It was a strange reference to a war that occurred 80 years ago. Whilst that has some semblance of relevance to US-Australian relations, it is meaningless in this context.
Your comments about variety of alliances makes more sense. Bringing in irrelevant considerations strikes me as either political or stupid. Let's assume political. He's doing a sales job, in my mind.
Turkey has been part of modern US interventions. The Kurds have not. It demonstrated cooperation outside local warfare. Alliance are political. In the long run the Kurds have little to offer compared to Turkey.
Again, irrelevant to this issue, I was merely suggesting that the history of Turkey is hardly more compelling or relevant than Kurdish history.
You are completely wrong about that as that history does matter.
But, facetiously I might suggest that the current iteration of Turkey might not be too unfamiliar to any familiar with the history of the Ottoman Empire in the first quarter of the 20th century.
Its not even close to the Ottomans yet.
As an Australian, it warms my heart to think that all alliances are reduced to cost/benefit and are therefore disposable on short notice to expediency.
You have to plan for the next war.
I'm obviously talking a little tongue in cheek, and I understand the rationale behind NATO inclusions of Turkey. Basically the juice has never been worth the squeeze, right up until the location of their airbases becomes important in one conflict or another.
Do not forget Turkey has bought a lot of hardware since 51.
In limited wars Turkey is an asset at times well above what Europe has done in 20 years beside the UK. The US has a vested interest to keep Turkey under it's influence rather than conceding all of to Russia. If a major war broke out I have little faith in Turkey as this time.
Assad pegged it right from the beginning. The version of realpolitik America has been playing in the Middle East since at least CIA operations in Afghanistan has consistently backed a horse, then switched based on short term needs. That hasn't worked well. Whether you like it or not, US decisions provided Erdogan tacit approval to invade Syria.
Turkey has been invading Syria for 5 years already. SFD didn't accept Syria's offer. Think about that.
That is a horse I would be very wary of backing. Calling him both strong, and threatening destruction of the Turkish economy if he oversteps an invisible line left undefined and in the sole hands of the President seems like a school yard approach to relations and strategy in the most complicated region on Earth.
That's just optics for the base. The state department had someone in communication the moment they found out.
Meh...we can argue about whether the US should be in Syria at all, and that position was handed to Trump to deal with, which is tough.
But the nature of this withdrawal and the method of communicating it to the world is strictly amateur hour, and seems to fly in the face of long term military strategy.
What long term strategy? The Kurds only opened dialogue with Assad when Turkey was about to attack. Seems to me the Kurds are playing the US and using the media to play for sympathy. All while carving out their own state whil trying to get the US to protect them while they do it.
