Tensions in Turkey keep rising. In response to US abandonment of Kurdish rebels in Northern Syria, the Kurds entered a pact with Syria to stave of a bloodbath at the hands of Turkey.
The invasion by Turkey went further into Syria than Turkey claimed it would, so Trump Responded with Steel Tariffs and threats of shutting of US dollar transactions for Turkey.
“Turkey’s military offensive is endangering civilians, and threatening peace, security, and stability in the region,” Mr. Trump said. “I have been perfectly clear with President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan: Turkey’s action is precipitating a humanitarian crisis and setting conditions for possible war crimes.”
The administration’s sanctions plans are unfolding as pressure gathers on Capitol Hill for sterner action to punish Turkey. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she had spoken with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) about putting together a bipartisan, bicameral sanctions package that is stronger than what the White House is considering.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said earlier in the day that his office was presenting Mr. Trump with retaliatory options against Turkey. “It is a complicated situation,” Mr. Mnuchin said, when asked if Turkey has moved further into Syria than initially conveyed to U.S. forces.
“On the one hand we have Turkey, who is a full member of NATO and an ally with us, fighting the Kurds who have helped us on ISIS,” he said, referring to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Islamic State. “And obviously we are very concerned about the humanitarian issues and we’re monitoring it very carefully.”
Another point of tension was Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile-defense system. Weapons experts say that system could compromise U.S. and NATO security by potentially giving Russia access to sensitive military information. Mr. Trump has in the past told his advisers he wanted to avoid punishing Turkey over the Russian missile-defense system.
US Nukes Held Hostage
The New York Times comments Trump Followed His Gut on Syria. Calamity Came Fast.
One day he was inviting Mr. Erdogan to visit the White House; the next he was threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate” Turkey’s economy if it crossed a line that he never defined.
Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the generous description of a senior American diplomat — probably will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.
But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team.
Over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials.
Perpetual Engagement
With that Op-Ed, the NY times writer supports continual US troops forever, where they don’t belong.
Erdogan Threatens to Release Millions of Migrants Into Europe
“Hey European Union. If you attempt to label our operations as an invasion, then it’s simple: We will open out borders and send 3.6 million refugees your way,” said Erdogan.
Operation Spring Peace
Erdogan calls this “Operation Spring Peace“
Indeed. What else could it possibly be?
Yes, Take the Missiles Out
Take the damn missiles out.
They never should have been in Turkey in the first place.
Some Allies
Some allies we have.
This is all part of the asinine sponsorship of the failed policy “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
The NYT writer does have one thing right, albeit without saying so.
Trump is a Hypocrite
Trump pisses and moans, correctly so, that Syria is 7,000 miles away.
The fact of the matter is Saudi Arabia is even further. Yet check out these headlines.
Hell, not even Saudi Arabia knows where Trump stands.
I will tell you: Nowhere.
Mish vs Trump
- I favor pulling troops from Syria. Trump only did so when Erdogan told Trump he was going in. Trump backed down and labeled it a victory.
- I support pulling out of Afghanistan. So does Trump, in theory. But we are still there.
- Trump correctly complains Germany is not pulling it’s NATO weight and threatens to pull out. Trump is correct. Germany is not pulling its weight.
- But what does Trump do about Germany? A: Nothing.
- I would pull troops out of Germany.
Political Insanity
Trump has gone from inviting his buddy Erdogan to the White House to threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate” Turkey’s economy, in short order.
Feel free to disagree. But if you support Trump’s logic then you look as hypocritical as he does.
Playground Bully
Trump is nothing but a playground bully and a monstrous hypocrite at that.
Trade talks with China prove just that.
Turkey is icing on the cake.
Bring the Troops Home
Bring the troops home, all of them: From Syria, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, everywhere!
The US cannot afford to be the world’s policeman, nor should it try even if we could.
Out foreign policy has been nothing but disaster after disaster.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
As an European completely discouraged by the various plagues Middle-East countries state control (whichever it was democracy or not) destruction by US-EU interventions has imposed to our quality of life, I want to write:
THANK YOU, THANK YOU; THANK YOU , TRUMP at least you did it! VERY COURAGEOUS ACTION !
I expect now a faster reunification of SYRIA under a (possibly with a constitutional project) State Authority. The Kurds there were in peace with Assad (not in Irak and Turkey) before the Civil war caused by external interventions and financing started.
I hope this could help all the bad illegals causing fear and deaths in our countries to be sent back by our WEAK European authorities before we get civil unrests and possibly war some places over-here. .
The US supposedly moved 20 nukes out of Turkey into Romania after the attempted Erdogan coup in 2016. Read a few articles back then claiming that none remained. Who should we believe?
I was stationed at a SAC nuke base in California, one thing I am pretty sure of is that they will never tell the public what they really had there, removed from there, or where they took them if they did. Though it is reasonable to suggest that they remain somewhere in that theater close to Russia. Our naval base at Constantia is a reasonable assumption.
But, reading about the ongoing civil war in DC over the impeachment events and the daily spinning out of control of the orange servant of Putin I am thinking that international events are spinning completely out of control. Trade wars, Hong Kong rioting over months and China now blaming the US, straw man there if ever there was one, the ME blowing apart geopolitically, Brexit, the EU making decisions that threaten the stability of that entire continent (read the news today about the arrests/indictments of 9 Catalonian leaders and the demonstration starting in Barcelona), the deterioration of the domestic economy, it is almost as if man has given up. And who do we have at the helm in the world’s most powerful nation? NOBODY, at least nobody sane. I will be genuinely surprised if we get to Xmas without a world war.
“…and threats of shutting of US dollar transactions for Turkey.”
This wouldn’t be such a threat if Turkey had a gold backed currency now would it?
The allure of stealing from the nation’s productive class via fiat currency is too strong for the political/banking class the world over.
spot on…the response will be, DEfault on all us debts to western Banks….ups….bail out nr. 23 coming to rescue Rothchilds piggybank 47 / Dbank + gold and silver smashed again late SUNday night, because ” Investors prefer safe bonds in Greece at 1 % 30 year
“The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team.”
Well now. The experienced foreign policy teams of previous presidents have made an absolute mess out of the Middle East.
By depleted, i’m guessing that the NYT writer is a fan of Bolton.
Bolton might be a war hawk and a hard nosed throwback to a more violent age, but at least he was not on the Russian or Turkish, or Saudi payroll to submarine American policy to the benefit of Trump and Giuliani’s personal bank accounts. It was Bolton that advised our ambassador to Ukraine to document everything with NSA lawyers. He advised that long before he resigned though he knew the end would come for himself as well. Watching the house testimony (what bits and pieces that have leaked out anyway) one thing is abundantly clear, Trump has sold out the USA to Putin and other evil dictators to a point where foreign policy is now crippled and just how the hell bad does our presidency have to be to make John Bolton the good guy in all this?
How come no ones talking about China and their Muslim “re-education” camps? Total humanitarian crisis that is completely covered up by all of the media…as crazy as it may sound our family has begin reducing any and all purchases of items made in China…not easy but it can be done. The world is a crazy place and the entire US is controlled by the media…the narrative is force fed to us…worst of all almost all Americans have very short term memories…until it comes time to pay our bills…Health insurance and the insanely high premiums we now pay…but everyone here wants to talk about the Global peace keeping without costs…
No one is talking about China because they are all afraid of losing $. Mish can’t see China because he is addicted to the cheap imports. He’s not concerned about the camps, censorship or use of slave labor. It’s just like South Park. Everyone bows down to China as they don’t want to be excluded from the market or miss out on any $. Pathetic.
Also because China is fairly immune to criticism of their internal politics and actions. It goes to the very name of the country which means in literal translation Middle Kingdom, but a better translation would be the Center of the Universe. What matters is right there, what is outside the center just does not much matter. If they appear to be on one side or the other with a nation, a bloc of trade partners, allies to one or another nation, it is temporary and expedient, they do not see the world the same as we do.
“How come no ones talking about China and their Muslim “re-education” camps?”
Or the disproportionate pollution they cause? Why don’t Greta Thornburg’s parents (who manipulate the poor child) travel to China and preach to them?
China is just mimicking what happened to the natives in north America a couple hundred years ago… just like a lot of Americans enjoy mimicking the Nazis, and would like to try some of their baking recipes. 80% of humans are hot garbage, no matter where they come from.
Nukes? Warheads?
They make great weights without the codes.
Actually, the Turks are well enough advanced to make their own bombs and the thing stopping them or other aspirants to a nuclear arsenal are the raw materials. If they possessed say 50 of our nuclear weapons captured at Incirlik they would have all the materials they need for….. 50 nuclear weapons, a ready made arsenal to rival who knows, maybe even Israel’s. Of course they would have to extract the nuclear cores and place them in their own devices, that should take a matter of weeks using off the shelf technology, because the actual process behind detonation is really pretty simple, a bright high school student can understand it. And our fearless leader has driven Erdogan into the waiting arms of two cooperating allies neighboring his nation, Iran and Russia. Both more than capable of transforming those weapons into a Turkish arsenal from NATO. A geopolitical shift of Turkey from NATO to Russia/Iran would be a global tectonic event unrivaled since…. Well, perhaps unrivaled period. It would reorder the entire global alignment and put Europe into a very seriously bad situation, one which I expect their waffling parliamentarian system could not handle, they would fold and become a client state of Russia before they would risk war with Russia. This would effectively isolate the US and bring on the return I think of the Monroe Doctrine. Though how it would really work out nobody can guess.
“Peace and prosperity with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” — Thomas Jefferson. It worked for Switzerland, it could have worked for the US as well.
IMO it’s way past time for the US to bring the troops home and hand the reins of empire over to the next in line for economic reasons as well as all the ones Mish outlined, as well as Jefferson’s. Eventually, circumstances will force us to give up the empire anyway so why not now, peacefully, and under controlled circumstances? But I just can’t picture anyone in DC or the Pentagon doing that. All I can picture is a bunch of nutjobs throwing a temper tantrum saying, “If we can be the boss of the playground, then nobody can,” and pushing The Button, all that mutually assured destruction crap notwithstanding. The development of hypersonic weapons increase the probability that it will happen in my lifetime. Ground wars to change empires? Not this time around.
The US cannot bring the troops home, it crossed the point of no return long ago.
The nation should have listened to Washington, Avoid foreign entanglements.
Of course the US can bring the troops home. Just leave. Hop on whatever planes and boats are available, and return to the US. Just like that. Let whatever happens, happen. As of it is any business of Americans anyway.
I am with Stuki here, what you say is serious business but, we have been vehemently isolationist in the past in spite of treaties, post WW I the nation went so isolationist that FDR in spite of all his success on the domestic front could not really support the UK in the beginning of WW II which ravaged shipping for years before he got the power to intervene after Pearl Harbor.
If a NATO ally like Turkey which was so strategically important (The Dardanelles made them so along with proximity to Russia, remember that they need a warm water port and both the Crimea and Baltic require Russian vessels to pass through allied straits) decides that they no longer want to be the ally of the US or NATO then they can and are abrogating that treaty rendering it null and void. But, they are doing it with our troops and assets on their soil. Any attempt to hinder the removal of those at the end of the agreement would itself constitute war.
Unfortunately Washington did not have the advantage of a crystal ball wherein he could see the future, the cold war, the rise of imperialism whether we want it or not, how do you avoid the entanglement that comes with the Japanese Empire attacking Pearl Harbor? His sentiment is noted and admirable, but of no practical value in a world of hypersonic nuclear weapons and interdependent global markets and finances.
FWIW I now predict the US will be dragged into another war it doesnt want by January of 2020. Trump will also be impeached by the spring of 2020 and convicted by the senate. A full scale recession will ensue by next summer. The decade of chaos will begin soon.
Lol. Mish Trump foreign policy is worse than what we had under previous administrations. Democracy and freedom do matter. Giving these autocrats what they want will lead to more disasters. Remember no two countries that traded with one another never went on to fight wars with each other. Russia will soon do what the US should have done. They will annex more territory and countries in their march towards reestablishing themselves as a superpower. Trump was a perfect president Putin’s goals. Leaders like Putin, Erdogan and Assad have no trouble killing their own civilians as a matter of policy if they try to stand up for their own rights. This will end up worse than before. We are doomed to get another Hitler at some point who thinks he can kill people and invade countries for some grand delusion. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
…no two countries that traded with one another never went on to fight wars with each other….
What? What history have you read? You don’t think Germany traded with France or Russia or Poland or the UK before WW1 or WW2?? What about Japan, China and the US? How about Vietnam and the US and France? What about the trade between Iran and Iraq? You do realize that trade has been going on between India and Pakistan even as they sleepwalk toward a nuclear war? That is such an old trope (didn’t the hinterlands sack Rome?) that deserves a quick death. Trade only ceases when the guns start firing, and then it still might continue in the dark corners.
“Democracy and freedom do matter…”
And are mutually exclusive, per “progressive” interpretations of the former.
Germany was trading with Russia heavily up to nearly the date Germany invaded Russia Sunday, 22 June 1941
The EU leadership is not democracy. It is an un-elected troika.
The U.S. moved NATO to the Russian border, not the other way around.
Of course regarding trade, I meant since WWII and only in an official capacity where trade agreements were struck via international norms. That rules out countries like Iran, Iraq, North Korea and China until they joined the WTO. The other way to think of this is no two countries with a McDonald’s have ever fought a traditional war. You can apply it to Starbucks or some other globally known brand. The bottom line is since WWII, we’ve seen the longest era of global prosperity for anyone willing to find their niche and trade with the world. Trade brought China int the international community. Some here may say the US has been awful but on balance they have brought more good than bad. If anyone thinks China, Russia or some other country that has an autocrat or dictator making the world a better place, I have multiple bridges for sale under a dollar.
Elect a clown expect a circus.
Are you talking about the prior 24 years? Middle east has been degrading for quite a while. Afgan war is now at 18 years. Libya is a disaster. Same for Yemen. Syria – now at 10 years.
At least we have no new wars in the last 3 years and maybe in the next year we might get out of Syria and Afghanistan. To me, that is progress.
Prior 150 or so. That was the dawn of the rise of the progressive movement. That was the inevitable beginning of the end of the West. Some people just aren’t all that bright nor farsighted.
The ME has always been a mess, from about June 8, 632 AD to present. The crusades, the conquest of the Iberian peninsula, the siege of Vienna, the stranglehold of the Ottomans on the Russian access to the Mediterranean Sea. It just never ends, and it boils down to something we cannot control, blinding religious rivalry that makes the Catholic Protestant schism look like a tea party. The best we can manage is to channel as much of it as possible away from our own shores, but, it has had to be done because the situation there impacted global energy so dramatically. I am hoping that the shift away from fossil fuels to renewables will lessen the threat of this over time, but the pace is not going to make the eco nazis happy, I will not live long enough to see if there is a permanent impact on ME policy.
By the way, while this is happening classical economics would tell you to expect lower energy prices in the fossil sector, demand drops as renewables provide a growing share of energy production, but, I would expect to see far higher prices, for two reasons, one is that economics of scale have held down pricing, as the sun sets on fossil energy that will no longer be the case and it will take decades to phase out internal combustion. If people think I am going to turn my new BMW into a lawn sculpture after only 4 years of utility from it they are crazy, demand for fuel will be around a long time, but it will be costly.
The other reason is that energy providers like the ME see that day coming when they will do more business selling sand than oil, they will not invest trillions collectively in operations related to energy production, they will slap band aids on the old gear to keep it pumping as long as they can.
If there is ever going to be peace they will have to work together toward some major project that their futures depend upon, if there is any truth to the threat of climate change they could do something like dam the straight of Hormuz and pump out the salt water turning the Persian Gulf into a giant fresh water lake that by treaty would benefit the whole region. It is actually one of the most doable major geoengineering possibilities anywhere. But they would have to end their religious zeal in favor of survival, so not looking for it to happen anytime soon. Too bad Muhammad did not promise them 84 virgins for NOT killing everyone in sight.
The EU will preempt the threat of unleashing a flood of refugees — by sending 5 million Turks packing back to Turkey.
Forget it. EU demographics would be even worse, who do you think is having kids?
EU wants more migrants, it just can’t say it out loud for fear of upsetting the horses.
No more nukes in Turkey? The US has had nukes in Turkey ever since it stationed those Jupiter missiles on the border with the Soviet Union in 1961 (The Cuban missile crisis — Khruschev wanted to return the favor).This would be overturning more than a half century of national security policy. Whole Cuban missile crisis for nothing…
Now who has wanted nukes out of Turkey since 1961?
How/why do you think Turkey became a part of NATO?
Where would the southern threat be re-located to? Hint, southern of what?
The Syrian army will replace the Turks once US troops are out of the way. The Kurds are aligning themselves with Assad, now.
US foreign policy can no longer do good for anyone.
War crimes? Grenada,Panama,Iraq,Iran,Afghanistan,Libya,Yemen,Somalia,Syria,Balkans,drone strikes,millions slaughtered by the MIC,and this buffoon talkin war crimes….Barak is that you?
Bring them home. To do what? I do not know what the number of personal that are stationed across the Earth but the troops along with the support staff(s) and the industries that supply these operations; my bet is the economics of this “police force” is large. So again what do we do with all these personal and their affiliated industries when they come home?
No civilized “We” do anything with free people. Instead, any civilized “We” simply steps aside and let them do whatever they feel like.
your falling apart infrastructure could do with some extra hands…. and the newly disposable money ….
Teach them trades that don’t involve killing people and set them to rebuilding our infrastructure?
How about have the military secure the border?