I am very worried that the news media doesn't seem to be taking the Russia-Turkey tensions seriously. Turkey shot down a Russian plane, and all I saw about it on the news was a couple jokes about Thanksgiving. Maybe I missed it while flipping around, but looking at websites it seems like it's buried.
People. Turkey is a NATO ally. A huge percentage of Russia's travels through the Bosporus, past Istanbul. Logistics.
Russia can't project reasonable force in Syria without Turkey's cooperation. Russia has wanted that warm water port since Istanbul was Constantinople.
Don't newspeople learn geography in school any more?
Well, most of all, the rest of NATO are generally pretty much pissed off with Turkey for it, so they´re pretty much grumbling some about it but mostly they just want the whole thing to go away.
Then we have the funny little fact that its only a few years ago when Erdogan complained loudly that a plane momentarily crossing a border is absolutely no reason to shoot at it, oh no!
The Russian plane btw, entered Turkish airspace for at most 19 seconds, overflying a small stretch of land where the border goes a bit extra south.
Russia is obviously pissed off about it, but they don´t want a mess with Turkey and tend towards realpolitik, so,
most likely not all that much will happen.
As far as the current Turkish Government really being an ally against ISIS is ... Questionable.
Turkey is essentially an ally WITH ISIS, because ISIS is fighting the Kurds, and Turkey, among other things, used the fighting in Syria as an excuse to bomb the Kurds not long ago.
For the rest, never in five centuries has Russia
voluntarily gone to war against someone who, on paper,
might defeat them. They have miscalculated (Chechnya,
Afghanistan),
Ehm, RUSSIA had nothing to do with Afghanistan. If you equate USSR with Russia, or with tsarist-Russia for that matter, you´re already far out in fantasy-space.
Chechnya had nothing to do with calculations.
The Chechnyan maffia was starting to gain dangerous levels of influence and expanding into into terrorism with the help of Saudi Arabian jihadists and fanatics.
Even if they had been inclined to ignore the rest of the situation, those parts made intervention something they couldn´t not do.
And the rest of the situation wasn´t exactly pretty nor clearcut either.
Imagine that the Italian maffia hired a few thousand US private militiamen, and then proclaimed Texas an independent nation...
Yeah, USA wouldn´t just sit around nicely either.
Afghanistan, sheesh, doesn´t anyone know what happened there?
USSR gave some minor support to a leftwing government setting up there. It wasn´t the most well-liked ever, but it had a fair amount of support, especially among the secular and progressive parts of the population.
But they were "obviously" evil commies, so CIA started supporting religious Islamic extremists, which was the only group totally hostile to the government.
Once the terrorism started getting bad, and outright guerillas formed, the Afghan government requested military intervention from USSR.
And some dumb bureaucrat officially promised it before the Soviet leadership had even gotten full information.
They were a bit pissed off both at being committed without being asked, and at US getting involved in their backyard, and so, intervention it was.
So, it wasn´t an invasion at all, USSR went there by request from the government in charge at the time.
Then of course, with brand new lovely "foreign invaders" to unite against, the government that had let them in, even begged them to come, were ousted(they were still around, but their official power was mostly an illusion) when all the previously more neutral groups joined the religious extremeists, and even some of the previous supporters of the government as well.
but they hesitate to go to war against
even Poland-size countries.
Correction, "they" hesitate to go to war regardless of who.
If you bother to look, you will find that even if you take Russia, tsarist-Russia and USSR together, they get invaded something like >10 times as often as they invade anyone else.
For example, what nations have invaded "them" during the 20th century?
USA
UK
Germany
France
Japan
Canada
India
Greece
Poland
Romania
Serbia
Italy
China
Czechoslovakia
Slovakia
Hungary
Austria(Austrohungarian empire)
Bulgaria
Spain
Finland
Turkey/Ottoman Empire
And i´ve probably forgot someone. Pretty much everyone and their auntie tried to invade either tsarist-Russia or USSR during the 20th century.
What places did "they" invade?
Ukraine(post WWI civil war)
Baltic states(post WWI civil war, all 3 )
Iran(because USA was trying to make Iran its obedient little puppy-colony and the tsar was not happy about that(this is one of the possible origins of the term "shyster", because the yanq put in charge in Iran was lawyer called Shuster))
Iran 2nd time was the joint invasion with the wallies during WWII.
Finland(post WWI civil war)
Finland 2nd time, at least one clearcut invasion from USSR starting a war without any outside actions
Poland(Poles started it after WWI and then got screwed over back with the Soviet invasion in 1939)
Azerbadjan/Armenia/Georgia(now these ones get more complicated, they´re usually considered part of the Soviet civil war after WWI, but there were some serious attempts at independence, giving at least some little reason for MAYBE calling it an invasion by USSR)
China(but all of these are so messy that there´s just one i can say for sure who started it, and then(1929), it was China)
Czechoslovakia, and another clearcut invasion
Hungary, not quite as clearcut as you probably think
Not listing the nations that during WWII got counterinvaded, as they´re pretty damn obvious cases of reacting to anothers invasion and starting of war.
So, 20th century result, "Russia"/USSR invaded with or without starting war with 2 nations for sure and another 4 or so are debatable while the rest is reacting to events outside their control.
Russia hardly noticed ISIS until they were hurt a bit.
That´s incorrect. ISIS has close ties with both islamic extremeists directly and indirectly threatening Russia, as well as being supported by Saudi fanatics that also support terrorism against Russia.
And Russia had ISIS as their (mostly)official enemy even before Syria went to pieces.
It´s one of the primary reasons they choose to support the Syrian "government".
Most of the funding for ISIS is based on Oil Revenues.
Sold via turkey.
Seems a good chunk of that revenue is from sales to Turkey.
More of it is sold VIA Turkey than TO it.
Buyers range from not so fuzzy African companies all the way to US and European bigwig oil companies.
Because Turkey has made sure that there is no guaranteed way to determine where the oil comes from.
