26 November 2015
Serious Consequences
President Putin reaches for the Paracetamol. Again.
By Neil Tidmarsh
President Putin has promised that there will be “serious consequences” to the shooting down of the Russian Sukhoi Su-42 fighter jet by Turkish F-16 jets yesterday. While reactions to the event are likely to be rapid – this article may well be obsolete by the time you come to read it – it is nevertheless worth trying to define here and now what those consequences might be.
The loss of a jet and a helicopter, and the deaths of a pilot and a marine, must have been a grievous blow to a nation and president to whom self-image is so important. So retaliation must be inevitable, sadly, if only to save face. How then will Putin strike back at Turkey? His options include the military, the economic and the diplomatic.
First, the possible military reaction. If Putin chooses to strike directly at Turkey, his most obvious target would be Turkish military aircraft flying over Syria, where the Turkish air-force is active against Kurdish forces (and Isis). Russia installed anti-aircraft weaponry (and equipment for jamming aerial communications) in Syria as soon as it joined Assad in the armed conflict; this was puzzling at the time, as Russia’s enemies – anti-government forces – have no aircraft; but perhaps that mystery has now been solved. Alternatively, Russian jets could return to Turkish airspace and take on Turkish jets in their own backyard, or attack targets such as military airfields on Turkish soil. Let’s not forget that the elephant in the international relations room is that Turkey and Russia are already engaged in a proxy war in Syria; Turkey aiding those forces fighting Assad, and Russia defending Assad.
This would be the most serious reaction, with the most dangerous consequences. And also the least likely. It’s difficult to understand the motivation behind Russia’s repeated invasion of Turkish airspace and indeed its recent violations of airspace all over Europe and the Baltic; the most obvious explanation is that Russia is trying to provoke a cassus belli – but it is more likely that this is simply macho posturing intended to demoralise and intimidate the opposition. Putin can’t really want open war with Turkey. In recent weeks he has found that he has enough of a war on his hands against Syrian rebels (government forces have made little headway against them in spite of all those massive Russian bombardments) without Turkey taking the gloves off in its fight against Assad as well. And war against Turkey risks war against all the rest of Nato, and that would be disastrous for everyone involved – as Putin the pragmatist, the realist, must realise.
A more likely military reaction would be to concentrate punitive strikes on the Turkmen forces who claim to have shot the Russian pilot and destroyed the Russian search-and-rescue helicopter, and who publicly humiliated Russia by broadcasting their claims and graphic footage on social media. This would consolidate the mission those Russian jets were pursuing in the first place; they were supporting government attacks against the Turkmen rebels. It would also save face, visibly punishing the enemy and indirectly striking at Turkey. In the preceding week Turkey had repeatedly protested about Russian attacks on Turkmen communities – the Turkmen are a Syrian ethnic minority group with strong links to Turkey – and requested Russia to desist. The risk of dangerous escalation would be much smaller than with a direct attack on Turkey.
Second, the possible economic reaction. Russian economic sanctions could hit Turkey hard; it needs Russian energy (Russia supplies 60% of Turkey’s gas, and a lot of its oil), commodities (Russian wheat in particular), custom (Russian tourists, already common in Turkey, were set to increase dramatically with Egypt no longer a safe destination) and partnerships (Turkey’s first nuclear power station is to be built with Russian help, and both countries are involved in the TurkStream pipeline plan).
But economic sanctions cut both ways. Russia needs to sell its energy and commodities to Turkey (Turkey is second only to Germany as a customer for its gas and oil, and is Russia’s biggest customer for its wheat). Russia’s economy is already suffering from the collapse in oil prices, the cost of maintaining the Crimea, the conflict in Ukraine and the EU’s economic sanctions. Indeed Russia signed a series of trade and energy deals with Turkey less than a year ago in an explicit attempt to offset the sanctions. In the past decade, Russian/Turkish trade has doubled to over $30 billion a year, and with Turkish exports making up only 20% of that figure, that trade is clearly worth more to Russia than it is to Turkey. Economic sanctions against Turkey would do Russia more harm than good.
Third, the possible diplomatic reaction. Russia insists that its jet did not venture into Turkish airspace, that it was shot down in Syrian airspace. The rescued navigator insists that they were given no warning by Turkey. This directly contradicts Turkey’s side of the story and, frankly, goes against the known facts about the recent behaviour of Russian military aircraft in the Middle East and elsewhere. Nevertheless, if Russia is sincere, it must have the confidence to put its case to a higher international authority, rather than take justice into its own hands. That it has already appealed to the UN Security Council is an encouraging sign. No one, not even Putin (despite the face-saving rhetoric), can want this crisis to escalate. It is known that frantic diplomatic efforts are being made behind the scenes between Nato allies and Russia to defuse the situation.
The Syrian peace effort is at stake here and, according to an announcement by the EU after its foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini spoke to the Russian foreign minister Mr Lavrov the day after the event, Russia is as determined as any of the other parties to keep that effort on track. President Putin must know that the only way out of the increasingly sticky Syrian quagmire is to secure that peace; by now it must be clear to him that military defeat of the anti-Assad forces is not a realistic alternative.
We have spoken before about what must be an abundance of headaches for President Putin – the chaos on his border with the Ukraine (flaring up again now his eye is on Syria rather than on the anti-Kiev maverics he’d just about brought under control), the cost of maintaining the Crimea, the EU sanctions, the collapse in the price of oil, his unsustainable ally Assad. And now this head-on confrontation with Turkey. He must be reaching for the Paracetamol once again – and the bottle’s probably empty by now.
How Isis must be laughing. Just when it looked like all parties were uniting against it in the face of its bombs against all, two of those parties break away and square up to each other again, fists raised. And how ironic that both Turkey and Russia, neither of whom have exactly seen the fight against Isis as a priority, are now pointing accusing fingers at each other and saying “If you had been doing what you were supposed to be doing – fighting Isis – this would never have happened.”
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