The felling of the Russian Sukhoi was a matter of time. It could have happened for a missile of the Syrian rebels, it could depend on the ISIS militias, it could be an accident.
It was a Turkish F-16, on the orders of the Ankara government.
A NATO country deliberately attacks a Russian plane officially to defend its airspace. If the military scenario is worrying, the political message is very clear and sheds light on the war games on the border between Syria and Turkey.
However nebulous the episode may be, the epilogue to a series of skirmishes that began in September between Turks and Russians, in reality for the first time since the beginning of the internationalization of the Syrian crisis a net watershed has been created on the fronts of war.
There are two elements to highlight:
- political and military confrontation in the Middle East is played at the level of national states;
- the margins for concealing the objectives of each subject are now null.
Regarding the first point, we note the fact that the Syrian civil war, degenerated into a regional and global problem, does not see supranational bodies as protagonists. To the total absence of the United Nations is added the hysteria of a European Union deprived not only of a common foreign policy, but also of unity of reference values. National states move individually taking into account the degree of involvement in the crisis and their political-military weight. In light of the fact that international terrorism of an Islamist nature must be considered linked to the Syrian theater of war, it is easy to understand that no national state can be considered excluded a priori from a direct involvement in the conflict. France, which has moved on its own, demonstrates both.
In this regard the NATO 17 meeting of the November 24 requested by Turkey is to be considered little more than a pro forma from which no particular operational decisions are to be expected. The direct involvement of Russia in the rest widens the risks of a military escalation beyond any predictable scenario. The war in Syria, which from the beginning has re-evaluated the role of individual states, will therefore end up endorsing the thesis that it wants a reshuffling of alliances, due to changes in equilibrium and ever more fluid geopolitical interests.
The thing sounds a bit romantic and nineteenth-century, but the intense diplomatic activity of Paris and Moscow has shown for months that patterns and classical fronts have partly disappeared. Indeed, the very idea of a Second Cold War seems already an archive hypothesis.
Net of the fact that the countries that have focused on a collegial foreign policy (Italy) will be more isolated, to the point of remaining completely out of the game, the question that arises automatically is simple: does it still make sense to talk about alliances and rigid alignments?
We can try to answer by examining the second element highlighted.
The demolition of a Russian plane engaged in operations on the Syrian front reveals the order of Turkish priorities. Ankara prefers the defense of its airspace to the ISIS war. Even pretending not to know that the demolition rather than a problem of sovereignty is linked to the aid that the Turks provide to the Syrian rebels, it is clear that the choice disputes any involvement of Turkey in the war on terrorism. Even ideologically Ankara disengages from the international anti-ISIS consortium and pulls straight for its alternative interests.
It is no coincidence that the battle in the Syrian skies took place after the elections that sanctioned a clear victory for Erdogan. With today's act of war, Turkey has made public a strong and consolidated choice over time: with due caution, imagine its Islamist drift (feared for months in previous analyzes on this address book) no longer seems a totally surreal projection.
Turkey's membership of NATO at this point offers the most important food for thought. Does the return to "individual state politics" also elude the constraints of the Atlantic Alliance or will Ankara's weight end up dragging Western members into a dangerous framework?
If Turkey's role in Syria can no longer be considered ambiguous, but clearly hostile to the YPG Kurdish militias and consequently useful to the ISIS front, how will the US behave?
Russia is on a war footing, but thanks to its diplomatic tradition it will make the incident weigh more on the level of global political negotiations (including the Ukrainian crisis). The "hostile act" as judged by Moscow, however, remains.
The next few hours will be very hot not only for the Syrian front and for the military consequences that will follow. What is at stake is the order of secular political and military alliances.
(photo: Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri / Palazzo Chigi)
