ERIC ZUESSE—The anonymous geostrategic genius who blogs as “Moon of Alabama” headlined on February 28th, “Syria — Deadly Bomb Strike Warns Turkey To End Its Escapades”, and this is only the latest in his series of articles arguing that Erdogan has maneuvered himself into a position from which a checkmate can no longer be avoided. He concludes the article with “NATO and the U.S. have both rejected to get involved in the Idleb [sp.] affair. Turkey is on its own and Erdogan will have to be careful. He is not only losing in Syria but also in Libya and he can not risk to further upset Russia because the Turkish economy depends on it.” If that is true, however, then ultimately Turkey will need to expel NATO from Incirlik Air Base, and quit NATO altogether.
RUSSIAN MIGHT
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MoA—Since its invasion of Idleb Turkey equipped its mercenaries and the Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) terrorists with U.S. made M-113 infantry carrier vehicles and with light armored infantry tanks. They also received more anti-tank missiles. The Turkish army is supporting them with artillery. The Turkish army also fired man portable air defense weapons (MANPADs) against Syrian helicopter and Russian warplanes. A Turkish drone which earlier today had entered Syrian airspace was shot down. Several Turkish convoys which attempted to move further south have been attacked by the Russian airforce. Russia claimed that at least 13 Turkish troops died or were wounded yesterday though Turkey has not issued any news on that.
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Speaking of military matters: The Russian Mi28 tactical helicopter; the unusual training of WW2 Japanese pilots
60 minutes readGenerally good answer but to nit pick what you left out was the flawed Japanese pre war training program that was very elitist and purposely focused on a rather small highly trained cohort of pilots rather than quantity as well as quality. Look at the U.S. or British training system the contrasts are striking. Just the entrance criteria were so elitist that few could even qualify for pilot training and training was so tough and realistic that losses were high just as in say Japanese destroyer crews for example.
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Now twenty years later, how did Putin do it?
30 minutes readPATRICK ARMSTRONG—As far as I know, most Western intelligence agencies (but not the one I was involved with) would have agreed with his prediction that Russia was, inevitably, going down to “obscurity”. The fear then was of chaos – rogue generals, nuclear weapons gone missing (remember suitcase nukes, “red mercury”?): Russia’s weakness was the threat, not its strength. We appreciated how badly off Russia was but also knew that Russia in its thousand years has often been down but never out. We also knew that there was more to Putin than the absurdities that were said about him.
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Is there a future for Russian aircraft carriers?
20 minutes readTHE SAKER—Hypersonic and long range missiles have changed the face of naval warfare forever and they have made aircraft carriers pretty much obsolete: if even during the Cold War the top of the line U.S. carriers were “sitting ducks”, imagine what any carrier is today? The old saying, “shooting fish in a barrel” comes to mind.