Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 578

Slow Rates Sink States

The world economic outlook isn’t exactly appearing fantastic these days: According to the IMF, world growth this year is expected be the slowest since the 2008-9 financial crisis. Moreover, Citi has found that, in August, hedge funds had their worst month since, well, gulp, 2008. It’s not just that China is slowing down, either, or that the U.S. isn’t growing fast. Germany, too, has got problems. Reuters reports that industrial orders are down:

Contracts for German goods declined by 1.8 percent on the month, said the economyvministry. A Reuters poll had forecast a rise of 0.5 percent […]

German factories got 1.2 percent fewer bookings from abroad, driven by a 3.7 percent slide in demand from countries outside the euro zone.“The decline in orders from abroad paints a dim picture,” said Thomas Gitzel, an economist at VP Bank. But he added that he expected the Chinese economy to stabilise, which could feed through to German industry.He also said there was some comfort in a 2.5 percent rise in orders from euro zonecountries.The economy ministry said a 2.6 percent fall in domestic demand was due partly to holidays.

It’s hard to say what all of this means. Economic forecasting is always an uncertain business, and the weird economic reality we’ve inhabited since 2009 (near-zero interest rates, slow growth, low inflation, and asset bubbles) is something nobody really seems to understand.

But we do know that the economic slowdown is already affecting world politics, and the next question is whether the U.S. economy will slow further as American voters start to think more seriously about 2016. With voters already angry at the establishments in both parties, a recession or a spike in unemployment could raise the political temperature much higher. Establishment candidates are already carrying a lot of baggage in this election cycle; at this point, a recession would probably not help Democrats in general and might be especially difficult for a Biden candidacy.More fundamentally, this bad news reminds us just how important healthy economic growth is for the strength of democratic societies. The past eight years of anemic growth have been hard on the world’s social and political cohesion, and more bad times would put an even greater strain on organizations like the EU, not to mention on the political structures of emerging market countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Malaysia, Turkey, and Brazil. At a time of growing global disorder, more bad economic news is especially unwelcome.

ISIS Attacks Saudi Coalition in Yemen

Saudi Arabia’s Yemen mess might have just become even messier. The AP reports:

Attacks targeting exiled Yemeni officials and Saudi-led troops fighting in the country’s civil war killed at least 15 people Tuesday in the port city of Aden, authorities said. A new Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) affiliate claimed responsibility for the assault, which officials previously blamed on Yemen’s Shiite rebels […]

The official Saudi Press Agency blamed the Houthis for the attack, saying the rebels fired Russian-designed Katyusha rockets. Those rockets are part of the Yemeni military stockpile that the Houthis, as well as al-Qaeda’s local branch in the country, have seized amid the war’s chaos.But by Tuesday afternoon, the new ISIS affiliate in Aden claimed the attacks in a message circulated by militant sympathizers online. It said a truck bomb driven by a militant named Abu Saad al-Adani first attacked the hotel, followed by a bomber named Abu Mohammed al-Sahli driving an explosive-laden Humvee.

The ISIS claim may not be true; the group would have plenty of incentive to opportunistically claim credit for another group’s dirty work. It could also just be an one-off attack. But if ISIS is starting to get more involved in the Yemeni civil war, this attack could mark the beginning of a big problem for Saudi Arabia.

As WRM wrote on Monday, the Saudis are confronting a host of strategic problems across the region right now, including Iranian-backed Shi’a aggression in general and the Iranian-supported Houthi insurgency in Yemen. They are therefore trying to build a united Sunni front to confront the Shi’a and the House of Saud may be tempted to turn a blind eye toward domestic funding of groups like ISIS that, though they might go too far (in Saudi thinking), at least fight the “right” enemy.But history shows that radical terror groups, prominently al Qaeda, bear no love for the Saudi government, and ISIS is no different. If the jihadi group becomes a third player in the Yemeni war, that involvement will complicate even further what’s already starting to look like a quagmire for the Saudis.

Green Ideals Trump Science in Europe

Maybe this was predictable: 19 of the EU’s 28 member nations have so far asked to “opt out” of scientist-approved genetically modified crops, exercising an option afforded to them by a compromise made by the European Commission earlier this spring. Under that deal, EU scientists are tasked with evaluating the safety of GMOs before their import into the trading bloc, but members are still given the option to eschew that expert analysis and reject GM crops on a case-by-case basis. Since then, the number of countries opting out has steadily risen, and a spokesperson confirmed earlier this week that the European Commission has received 19 such requests. Reuters reports:

The requests are for opt-outs from the approval of Monsanto’s GM maize MON 810, the only crop commercially cultivated in the European Union, or for pending applications, of which there are eight so far, the Commission said. […]

The 19 requests are from Austria, Belgium for the Wallonia region, Britain for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany (except for research), Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia.

These GMO rejections are notable for the fact that they’re entirely political. While greens often cite safety concerns to explain their hypocritical rejection of higher-yield, hardier, and less pesticide-reliant GM crops, in this case the facts are quite clear: The only crop that’s been approved so far—a Monsanto maize variety—has passed rigorous EU testing, and the other 9 awaiting approval will undergo that same scrutiny. The 19 opt-out nations might try and cite health or environmental concerns by way of explanation (and indeed many of them already have), but that’s not borne out by the science.

But GMOs aren’t dead in Europe. Spain and Portugal have a long history of planting genetically modified corn, and Romania seems excited at the prospect of boosting its own GM cultivation. “It’s common sense that any maize farmer, be it in Spain or in Portugal or in Romania, would like to reduce production costs and eventually reap a bigger harvest”, said Laurentiu Baciu, president of the Romanian farming coalition LAPAR.If humanity wants to feed itself on a warming and increasingly crowded planet, it’s going to need to plant better crops, and to that end greens, and the policymakers they hold sway over, need to get over their irrational rejection of GMOs.

The Victory of ‘Un-Populism’

Over the weekend, the ruling centre-right coalition in Portugal was reelected. You might be forgiven, dear reader, for having glossed over the news, but the news was significant. It was the first reelection of a government of a bailed-out country in the Eurozone. The Portuguese people have voted for the same team—albeit without giving them an absolute majority—that imposed draconian measures such as cuts in wages, pensions and a huge increase in taxes on the country.

There are two important lessons to be learned from this electoral result.The first one is that a government can actually enact extremely unpopular decisions in Europe and still win elections. For months we have been listening to what seemed to be a very logical narrative: by cutting pensions, wages, and increasing taxes, the government of Passos Coelho’s Forward Portugal (PàF) is committing political suicide and is destined to be shellacked at the polls. But unlike Santiago Nasar, the tragic hero of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Chronicle of a Death Foretold, it did not perish. And if there is one feature that is certain to recur in Europe’s present and future political landscape, it is the need for enacting deeply unpopular measures against a background of rising populist movements.The second one is that there is much more heterogeneity to Southern Europe than is usually portrayed. To put it in different words: Portugal is not Greece or Spain. Unlike these two countries, the anti-establishment parties have not been able to present themselves as real contenders for power.This is not to say that they didn’t do reasonably well. In fact, the Left Bloc, a Trotskyite movement formed in 1999, and the traditional hard-line Portuguese Communist Party, which have both campaigned against the euro, together earned 18.5 percent of the vote—enough to have them have a strong voice in the opposition.Their established role goes a long way to explaining why they managed to consolidate any kind of anti-austerity vote between them. But so does low voter turnout, especially among the younger generation. In fact the abstention rate was 1.1 percent higher than the last national elections, and reached 43.07 percent. But even so, their success was distinctly limited, and the Left Bloc achievement came at the expense of the more centrist Socialist Party, which campaigned against austerity but still favored policies for keeping the country in the Eurozone.Because the ruling coalition fell short of an absolute majority, it will face severe challenges in the coming months. It will need to come to some kind of an agreement with the chastened Socialist Party (which gained seats, but not as many as it had hoped) in order to form a viable government. The likelihood of that play working out is not clear at the moment. The Socialists have been sending mixed signals. As things stand, they have much more in common with the center-right than with the old anti-establishment parties. But even so, they may not be able to form a coalition, due to a brewing fight over the leadership of António Costa, the former mayor of Lisbon.Any battle between the center-left and left wings within the Socialist Party is likely to be bloody. This tension has always been present in the Party, but it is now at a rolling boil. The former leader, António José Seguro, who is close to the left wing, was very publicly accused of not having won a sufficiently big victory over the coalition in the European elections last year. Seguro lost the leadership contest to Costa, who argued that only he could steer the Socialist Party back into power. He clearly has not delivered on his promise. Some party members have already stated their intention to contest the leadership of Costa, but none of them really have the pedigree or the presence to lead the Party.If the Socialist Party falls prey to fratricidal infighting and is unable to get back on its feet, democracy in Portugal will take a body blow. The worst thing would be to have a replay of what happened in Greece with the virtual disappearance of the socialist PASOK. Nature abhors a vacuum, and in politics, it looks like formerly fringe parties often fill the void.But Socialist disintegration is not a foregone conclusion. And overall, the election results in Portugal may not be bad news for the eurozone as a whole.The next critical chapter of the euro saga will take place at the end of the year in Spain. Spain has a population of 48 million, and the fifth largest GDP in Europe. Madrid, just like Lisbon, implemented a strict austerity program, although it did so voluntarily rather than having the program imposed from outside. Nevertheless, structural problems such as youth unemployment continue to plague the government. The disenchantment with the mainstream parties that have dominated the life of post-Franco Spain—the Socialists and the Conservatives—has been enormous and given birth to various political and protest movements.To the left of the spectrum, an anti-austerity group calling itself Podemos (‘We can’) arose out of the indignados protest movement, and has a Syriza-like style and agenda. A more centrist, pro-European and market-friendly movement, called Ciudadanos (‘Citizens’), also sprung up, giving voice to those who feel disillusioned with the corruption charges facing members of the Conservatives. The latest poll shows that the two mainstream parties represent around 57 percent of the voters’ intentions, with the Conservatives ahead with 30.4 percent, whilst Podemos is third with 16.7 percent and Ciudadanos fourth with 12.3 percent.Spanish democracy has traditionally not been keen on coalitions. But if these polls are indicative, then there may be no choice but for the leader of the Conservatives, Mariano Rajoy, to consider forming a government with Ciudadanos. There is a common point of convergence between the two: Ciudadanos is led by a Catalan politician, Albert Rivera, who like Rajoy holds an uncompromising stance against Catalonian independence—something that is likely to emerge as a key campaign issue in the December elections. But to even realize that governing coalition, the Conservatives will need to do better than they’re doing in polls right now—and will have to pledge greater transparency and a will to fight corruption in order to convince the Ciudadanos to come on board.There are many differences between Portugal and Spain. The Spaniards have experienced austerity in order to avoid a bail-out while the Portuguese have endured austerity because of the bail-out. And their respective parties and electorates are different enough that drawing explicit parallels would be too facile. But there may be a spill-over effect. Like the situation in Greece has served to show the damage that can be made by the radical left, Mariano Rajoy can now look to his Portuguese neighbors for inspiration that austerity is not necessarily an electoral death sentence.

Score One for Putin in Ukraine

One effect of, if not a rationale for, Putin’s Syria intervention is to distract from Ukraine. The Paris summit on Friday was overshadowed by images of Russian fighter jets over Syria. Indeed, Russia appears satisfied with its accomplishments in Ukraine and supports the current ceasefire, no doubt in part because the Kremlin hopes it will encourage the Europeans to lift sanctions on beleaguered Russian businesses. On Friday, it looked like Putin’s strategy might be working, as European leaders signaled they might review sanctions this year.

Indeed, the Paris summit appears to have gone even better for Putin than many have realized. An eye-opening account of the meeting from Leonid Bershidsky in Bloomberg View reveals that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande were hardly supportive of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko:

French diplomat Pierre Morel, who has been in close contact with Moscow and the Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, prepared a plan for the Paris meeting of the four leaders to approve. According to Morel’s proposal, Ukraine would need to pass a special law setting out rules for the local elections in the rebel-held areas of Ukraine. That was a cunning way to defuse a time bomb planted under the Minsk cease-fire deal reached last February. Back then, Russia and its proxies agreed to an election under Ukrainian law by the end of the year, but they were clearly not prepared to hold it under the current legislation, which doesn’t differentiate the rebel areas from all the others in Ukraine. They were threatening to hold their own polls in mid-October, something that might cause the war to reignite.

Poroshenko, however, swept the French diplomat’s suggestion aside as “Mr. Morel’s personal opinion.” He was going into the meeting to demand Russia abide by the Minsk ceasefire, cancel what he called “fake elections” and return control of Ukraine’s eastern border to Kiev by the end of the year.[Poroshenko] underestimated the determination of France and Germany to get the Ukrainian matter out of the way in the most efficient manner possible. After five hours of talks in the Elysee Palace, the Morel plan was imposed on Ukraine in a form more beneficial to Putin. First, Ukraine must design the special election law in consultation with Moscow and the separatists. Then, it will have to pass it and amnesty the separatist leaders so they can run for local legislatures. In 80 days’ time, after the passage of the law, the election should be held. Then, if international observers declare it acceptable, Ukraine is supposed to regain control of its border with Russia. Hollande told reporters after the talks that wasn’t likely to happen this year, because of the need to draft the legislation and properly prepare the election.This is a slap in Poroshenko’s face. It’s almost politically impossible for him to push a Moscow-approved election bill through Ukraine’s parliament. Poroshenko has had trouble getting the legislature even to approve a tame constitutional amendment allowing for a special status of the rebel-held regions; riots broke out outside the parliament building during the vote and police suffered casualties. Trying to sell election rules favorable to Moscow might mean the breakup of Ukraine’s ruling coalition and perhaps snap elections likely to produce a parliament less favorable to Poroshenko.

It seems pretty clear that Europeans just want Ukraine to get off their radar as much as possible, and are perfectly satisfied with a settlement that leaves Russia able to create chaos for Kiev whenever it wants. Score one for Putin, then. It could not come at a better time, freeing Moscow to redirect resources to in Syria.

Pity, really. More savvy statesmen might press their advantage in Ukraine now that Putin’s occupied elsewhere.

Corruption Scandal at the U.N.

Former United Nations General Assembly President John Ashe was arrested today as part a larger investigation by U.S. District Attorney Preet Bharara, the Wall Street Journal reports:

Authorities allege that John Ashe, a former ambassador to the U.N. for Antigua and Barbuda who led the U.N.’s 68th General Assembly in 2013, accepted more than $1 million in bribes in various forms from Chinese businesspeople in exchange for advancing their interests in the U.N., including support for a U.N. conference center in Macau.

Mr. Ashe is charged with two counts of tax fraud in connection with the scheme, which extended from 2011 through 2014, according to the complaint released Tuesday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. Attorney information for Mr. Ashe wasn’t immediately available. A spokesman for the U.N. didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

It is unusual to see U.N. officials charged with corruption, because international organizations often escape the kind of press scrutiny, political investigations, and auditing that national organizations have to face. Those who think FIFA is an outlier are deluding themselves; that scandal was merely a particularly visible example of a big problem that too often is hidden from the public.

When they have happened, investigations into these organizations have uncovered a lot of corruption. Given what we know about the overall dishonesty and incompetence of international organizations ranging from UN peace-keeping organizations to the EU (the annual budgets of which are often full of unexplained gaps), these bodies clearly need more scrutiny. We hope this latest probe is a sign of a new investigative attitude.

New Draft Climate Text Is 20 Pages of Hedging

At long last, negotiators have hammered out a condensed draft text for this December’s climate summit in Paris. Members of the UN’s catchily named Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action took a bloated 86 page document and slimmed it down considerably. But a quick reading of the text evinces the fact that brevity and clarity are not the same thing, as plenty of uncertainty remains in the form of bracketed verbiage. Here’s a sample of the first heading under the Mitigation section of the text, which is sure to be one of the most contentious items under discussion during the conference:

Parties aim to reach by [X date] [a peaking of global greenhouse gas emissions][zero net greenhouse gas emissions][a[n] X per cent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions][global low-carbon transformation][global low-emission transformation][carbon neutrality][climate neutrality]. […]

Each Party’s nationally determined mitigation [contribution][commitment][other] [shall][should][other] reflect a progression beyond its previous efforts, noting that those Parties that have previously communicated economy-wide efforts should continue to do so in a manner that is progressively more ambitious and that all Parties should aim to do so over time. Each mitigation [contribution][commitment][other] [shall][should][other] reflect the Party’s highest possible ambition, in light of its national circumstances, and: (a) [Be quantified or quantifiable;] (b) [Be unconditional, at least in part;] (c) [Other].

To take one example, the difference between the words “shall” and “should” in an international treaty is obviously enormous, the former being presumably binding while the latter describes a suggestion for the involved parties. It’s not surprising that these differences haven’t been ironed out yet—that’s a job for the delegates due to descend on Paris—but this draft text is lousy with these sorts of opportunities for equivocation.

And you can be sure that many countries will be pushing for those less stringent, bracketed options. Take India, which last week outlined its climate pledge, a pledge that essentially amounted to a promise to only triple its carbon emissions by 2030, a reduction from the seven-fold increase unfettered growth might otherwise produce. India has long insisted on its right to grow and as Reuters reports, it’s planning on doing that with the help of cheap, dirty coal:

India is opening a mine a month as it races to double coal output by 2020, putting the world’s third-largest polluter at the forefront of a pan-Asian dash to burn more of the dirty fossil fuel that environmentalists fear will upend international efforts to contain global warming. […]

If India burns as much coal by 2020 as planned, its emissions could as much as double to 5.2 billion tonnes per annum – about a sixth of all the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere last year – [said  Glen Peters at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research]…He said India could replace the United States as the world’s second largest emitter by 2025. “This is something no one would have expected.”

India isn’t the only nation keen on choosing development over green goals. Coal-dependent Poland has already staked out a similar position, and that sentiment will be forcefully expressed by many of the world’s poorer countries in Paris. The summit may have a shorter text, but if the new draft has accomplished anything, it’s to throw into sharper relief the divide between the developed and developing worlds.

Credit Ratings: Who Needs Them, Anyway?

The left-wing government of Spain’s financially fragile capital city would rather not deal with the pesky organizations that evaluate its solvency. Madrid is cutting ties with S&P and Fitch as the city plans more social spending, a move that will leave the city without a credit rating within a few months. El Pais reports on the potentially catastrophic decision:

After meeting with both ratings agencies, the municipal economy and treasury department has decided not to renew the contracts next year […]

Although both agencies automatically rate countries, regardless of whether there is a commercial relationship between them or not, that is not the case with local and regional governments, which need to sign a contract just like any private company.

This is all very well so long as Madrid doesn’t want anybody to lend it money ever again. Being able to tap capital markets for infrastructure and construction projects is pretty important for a city that is interested in promoting employment, growth, and economic development, but that doesn’t seem to matter very much to Madrid’s ideological leadership.

It’s also worth noting that this move won’t just create problems with lenders. Far-sighted businesses are also unlikely to want to invest in cities that are burning the bridge to their own future. And if Madrid’s economy tanks and its credit dries up, there won’t be much money left for social spending. This won’t end well.

What Would Winston Say?

The greatest statesman of the 20th century, Winston Churchill was also a wise historian, and a witty, humorous, and insightful essayist. He accepted the realities of power and the immanence of evil, but remained, at heart, a long-term optimist, animated as he was by the belief that in the end, the ideals of liberty, if defended resolutely, would win.

Sharing the same hope in a different age, I have named this column “The Sinews of Peace.” It is the title of a speech remembered for a still more electrifying phrase: the famous “iron curtain.” So it often was with Churchill. Only a fool would claim to imitate him; but it is open to all to be inspired by his deeds and words.And particularly so in our darkening times. We live in a disordered world, in so many ways—a world in which the unrestrained and cynical dictators leading several of the great powers are thrusting aside the norms of decent international politics, in which religious fanaticism flares into massacre and chaos turns loose millions of refugees, in which belief in the old verities of representative government are under attack, and in which not a few citizens of this country have given up hope in the elementary competence of their own government. In one way, ours is not nearly as bad as Churchill’s time—there is nothing (yet) to match the malevolent power of the Nazis or the Soviet Communists, or the depth of economic collapse that helped create the political crises of the mid- and late 1930s. Yet the situation is bad enough. It is not 1940, to be sure, but there are more echoes of 1932, say, than one would wish.Churchill’s arguments carried through only until the beginning of the nuclear age. He would have been shocked to contemplate the security of a Western world in which Kim Jong-un and the Supreme Leader of Iran could, under the noses of knowing Presidents and Prime Ministers, steadily advance to become nuclear powers. He would have been appalled by feckless and spineless Western leaders who have trouble distinguishing between friend and foe, and whose aspirations to world order unsecured by ample power he would have thought dangerously naive. “Arms and the Covenant” was his motto in the 1920s, meaning no grand schemes without the muscle to support them. Twice in his life he witnessed the trahison des clercs, the rise of intellectuals who not only apologized for but argued strenuously on behalf of regimes that preached lies and practiced murder on a vast scale. But at least then there were voices of equal eloquence on the other side—the George Orwells, to take but one iconic name—who saw the truth and spoke it, as did he.This is, to repeat, a dark time, and much of the matter of this column will be about the way in which the United States and like-minded countries can navigate their way through it—as well as stringent criticism of leaders who make choices that seem to me foolish, or immoral, or both. But I would like to write about much more than that.For one thing, I am a curious hybrid of political scientist and historian, occasional government official and polemicist. I intend to write about topics that range well beyond politics, and reach back beyond the present. Do not be surprised if occasional columns pop up about teaching Shakespeare to aspiring bureaucrats, re-reading Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood, the joy of magic (conjuring, not occult practices), and the leadership insights to be derived from children’s literature. Not the least among Churchill’s armaments of sanity were his sense of whimsy and his realization that public people should have cultural interests independent of politics. I intend to indulge the former and explore the latter.For the most part, though, this column will deal with current politics and, frequently, what history has to say about it. Anniversaries will be the occasion of reflections on, say, the legacies of World War I, or the meaning of moral as well as physical rearmament. (Expect a reflection on the column’s namesake speech when its 70th anniversary comes around in March.) Much of the writing that I would normally pour into op-eds will end up here, where the constraints of time and space and formality are fewer, and the range of topics more ample.I am deeply grateful to my friends and colleagues here at The American Interest for this opportunity. I helped found this magazine, and it has lived up to my hopes in many ways—in its tolerance of a range of views; the breadth of its intellectual reach; and not least, the spriteliness of its prose. I look forward to writing here often—at least once every two weeks for starters—and to reaching out to new readers as well as old. I hope you will look forward to reading.

Russia-NATO Confrontation over Turkish Airspace

Russia hasn’t wasted any time shattering Western illusions in Syria. First, despite initial rhetoric about fighting terror, they bombed every anti-Assad force in sight except ISIS. Then, they killed any hope of a no-fly zone. Russian authorities announced on Friday that the Moskva, a naval cruiser armed with 64 S-300 ship-to-air missiles, and an unspecified number of other ships, were deployed just offshore of Latakia, near the air base set up by the Russians weeks ago.

Meanwhile, a Russian general calibrated his comments in a way that was sure to rattle Brussels: “Panic and desertion has started among them. About 600 mercenaries have left their positions and are trying to flee to Europe. Thus, the Russian airstrikes will not only be continued; their intensiveness will be increased,” he said. Another Russian admiral seemed to indicate that Russian ground troops, in the guise of volunteer veterans of the wars in eastern Ukraine, would make an appearance soon, and that their appearance on the scene “could not be stopped.”And, just in case you thought this couldn’t sound any more like the Ukraine fight, Russia is violating the airspace of the nearest NATO member. Reuters reports:

The United States and NATO denounced Russia on Monday for violating Turkish airspace and Ankara threatened to respond, reporting two incursions in two days and raising the prospect of direct confrontation between the former Cold War adversaries.

NATO held an emergency meeting in Brussels of ambassadors from its 28 member states to respond to what Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called “unacceptable violations of Turkish airspace” after a Russian jet crossed its frontier with Syria on Saturday.A Russian warplane again violated Turkish airspace on Sunday, a Turkish foreign ministry official said late on Monday, prompting Ankara to summon Moscow’s ambassador.It had done the same following Saturday’s violation, and said Russia would be held “responsible for any undesired incident that may occur” if it were repeated.

“The Russians are not playing ball at deconfliction—they are just saying, ‘keep out of our way,’” a UK-based analyst noted.

Part of Putin’s project recently has been to expose cracks in the Western alliance systems, and the Turkish incursions put NATO in an ugly spot: either the alliance has to make a show of force to protect its member-state’s sovereignty, and so risk conflict with aggressive Russian forces, or it risks appearing to be a paper tiger. Putin may be gambling that Western aversion to the former is strong enough that he can start applying pressure—hopefully, the Kremlin might think, leading to the latter.And if NATO chooses option B, it wouldn’t just be damaging in its own right: it would likely encourage more such behavior. If Putin thinks he’s found another soft spot in the Western alliance system, he’s going to keep pushing. It’s what he does.