Interesting article by a former Pentagon official on Moscow’s attempts to hurt NATO, interventions in the interior of Balkan countries and the role of the Turkish president.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to use Turkey to cripple the NATO military alliance from within, says Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
In an article on the news and analysis website 19fortyfive, he says that Erdogan is closer to Moscow than to Washington and that he delayed the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO.
Turkey’s actions, he says, are part of the effort to hurt NATO and both the Europeans and the Americans must decide how to react.
Rubin also reckons that Putin doesn’t see Erdogan as an equal, but more like a … chihuahua, and that’s why he wouldn’t rely on the Turkish president for Russia’s broader security goals. Therefore, it attempts to intervene in the interior of Balkan countries and even members of NATO.
Russia has a plan to weaken NATO: The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, fully highlighted his diplomatic weakness last month. He suspended Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership in order to win unrelated concessions: A Swedish and Finnish commitment to withdraw support for Syrian and Turkish Kurds, and a push for President Joe Biden to proceed with the sale of advanced F- 16 and upgrade the fighters that Turkey already has”.
Erdogan may be cynical and Turkey no longer deserves to be a member of NATO, but there is very little NATO can do about it for two reasons: First, there is no mechanism in NATO to expel a member, and second, the organization is governed by consensus. There is no difference between the vote of the United States of 330 million people, Turkey of 85 million people and North Macedonia of 1.8 million people.
If Erdogan likes Russia more than the United States, and all the evidence points to it, then he and Russian President Vladimir Putin gain more power with Turkey as a member of NATO than without, as they can use its membership to to paralyze the alliance from within.
But Putin realizes how fickle and selfish Erdogan is. When Erdogan looks in his mirror, he sees Putin’s equal, but when Putin looks at Erdogan, he sees a chihuahua. Put simply, Putin will never entrust Russia’s broader security goals to a man he considers little more than a pet dog.
It is already unfolding in the Balkans. Ivana Strander of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has carefully and repeatedly documented the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in the internal affairs of several Balkan countries, including NATO members such as Montenegro, North Macedonia and Croatia. The White House and State Department may compartmentalize their diplomacy, but Putin takes a more holistic approach. Simply put, this strategy appears to be to block NATO actions through vetoes from smaller members that (Putin’s) forces penetrate long before he has to face the defensive alliance on the battlefield.
So the question for Washington and Brussels is what will be the reaction of the American Europeans? The tendency in both capitals to heave a sigh of relief when a crisis is over does not serve NATO well when what really happened with Turkey was a rehearsal for destroying NATO from within.
