lot of lead and let kinetic energy do the job.
But for these kinds of theater operations where you have decent pre-existing information on where the launch sites are, you can pick up the signal early and lock on and hand-off to the defensive missile. Then when you get close to it, detonate a large fragmenting warhead, so you are still shooting at an area, not a bullet.
If we have any kind of decent intelligence on Iranian launch sites, this should be a nice useful system.
Re: Answers on Turkey for Claire
Kori, thanks for detailing the situation so thoroughly. The prescription you lay out for US diplomatic initiatives makes very good sense. Is the administration following through on any of this, or are they again raising counterintuition to an art form?
Re: Answers on Turkey for Claire
Duane, given your expertise, can you hazard a guess as to why Turkey would want command of the system in country? Do you think this is a "post commander" issue, as Kori suspects, or are they looking for some sort of operational authority that might not even be feasible?
Re: Answers on Turkey for Claire
Kori, this is the subject of an upcoming piece I've written for Commentary, and one of the key points I make is that both the Administration and Turkey allowed themselves to be played by Iran. The amount of naivete and incompetence on both sides was staggering. But I think you may be overestimating how well Turkey understands Iran and it's ability to be a useful mediator: This is definitely the Turkish position ("Trust us, we know Iran better than you"), but my conclusion is that in fact they don't know Iran anywhere near as well as they think--and have been manipulated by Iran at every turn. I'll send you the link to the article when it's up. Many thanks for the post; very helpful. I'm sure we could talk about this for hours.
May '10
Re: Answers on Turkey for Claire
Boy, David, I just don't know enough about the C&C structures for the ABM system, or the diplomatic implications, to even guess. The reasons could fit several alternative motives- maybe they deliberately attach an impossible condition to torpedo the whole deal, maybe it is a negotiating ploy, maybe they seriously believe they need to have control I(to protect their Iranian friends, or to have leverage over Iran?)
But under the circumstances, I wonder if Turkey is the place to locate the system.