This Puts The Russia-Turkey Thing Into Some Much-Needed Perspective

Yesterday, Turkey shot down two Russian planes and a Russian helicopter. You might have heard about this – then again, you might not have (this being a holiday week and a lot of people are heading out of town for Thanksgiving and not really paying attention to the news. Can’t say that I blame them). The pundits were quick to proclaim this akin to the “Archduke Ferdinand” moment, referring to how World War I started. It’s a messy political situation – Turkey’s our NATO ally, though they support ISIS. Russia’s probably justified in being ticked off about this, though it’s not like we’re bestest best buds with them. All the while, our glorious President Pushover is suggesting that Russia and Turkey talk about their differences over golf and beer (ha ha – not happening).

I don’t know about the Archduke Ferdinand, but this does feel an awful lot like Jimmy Carter in 1979 trying to deal with Iran and get them to “talk” and be BFFs with the rest of the world. The only consolation I take from that is that Jimmy Carter’s bumbling ineptitude reminded America just how crappy the Democrats are at handling national security and international crises and we got President Ronald Reagan in 1980 (I’m praying that’s the case this time).

In the media’s hurry to look at their all-knowing news-and-history expert tea leaves to divine What This Means for the course of history, I ran across this post by the good folks at EveryJoe.com. It’s an open letter written by Tom Kratman – sure, he’s addressing Russia, but he’s also talking to everyone who’s proclaimed that this is going to start World-War-Whatever. Which, they might be right. I really hope not – but it’d be naive of me to say that this isn’t going to have big-time consequences (though you could argue that we’ve already been heading down this path. I’m not saying which opinion I hold to personally because, frankly, I have no idea what I think about this yet).

I think Kratman’s entire post is well-worth a read, as well as taking into consideration when you’re trying to figure out what you think about this whole mess. Here are some excerpts –

First, he admits that we really don’t have all the details, though it is clear that this is not good, regardless of What Actually Happened –

Firstly, my condolences on the recent murder of your two pilots. While one might argue that shooting descending parachutists (as opposed to paratroopers) would be permissible in some circumstances, as when there is no reasonable possibility of capture, in this case there was such a possibility.

[…]

I can’t offer condolences on the initial shoot down of your Sukhoi-24, because I really don’t know what happened. If it drifted into Turkish airspace, and the Turks shot it down, even if they pursued it out of Turkish airspace…well, you’re in an unenviable moral position to complain about any of that, given the conduct your predecessor in interest, the USSR, with regard to KAL 007.

He also addresses the rush to proclaim this the start of a new world war –

A little aside is in order at this point. I’m not really so concerned about the incident that just took place, with one of your planes shot down by the Turks, and the ejected pilots murdered on the way down. What’s really bugging me is the almost instantaneous assumption of people over here that this was the first set of shots in World War V, World War III having been the Cold War, and World War IV the on-again, off-again, fiasco with the Islamics. On its own, this should not be capable of doing that. Add in paranoia, self-fulfilling prophecy, idiotic foreign policy on many fronts, from many fonts, a fairly inscrutable Turkey…I’m a little concerned that things might spiral out of control.

The rest is an analysis of Russia’s relationship with Turkey and it gets pretty detailed and dense, so I won’t go into it here. But like I said, it’s worth a read and worth including in your own attempts to decide how you feel about this. Personally, I’m still sorting out my own thoughts on it the situation. And that’s fine – just because something huge like this happens doesn’t mean everyone should suddenly have all the ABSOLUTELY 100% CORRECT ANSWERS AND EVERYONE ELSE IS SUPER-WRONG.

That’s how World War I started (I think).