I thought it was interesting when during the debates, when asked what she'd do about Syria, Clinton said "work with the Kurds."
"Work with the Kurds" has meant "fuck Turkey" for about 30 years now.
Definitely GoT level intrigue here (actually I've never read of watched, but it seems culturally relevant...gotta keep up with the kids). Maybe it's naive underdog rooting, but I was hoping for the Kurds to start selling oil internationally until the US courts put the kibosh on that. How would they align. The enemy-of-my-enemy logic get complicated fast given that Russia and the Turks have a mutual hatred that goes back a loooong time. The complexity of the Syrian civil war is such that it at times makes me fear WWIII. Obama has never really articulated a strong foreign policy vis Syria, but while many thinks that makes him look "weak," I would argue that it makes him look smart. Containment has has its problems in the past (cough, Hitler), but it has also allowed us to not go to war with USSR/Russia for 70+ years now.
There's like five different factions in Turkey and none of them are lily-white. I think one of the reasons everyone is all flummoxed about ISIS is that the smart move is to play them off each other for advantage and let whatever backsplatter blood you get in Belgium and France as a result be considered the cost of doing business. Which is obviously inhumane AF and ickily stickily Machiavellian which nobody Who Loves Freedom can stand. Here's my bet. Put on your tinfoil hats. The US is looking the other way while Iran arms and guides the Kurds through Hezbollah in order to destabilize Turkey and sap the Russians. Then when Erdogan falls, Turkey will end up with a Sunni state friendly to Iran and the US, thereby propping up Iran and increasing its buffer/prowess against Saudi Arabia. I reckon we're going to end up with a loose confederacy of milder theocracies across the Middle East, and they'll all be client states of the US. That whole "western freedom" thing pretty much went out the window when the Arab Spring failed miserably and if I were the State Department I'd try and build myself a Caliphate Lite that, while it doesn't take my instructions by the letter, is at least easy to bribe. If I'm super lucky I can build myself something with some legs in Turkey that might just sweep across Saudi Arabia when it crumbles, because crumble it will. And it will not crumble towards secularism.
What's your logic behind the Hezbollah/Kurd connection? If it's been written about, it's ignorance on my part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Hezbollah http://www.understandingwar.org/report/hezbollah-syria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_involvement_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_Revolutionary_Hezbollah http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/turkey-chooses-isis-over-kurds On the face of it, Hezbollah (rank-and-file Hezbollah, as opposed to splinter factions) is propping up Assad. On the face of it, that means two different things before and after the coup. The nice thing about proxy warfare is you can play both sides and Iran has managed to survive and thrive under 30 years of American machinations and economic warfare. I am not knowledgeable about the various factions in and around Syria at the moment, and Turkish politics is, in my estimation, very much in flux. I think we're watching a big shakeout in motion and my money is on Iran to come out ahead, Saudi Arabia to come out behind, Turkey to suffer immensely and the American press to flagellate and rend its hairshirt for the next ten years at least.
Hm, I'm not seeing the intrinsic link between Hezbollah and Syrian Kurds in the Understanding War (I perused the abstract) and the world affairs article. The Kurds are definitely not legion and there's a pretty big distinction between the Socialists in Rojava and the Burzani clan in Northern Iraq. The splinter groups that are more Sunni than secular may see some precarious alliance with Hezbollah, but I bet more of them are joining ISIS as a pan-Sunni movement than allying themselves with Hezbollah (my analysis). I think as a "enemy of my enemy" axis it makes sense, but I still don't see the guidance offered to the Öcalan-worshipping PKK Kurds. Then again, it wouldn't be much of a surprise to read that, Iran and it's proxies play intricate political games, not brash hammer swinging like most Sunni groups tend to do. But I may have been over-reading your statement and agreeing with what you originally said.
My point was to link to two differing threads: Hezbollah is simultaneously playing for Syria and against Syria depending on the faction. If I had to guess, I'd guess that Iran is mostly interested in the Alawites not being made extinct and that whatever happens, it doesn't end up Wahabi. I'm willing to wager that Iran isn't pursuing any broad ideological goals other than that their buffer in Syria doesn't end up weaker than it already is. That we've brokered even a vague peace with Iran basically telegraphs that we're willing to let Saudi Arabia twist in the wind; I'ma guess that we're more than willing to let Iran prop up whatever Iraq/Syria becomes for the simple reason that fundamentalist as the Mullahs may be, they aren't sponsoring-overseas-terrorism-crazy like the Saudis are.
Gotcha. I was fixated on the Kurd-Hezbollah comment and thought I had missed something substantial in that regard. It is strange to try and see what movies everyone is playing towards in the future. There's a lot of funny actors with a lot of disparate motivations. If the end point to sucking the Russians in deeper is pitting the Kurds against them, that's a very frightening prospect. No one seems to value their existence like the Alawites, and we can give them all the weapons we want but it's gonna be a bloodbath. and will end up being mujahideen 2.0 but this time with commies.
I suspect the Russians will never venture beyond airstrikes and proxy warfare. Their involvement in Syria at the moment is more to do with distracting Russians from their domestic economy than buffer-building and they've had Chechnya to remind them constantly of Afghanistan. My money is on a whole bunch of blood and treasure expended by all sides to produce a new map not significantly different than the pre-'91 status quo.
Technically, she said "Arm the Kurds" and won my vote. Fuck Erdogan.