Geopolitics Thick and Thin

Abstract

On November 24, 2015, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M aircraft on the Syria-Turkey border. For seventeen seconds the Russian aircraft crossed the southern tip of a salient of Turkish territory that Syria claimed rightfully belonged to it. Two Russians ejected from the plane over Syria. A local Turkmen militia, commanded by a Turkish citizen, fired at the aviators, killing one. A second Russian serviceman was killed during a rescue mission to save the surviving aviator. The incident, recorded on radar systems by many countries and partially captured on video camera, was the first time since the Korean War that a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) country’s fighter jet destroyed a Soviet/Russian Air Force aircraft. Fortunately the event did not escalate into a full-blown NATO Russia crisis, although with tensions high over the Ukraine crisis and two authoritarian leaders at loggerheads, it could well have done so. There were background accusations. Turkish president Erdoğan was aggrieved that Russia was bombing co-ethnic kin in its southern near abroad while aiding Kurdish separatists, while Russian president Putin saw Turkey as an accomplice of international terrorists. Entwined territorial and terrorist anxieties, as well as near abroad insecurities, preoccupied both men. Had Russia responded with force against Turkey, this could have triggered Article V of NATO’s Washington Treaty, and NATO members would have faced the prospect of war with Russia over a tiny piece of territory in the Middle East most knew nothing about. Relations between the NATO alliance and Russia are now at their lowest point since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Airspace violations, incidents at sea, military training exercises, and hybrid war hysteria have kept tensions high. After Crimea, NATO moved to strengthen its capacity to respond to perceived Russian encroachment on the Baltic countries. The Obama administration’s European Reassurance Initiative was launched in June 2014 with a $1 billion budget for training and temporary rotations. In a speech in Riga in September 2014, President Obama declared: “We’ll be here for Estonia.