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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Hopeless but not Serious (Spengler) |
| 2016-02-19 |
| Welcome to Permanent War, as Russian Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev dubbed today's Middle East. It isn't as bad as it sounds, provided, of course, that you're not in it. The bonfire built on tribal enmity and national disillusionment will have to burn itself out over time. The risk lies in the possible spread of the fire outside the region. First, a quick review of what is not going to happen in Syria, rhetoric to the contrary: Neither Turkey nor Saudi Arabia will send ground troops into northern Syria and fight US-backed Kurdish militia. Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz declared on Sunday that his country had "no intention" of sending its army into Syria, while Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said that deployment of Saudi forces is up to the United States. Turkey won't send combat aircraft into Syria to be shot down by Russian air defenses. Turkey would only sacrifice its aircraft in the hope of drawing the United States into a showdown with Russia, and the United States has evidently told Ankara that it's on its own. Saudi Arabia may base some aircraft in Turkey, but won't use them. The United States does not want to finnd out how good Russia's S-400 air defense system actually is; Pentagon analysts believe that it is very good indeed. The Russian-Iranian reduction of Aleppo will add little to the flood of Syrian refugees. Perhaps 40,000 people have fled Aleppo and nearby towns. Syria's refugee count had already reached 5 million in late 2013. Russia and the United States will not stumble into a strategic confrontation over a long-since-unsalvageable patch of Levantine desert. As long as the dance of death remains within the Middle East as such, the strategic risks to the rest of the world will be small. It is disgusting, but not dangerous. The risk is that the conflict will spill over into the rest of the world. There are two ways in which that might happen: through the actions of terrorists on the ground, and through long-range missiles bearing weapons of mass destruction. America's past support for Islamists has spawned conspiracy theories in Russian and Chinese media to the effect that the US created ISIS in order to destabilize its rivals. That is not the case. Americans have a brain cramp about democracy. The Republican and Democratic mainstreams both believe that the mere form of democracy as such will fix most of society's ills. No accumulation of facts to the contrary appears sufficient to shake the democracy cult. Except inside USA where democracy/freedom of speech/presumption of innocence has long since been sacrificed on the altar of equality. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #2 A-10s would be impervious. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2016-02-19 18:21 |
| #1 Turkey won't send combat aircraft into Syria to be shot down by Russian air defenses. Bummer. I really wanted to see the S-400 at work. Does that make be a bad person? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2016-02-19 13:10 |