The US-Turkish Confrontation in Syria: A New Crisis for NATO

Abstract

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 43, 4, 2018 © The Maghreb Review 2018 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources THE US-TURKISH CONFRONTATION IN SYRIA: A NEW CRISIS FOR NATO MICHAEL M. GUNTER* During the late 1940s, the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan brought US military and economic aid to Turkey that helped it withstand Soviet encroachments. For its part, Turkey proved to be a particularly brave and valuable ally of the United States during the Korean War (1950-53). Thus, their shared geopolitical interests paved the way for a mutually valuable strategic alliance that was formalized when Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952 and began to anchor the alliance’s southeastern flank containing Soviet communist expansion. The United States also began to hold Turkey in high esteem as a secular democratic Muslim state offering an important model for other states in the geostrategically important Middle East. Turkey continued to receive valuable U.S. economic and military aid. Despite their great national differences, the United States and Turkey had become staunch allies following World War II. Even with the end of the Cold War, the United States continued to tout Turkey’s significance as a strategic ally helping to bring stability to former Yugoslavia and Somalia during the 1990s, while also combating terrorism and political threats from such US-considered rogue states as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria. However, Turkey’s failure to support the U.S.-northern front in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003, and more recently even more serious arguments over the role of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on the one hand, and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its militia the Peoples Defense Units (YPG)—which has now morphed into the more inclusive Syrian Defense Forces (SDF)—in the Syrian Civil war that has been raging since March 2011, have begun to call into question the future of its alliance with the United States. The purpose of this article is first to examine some theoretical insights into alliance formation and termination and then mainly analyze the immediate crisis between the United States and Turkey concerning Syria and whether it may portend the end of the longstanding USTurkish alliance within NATO. THEORETICAL INSIGHTS Alliances are created to enable their members to achieve shared goals and then disbanded when the goals have either been achieved or are no longer pertinent. Consequently, alliances usually tend to be rather short-lived. According to * Tennessee Technological University THE US-TURKISH CONFRONTATION IN SYRIA: A NEW CRISIS FOR NATO 397 Robert E. Osgood, an alliance is “a latent war community, based on general cooperation that goes beyond formal provisions and that the signatories must continually estimate in order to preserve mutual confidence in each other’s fidelity to specified obligations.”1 Alliances, therefore, usually are created in situations in which conflict or its threat is present.2 George F. Liska and William R. Riker agree that alliances or coalitions disband once they have achieved their objective, because they are formed essentially “against, and only derivatively for, someone or something.”3 While it may be that a “sense of community” may reinforce alliances, it will seldom bring them into existence. In creating alliances to achieve some desired goal, decision-makers weigh their costs and rewards. The decision to join an alliance is made based on perceived rewards exceeding costs. Each state considers the marginal utility from alliance membership, as contrasted with non-membership. In the end, the durability of an alliance “rests on the relationship between internal and external pressures, bearing on the ratio of gains to liabilities for individual allies.”4 Once costs exceed rewards, the decision to end an alliance will be made. According to Liska, states join alliances for security, stability, and status. To these, Riker adds the threat of reprisal if they refuse to ally, the receipt of payments of one kind or another; the obtainment of promises about policy or future decisions, or the gaining of emotional satisfaction. Once these goals have been achieved, the size of the alliance must be reduced if the remaining alliance partners are to gain further objectives. In addition...