What’s wrong and right with the world; Russia-, Ukraine-, and Iran-wise.
Keeping it short and sweet for now, as things keep updating on the long-running Phase II of the “IT in Russiagate” topic. The first subject in today’s Ready Room grab-bag is the no-fly zone proposal for Ukraine.
It’s a bad idea. All I will do here is copy in an email sent earlier with my reflections on the matter. They were forwarded in response to a piece by former Senator Joe Lieberman in the Wall Street Journal (apologies for the paywall).
Russia claimed on Saturday 12 February that one of their Pacific Fleet ships, Udaloy-class destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov (BPK-543), recently drove a U.S. attack submarine out of Russian territorial waters.
The claim appears to refer to actions allegedly undertaken during M. Shaposhnikov’s current underway period for fleet exercises.
According to RIA Novosti, the Russian navy “discovered an American submarine of the ‘Virginia’ type near the island of Urup.”
Shootdown porn. (Image via rebel video on YouTube)
The war in Syria is metastasizing, as long predicted by this author and others. It’s perilously close to a direct confrontation of Turkey and Russia in combat — a situation that didn’t start with the warplane shootdown today, but rather seems to have culminated in it. The ground picture in the area of the shootdown is the key.
What we know for sure today is that Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 Fencer attack aircraft, which the Turks say was violating their air space. The Turks report that an F-16 fighter pair took out the Russian aircraft.
It also appears that Russian helicopters sent on a rescue mission for the Su-24 air crew were destroyed. If a video posted by Syrian rebels (below) is valid – assuming it shows something the rebels pulled off today (24 November) – it looks like the rebels used TOW missiles to attack the Russian helos while they were on the ground at the Su-24 crash site.
These rapid-fire events raise questions that will not be answered at a leisurely pace. The basic question is what Russia and Turkey will do now. But there is also the question of “why now?” Turkey has been closely tracking Russian air activity for weeks. The two air forces have interacted at dangerous levels before; the Aviationist has a good summary here. But today, instead of warnings and sword-rattling, the Turks shot the Russian aircraft down.Continue reading “War comes home: Russia v. Turkey; Jet shootdown; Rebels attack Russian helos with U.S. TOW missiles”
USAF F-15E Strike Eagle from the 48th Fighter Wing (RAF Lakenheath) arrives at Incirlik in Nov 2015. (Image: USAF, Tech Sgt. Taylor Worley)
It’s essential to have the big picture on this. The war in Syria is turning into something bigger, with substantially bigger implications than what happens to ISIS.
But ISIS remains the handy pretext for Russia’s and Iran’s growing intervention in both Syria and Iraq. That intervention is changing their posture, and the correlation of both military and political forces across the region, almost by the day. They are not there for ISIS, and they’re not there for Assad. They’re there – putting down stakes from the Caspian and the Caucasus to the Horn of Africa – because they intend to be in charge of carving up the rapidly fragmenting ruins of the post-World War I Middle East.
ISIS will get something of a vote in this conflict. But America won’t. The reason for these two realities is that Obama has limited the use of U.S. force – limited it to such an extent that ISIS is still a very viable entity. Obama’s “restraint” is also the reason Russia and Iran keep having ISIS as a handy, open-ended pretext for arranging to occupy Iraq and Syria. Which is what they’re actually doing.
The Optimistic Conservative 