NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has vowed that NATO will "stand together with Turkey in the spirit of strong solidarity" amid heightened tensions with Syria following the downing of a Turkish jet last week.
Rasmussen said that the security of the alliance was "indivisible" but that NATO diplomats who met in Brussels on June 26 did not discuss whether to invoke Article 5 of NATO's charter, which would categorize the downing of the jet as an attack on the entire alliance.
And even if it did invoke Article 5, individual NATO members are free to determine how they will respond. NATO nations participate as they wish in Afghanistan and participated as they wished over Libya.
Kind of like how Turkey skipped the whole Libya War despite NATO running it. Belgium participated a bit, for Pete's sake! As did Qatar and the United Arab Emirates--not NATO members last I checked.
Effective NATO assistance requires America, of course. Even if we "lead from behind."
So in addition to Turkey's inadequate alliance solidarity in regard to Libya, let's remember how Turkey refused to help us in Iraq in 2003 by denying us the ability to send our high-tech 4th Infantry Division (mechanized) into northern Iraq from Turkey.
But now Turkey wants NATO and American support for dealing with Syria.
I hope Assad goes down. And if Turkey goes in, I wish them well on that mission.
But don't think for a moment that I don't relish Turkey's difficulty in getting more alliance help than they are getting.
