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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is exactly why our Founding Fathers told us to stay the hell out of entangling alliances (treaties).

Turkey is a NATO nation. It has been screwing with a patient bear (Putin). Putin's patience is probably wearing awfully thin. If and when he decides to extinguish the last of the Ottoman empire, Turkey, as a NATO nation, will be able to call upon America's sons to sacrifice their lives in WWIII.

We need no entangling alliances: military or economic. [/quote]

Putin patient?  Ahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, no.  Putin has been the aggressor, he has invaded multiple territories and is harassing and threatening peaceful sovereign nations around the world.  Of late, HE is the provocateur.  If anyone has been patient, it's been NATO and the US.[/quote]

Putin may be largely in the wrong in Ukraine and Georgia but in Syria?

Not really. Russia's had a naval base there for decades -- it is one of the last jewels of the day their empire was astride the world. And, appealing to past glories is always a sure-fire electoral winner.

Assad is a dictator, but one that would probably win an actual fair/free election (*). He actually leaves Christians, Kurds, etc., alone, provided you don't oppose him politically. Most of the other non-Kurdish factions within the civil war aren't exactly the kindest towards non-Sunnis.

(*) I'd like to 100% disown/disclaim the meme that proclaims Assad was "Syria's elected leader." That election had at best "guided opposition."

Then throw in the US thinking it could moderate the anti-Assad rebels the way we did with the KLA in Kosovo (we basically told them in the late 1990s, you get help from bin Laden, we will abandon you) until around the siege of Kobani. They probably also thought Assad would fall apart the same way Colonel G did a few years earlier.

"Our" militias and whatnot among the non-Islamic extremist rebels turned out to be duds or just defected to al-Nusra or whatever they're calling themselves these days.

So in the fulness of time, I suspect you're seeing the West figure out that Assad's probably the least bad realistic option, given the paucity of people who'd keep the atrocities at even the Mubarak level and have the ability to actually win battles -- and let's face it, this means more to Russia than it does to us. Now we might piss off the Saudis if we were to formally abandon the rebels. Plus, most of the Gulf States are tied up in Yemen -- not sure how easily they could pivot over to trying to intervene in Syria -- they certainly wouldn't have the stomach for facing off against the Russians.

Turkey has been using their presence under the NATO umbrella to try and piss wage its independent Cold War against Russia.

Erdogan purged a lot of the security and civil services after the would-be coup. I'm sure the internal Russia media will initially be pitching an "Erdogan did it" line -- now if Putin and Erdogan kiss and make up (again) the line there will change. But we cannot count on it.

We miscalculated on Syria, and that's on Obama, especially the "red line" farce that Obama wasn't really able to enforce.

Trump's camp contains those hoping the US will return to a 1920s-style foreign policy, the 'realists' who view China as a bigger threat than Russia and hence want to splinter Russia and China, and those neocons who have decided, like Bolton, that they hate Islamic extremists/Muslims more than they hate Putin. Trump has also shown signs of being all three. Putin likes the first two, and might have a problem with the third.

Of course if Putin decides the potential thaw in US-Russian relations means he gets to "protect the interests of ethnic Russians" in the Baltics, that's a whole NEW can of worms, both for him and for the West. [/quote]

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