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Turkish Border Tensions
00:08:03
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| The storm before the calm. | |
| So, my first question to you is the breaking news item of the last week, and that is the deal the U.S. signed with the Taliban. | |
| What is George Friedman's take? | |
| Well, this war has gone on a long time. | |
| The original purpose was to hunt down Tal Qaeda, which is collaborating with the Afghan government, disrupt it. | |
| That was achieved. | |
| Once we did that, we decided to stay. | |
| And the mission crept up to making Afghanistan a democracy, which was fairly insane. | |
| There was no real path to anything comparing to victory. | |
| So I would say that what has happened here is that as part of the Trump doctrine to reduce our troops in the world... | |
| We had decided to fold our cards, win what we could, and leave. | |
| And unless we're planning to spend the next century there, that was a very good move. | |
| So if we leave and it provides echoes of our leaving South Vietnam, And there's a massacre of Afghans. | |
| Women are removed from the public sphere. | |
| Girls who go to school are shot. | |
| You would still hold it was the right thing to do? | |
| Well, given that we're there, and that's when the girls are shot, and women are oppressed, yes. | |
| An army is not a police force, and a police force is not a social worker or someone going for conversion. | |
| This is a heavily primitive... | |
| It's an Islamic country. | |
| It is a country that fought the British, fought the Russians, and wore them down. | |
| And as much as we would like to make this a better world, we need to face the fact that some places are quite happy the way they are. | |
| And even if they're not, no amount of American blood is going to change them. | |
| We got rid of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. | |
| They fretted, planted a price called Tora Bora. | |
| And we weren't going to do better than that, even if we wanted to. | |
| So, look, in retrospect, I think a lot of people believe we should have simply deposed the Taliban at the time and left. | |
| But, of course, the—well, not of course. | |
| Let me ask you this. | |
| Do you believe that once we leave, the Taliban will stay peaceful? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| The Taliban is heavily fragmented. | |
| They fought civil wars with various groups before they took power. | |
| They fight with themselves. | |
| This is a violent country. | |
| So there is no path to stability in Afghanistan. | |
| And there can be simply using our troops to show our commitment to building a democratic society. | |
| Well, I have two children in the military, and I'm not particularly happy with them having that mission. | |
| They're not symbols. | |
| They're human beings. | |
| Okay. | |
| I was very interested to get your response. | |
| Turkey has now opened its border, another late-breaking development, to allow Syrian refugees out into Europe. | |
| Do I have that correct? | |
| Pretty much, yeah. | |
| And the reason Turkey is doing this is? | |
| Well, there was a deal between the Europeans and the Turks. | |
| The Syrians were swarming into Europe. | |
| There was all sorts of internal fighting over this. | |
| And the Europeans agreed that if the Turks would house them in Turkey, the Europeans would pay the price, pay the cost. | |
| Okay? | |
| Well, the Europeans never came through with the money. | |
| And at this moment in history, where the Turks are fighting the Syrians, As well as the Russians. | |
| And the Europeans are refusing to give them any help. | |
| Erdogan did something that was not unexpected. | |
| He said, okay, deal's off. | |
| You take care of the Syrian refugees and we won't. | |
| And proceeded to release them. | |
| Now the Europeans have to decide either pay up or live with the problem. | |
| What will they do? | |
| They'll hold a meeting. | |
| The Europeans don't have any consensus as to what they should do. | |
| There are countries like Hungary that simply say, we're a Christian country, we're not going to let in Muslims to change their character. | |
| There are countries like Germany that are divided between those who don't think national character matters and those who believe that it does intensely. | |
| Europe is a divided, fragmented continent who's lost its second largest economy, the British. | |
| We've had enough. | |
| So they're not in a position to do anything. | |
| What the Turks really want is to see the Americans do something. | |
| And what they've asked for from the Americans are Patriot missiles. | |
| Now, the U.S. has a serious decision to make. | |
| They're asking for Patriot missiles so that we put our skin in the game on their side, their historic enemies. | |
| But doing that would also put us in a position of confronting the Russians. | |
| So we have to make a decision. | |
| Why do missiles, forgive me, why do missiles to Turkey confront Russians? | |
| Because those missiles, there's a fight going on. | |
| The Turks bought S-400 Russian missiles. | |
| We didn't want them to. | |
| We said they should buy Patriot missiles. | |
| They bought them anyway. | |
| Now that they have problems with the Russians, they want the Patriot missiles because they're not sure the Russian missiles will work against Russian aircraft. | |
| Oh, so it's an economic confrontation with Russia, not a military. | |
| Well, the Russians struck at Turkish positions, killing 30 last week. | |
| Why did they do that? | |
| Why did they do that? | |
| Well, they were warning the Turks not to come in and threaten the Syrian regime. | |
| The Turks are historic enemies of the Assad regime. | |
| They are... | |
| Oh, okay. | |
| All right. | |
| So that answers my question. | |
| The issue is Syria. | |
| I get it. | |
| So strengthening Turkey is weakening Syria. | |
| Syria is Russia's client. | |
| Well, Syria also is linked to Russia. | |
| And Russia and Syria are pressing on the Turkish border. | |
| Where we still have troops, by the way. | |
| All that weren't taken out. | |
| So we're in a position here where they're pressing on the Turkish border. | |
| The Turkish... | |
| Turks, who have a pretty impressive army, struck back. | |
| The Russians came in with airstrikes, and Turkey, not to make a joke, went ballistic. | |
| They turned to the European, to NATO, and NATO basically made no commitment to help their members of NATO. They then turned to the United States. | |
| Today there was a meeting between the Defense Department and the State Department. | |
| The State Department wanted to give them the defensive missiles. | |
| The Defense Department, according to the press, refused. | |
| The Defense Department does not want to commit without knowing what the endgame is and how many forces they have. | |
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George Friedman's Latest
00:00:17
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| All right, hold it there if you would, because I want to tell people again. | |
| This is George Friedman, my go-to person on foreign affairs. | |
| Clarity and knowledge. | |
| The storm before the calm. | |
| is his latest book. | |