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Russia, Turkey, and Article V
Two particularly interesting comments came up at the tail end of my post about Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian jet. Let me reproduce them:
Pilgrim wrote:
I’ll just say it. Dump Article 5. Mutual defense obligations are either doomsday machines or paper tigers. If the treaty is wrongly considered a paper tiger, then it becomes a doomsday machine. The treaty is no stronger than the capabilities and resolve of the allies and both are open to question.
The Great War (Parts 1 and 2, with a sporting intermission to let Germany raise a new generation of young men and re-arm), was ignited by a cascade of treaties, none of which protected vital national interests, and none of which deterred the horror. In fact, the mutual defense obligations caused the horror.
And Carey J. replied:
If the terms of the Treaty of Versailles had been enforced, there would have been no WWII. France could have reamed Germany if they’d re-occupied the Rhineland when Hitler illegally ordered German troops there.
I agree entirely with Carey J. on the latter point. But the odd thing is that Pilgrim is also making a valid historical argument, particularly concerning the onset of the First World War. So this is one of those cases where we have more than one lesson of history to which to appeal — and those lessons are highly contradictory.
To put my own cards on the table, I think that yes, it’s the product of at least a decade of insane policy-making that we’ve now put ourselves in this position: NATO’s credibility is at risk because Erdoğan is insane. But this is the position we’re in.
So let’s go with this thought exercise. Suppose tomorrow’s headlines were to read:
NATO ANNOUNCES THE REVOCATION OF ARTICLE V
What do you think would happen on Sunday? Would our security and the world’s be diminished or enhanced?
Published in Foreign Policy, General
Even less than no reason, possibly, as the Pershing II, with its very fast time on target (~6 minutes to Moscow if memory serves) is much more a first strike capable weapon. However, that being said, it should be conceded as making a better weapon against massed armed forces.
Still, we don’t want to do this for the incredible provocation it would create.
John Batchelor interviewed Stephen F. Cohen (Russian Studies, NYU and Princeton) a few days ago. He gave a good summary of the world as Russia sees it, which should inform any thinking about the issue.
https://audioboom.com/boos/3852131-tues-11-24-15-hr-2-nato-emergency-session-stephen-f-cohen-is-prof-emeritus-of-russian-studies-history-politics-at-nyu-and-princeton-also-american-committee-for-east-west-accord-eastwestaccord-com?t=0
Seems to me that most of the deterrent is in not allowing a US nuclear missile base to be overrun.
Very interesting. There is a paucity of MSM coverage of the EU, led by France, forming a coalition with Russia to wage war against all terrorists in Syria -completely bypassing NATO.
Here’s a Russian news story alleging that Erdogan’s son has close business ties with ISIS. Disinformation? Strategically leaked fact?
I just wrote a long response to this and lost it. I I don’t know what happened to it. I may step away from the keyboard, take a few deep breaths, then write a post about it. Short answer: Never trust the Russians. I’ll explain why when I get my will to live back.
Poor baby :) that is the kind of thing that can make you want to turn ski bum or move to Donovan’s Reef
Clara Binski, we feel your pain.
OK, I’ve reconstructed my response. I spent the morning cursing the Russians and whatever caused my comment to disappear, but now I’m okay.
I don’t read Russian, so help from those of you who do would be appreciated, but I believe the clip in question comes from Russia 24, formerly known as Vesti. It’s owned and operated by VGTRK, the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. And I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the translation — because I don’t speak Russian — but I’ll assume it’s accurate enough.
The part of the story Gates of Vienna says was “an open secret” has been the subject of a huge amount of reporting — in both the mainstream media and by credible independent analysts. Looks to me as if what Russia 24’s done is taken a ton of Western (and Turkish) reporting and added a bit of drama … and Photoshop. The story “clarifies and confirms” nothing. The parts that are true aren’t news, and the parts that would be news aren’t true.
It’s what it leaves out that makes it “disinformation” — not even “strategically leaked fact,” which gives them too much credit. As if they had real intelligence, as opposed to the ability to read, copy, and distort the work of hardworking Western journalists.
Russians. Do not trust Russians, ever. Worse than Turks.
First, of course we know that some elements of the Turkish state have had dealings with ISIS. This isn’t a secret — neither an “open” nor a closed one nor one in any way hidden from anyone’s view. It’s well-known and amply documented. I mean, start here: How and why were 46 Turkish hostages freed?
ISIS is not known for releasing hostages unharmed. QED.
We know from tons of reliable Western reporting, not to mention US government statements and documents, that the US and Europe are fully aware that black market oil is the main driver of ISIS revenues, and Turkish buyers its main clients.
Here’s a small sample of what’s been written about the ISIS-Turkish oil connection over the past few years by news organizations in the US and Europe:
I don’t know how much Bilal’s been skimming off the top, but the AKP skims off the top of everything — Turkey’s a kleptocracy — so no news there.
Let’s go through a bit more of the reporting about this from at least a year ago. I point this out to stress that “open secret” is a strange, conspiracy-minded way to describe this. A story published in The New York Times, for example, is not a secret:
From Bloomberg:
Islamic State Smuggles Oil Into Turkey—With Hostages as Insurance
From Turkish reporter Fehim Taştekin:
Turkish villages smuggle IS oil through makeshift pipelines
etc, etc., etc.
There’s been a metric ton of reporting about this, page after page after page, so Russia 24 is not breaking a new story; it’s rehashing an old one. But it’s leaving out a great deal of very relevant information, and making parts of it up wholesale. (For one thing, while Bilal is surely as corrupt as the day is long, that photo of him with “ISIS” is in fact a photo of him with “two guys who run a restaurant in Istanbul.” Probably Islamists, yes, but not exactly ISIS high command.)
More importantly, they fail to note that the regime they’re propping up — Assad’s — is purchasing a huge quantity of this oil:
And so is their other client, Iran. So alas are the rest of our clients — Jordan, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan. This is a nasty business, and probably the only state that’s cooperating with us in any way on this — at this point — is Turkey, although that doesn’t mean they’re cooperating enough.
So they’ve added nothing to the story save the theory that Bilal is running it all (almost certainly not true; it’s far too complex for a moron like him to run, although if he’s not making money off of it, I’d be astonished) and a photo of Bilal with some dodgy Istanbul restaurateurs. But suddenly, this “open secret” is “clarified” and “confirmed?” Because it was repeated in a Russian news source? Hey, maybe I should have worked for the Russians — people might have believed what I wrote about Turkey.
This part is especially rich:
Russia — Russia! — is complaining about Turkey’s human rights record? Russia is complaining about the fate of journalists in Turkey? I mean, the complaint is valid, don’t get me wrong, but it takes some chutzpahdik for a state-run Russian propaganda organ to point this out, considering this.
Here’s the part I don’t get: When Russia “reported” the story, people noticed! This story is flying around the Internet now. Even though half the world had already reported it, and done a much better job.
Why? It creeps me out. Since when do we trust Russians more than we trust our own journalists? This was reported by people and news organs across the whole ideological spectrum — left, right, etc.
But Russian journalists somehow (at a very convenient moment for them) “revealed” the story? And suddenly the world paid attention? Why?
I don’t need to read the papers now. Thanks, Ms. B.
Thank you, Claire.
Churchill said,
I just reread Heinlein’s wonderful pieces Pravda Means Truth and Inside Intourist, available in volume two of Expanded Universe.
He wrote them around 1960. He had this to say:
The way good propaganda works is to match the facts much more often than you would by sheer coincidence.
I’d have to go back and really study it to see whether Americans in, say, 1960, would take one look at Russian propaganda and start laughing or whether it’s only in retrospect that Soviet-era propaganda looks like Soviet-era propaganda. Russian propaganda — now — freaks me out because it seems wildly more sophisticated than the old-style stuff. It makes me go down a conspiracy rathole when I see a story like this. I genuinely don’t understand how they managed to make this story “news” in the West, and I wish I did.
And here we go: The story’s in “Veterans Today.”
(In case you missed my long, horrified post about Veterans Today, here it is.)