Benny Avni

Benny Avni

Opinion

America’s greatest alliance is about to end with a whimper

The Syrian civil war, still spiraling out of control, may soon lead to something even worse: a Russian-Turkish conflict that would engulf the region, magnify the war’s death toll and destruction, and likely mark the end of NATO.

Russian and Turkish empires have fought several wars, dating back to the 16th century and ending only at the end of the First World War. Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan dream of returning their countries to glories of empires past, what can go wrong?

Everything.

Erdogan is angry with Russia (and the United States) for helping Syria’s Kurds. Under Russian air support, the Kurds are expanding their territory into areas near the Turkish border, where the Turkish air force (plus troops, according to Moscow) has been active.

The problem intensified when at least 27 people were killed in a suicide bombing in Ankara on Wednesday. Turkish officials quickly blamed a Syrian Kurdish group, the YPG — which the United States supports and trains, and which Russia helps from the air. (YPG denies involvement in the Ankara bombing.)

Turkey says the Kurds are allied with the butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad — the man whose power Russia fights to preserve.

The Turks are angry with us for supporting the Kurds, but it’s Russia’s air bombardments that keep them awake at night. Putin, meanwhile, won’t easily forget that Turkey shot down a Russian plane earlier this winter, and now tells pilots not to await orders when they encounter suspicious aircraft near the Syrian-Turkish border.

Diplomats tell me France and other US allies are quietly warning that the increasingly hot words between Putin and Erdogan will soon turn into a hot war.

And then what?

Turkey was asked to join NATO in 1952, mostly because of its strategic proximity to the Soviet Union. Turkey now commands NATO’s second-largest military. Its bases are well-positioned to fight the war against ISIS. Yet can anyone envision America — or anyone else in the alliance — rushing to Turkey’s aid in a military confrontation with Russia?

No one will. We don’t do wars anymore, remember? We, and NATO, are the weakest link in the Syrian war, which by now is a mini-world war, with players from near and far deploying armies and backing proxy militias.

Oh yes, Secretary of State John Kerry is, as usual, hyperactive. Last week, he announced in Geneva that, by Friday, we’d have a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria. UN aid convoys will come in to help relieve civilians in hard-hit areas. Talks about postwar Syrian political “transition” will soon follow.

Indeed, Russia allows some UN aid to trickle in — “Or a few convoys as a smokescreen for the intensification of the offensive,” as the French ambassador in Washington, Gerard Araud, observed on Twitter Wednesday. Since Kerry’s Geneva announcement, Syrian and Russian planes have increased their ferocious bombing of militants and civilians in Aleppo’s vicinity, where two hospitals were bombed this week.

“If Russia continues behaving like a terrorist organization and forcing civilians to flee, we will deliver an extremely decisive response,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu thundered after the hospital strikes. “Unfortunately, barbaric attacks on civilians are continuing in Syria, and these attacks are being waged by both Russia and terrorist groups.”

Kerry’s ceasefire? In Geneva, maybe. In Syria, no chance. Not as long as America chooses to sit this war out.

While we have little sway over the Syrian war, that’s not the case with Turkey and Russia. And they’re getting angrier at each other by the day.

Can we convince Erdogan to refrain from directly confronting Russia, even while he’s angry at us? Maybe, but Putin isn’t guaranteed to act in kind. Especially if he’s convinced that, in Turkey’s case, NATO won’t activate its core principle of collective defense.

The alliance that had deterred the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War may not end with a bang, but a whimper. When it does, President Obama, who came to “repair” America’s relations with the world and strengthen our alliances, can add NATO’s demise to his burgeoning foreign policy legacy.