This video of George Friedman talking about rising chaos in Eurasia is interesting in a "how high can my pucker factor go" sort of way, although great power war is unlikely to be chosen by any great power--but stuff happens. But the part about America wanting Turkey to take responsibility for the Middle East to stabilize it is the most interesting detail to me:
So what we’re seeing is Turkey rising to its old role but not fast enough to suit us. We want to push the responsibility over to them and they are saying, no thanks, we’ll pick it up later.
This video is more than a year old since it pre-dates the beginning of the Mosul offensive, of course.
He notes that the borders established by Europeans after World War I are artificial, but what borders would have been natural? And the borders created a reality just by existing for nearly a century in a world defined by borders having real effects. So while borders there might be less meaningful now, don't assume that new borders would be better--they'd just be new artificial borders starting over and losing 90 years of effects of making them real.
The idea that America would want to push Turkey to exert dominance to stabilize the region does make some sort of sense. And I did mention that if Turkey rejects European integration and NATO common defense of Europe as Turkey turns to the south and east, that bilateral relations between America and Turkey makes a lot of sense for both.
And truth be told, America doesn't want a dominant role in the Middle East. Europe and the western Pacific are more than enough challenge.
After World War II we counted on Britain to stabilize the Middle East. When Britain withdrew from "east of Suez" (in 1971?) America turned to the Shah's Iran to carry out that role. Since the Iranian Revolution we've been drawn in to the region starting with President Carter's Rapid Deployment Force and peaking with the surge in the Iraq War and the subsequent surges in the peripheral Afghanistan.
So the idea of Turkey doing the job--although Turkey is resisting such a role any time soon as their hesitancy to act decisively in Syria shows--isn't an alien foreign policy objective.
I'm just not sure that we'd be happy with an increasingly Islamist Turkey taking on the role under the proto-imperial ruler Erdogan becoming a full emperor.
But America might not have much of a choice if we want to finally set down that unwanted burden.
And yes, sometimes I write a post just for the joy of writing the title.
