On Tuesday, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet, flying near Turkey’s border with Syria, shot down a Russian Su-24 military jet. It is not clear whether the Russian plane, which was presumably deployed as part of Russia’s operations in support of the Assad regime, had entered Turkish territory. Turkey said that it did, and that it has radar maps and radio transmissions to prove it. Russian denies it. (The incursion, according to Der Spiegel, may have lasted only a few seconds.) The Su-24 ultimately fell to the ground well inside the Syrian border. As it did, the Russian crew ejected from the plane, and there are reports that, as two pilots parachuted from hundreds of feet in the air, Syrian rebels shot at them, or at a Russian helicopter that had come to rescue the crew, or at both, possibly with TOW missiles. Pictures have circulated that purport to be of a dead or injured Russian pilot. According to the Times, the Russian Defense Ministry has said that one pilot and a Russian marine who had been on the rescue helicopter were killed on the ground. What actually happened—what the Russians were doing, why Turkey chose to take this action, who the rebels might be, and where their weapons may have come from—is all still to be sorted out. For the moment, what substitutes for certainty is the anger of Vladimir Putin, who said that “the loss we suffered today came from a stab in the back delivered by accomplices of the terrorists.” In addition, three larger questions need answers:
- Do we understand enough about the cast of characters in this crisis? There is a profound uncertainty about who is who in Syria—who is whose friend or enemy, who can be counted on to pick which battles in a multi-front war, and even the basic identity of certain actors—and the shooting down of the plane underscores how dangerous that confusion can be. Turkey is America's NATO ally, and it opposes ISIS, but it has a dozen other interests in the Syrian conflict, including some that are at odds with our own (the Turkish fear of the Kurds), or whose emotional resonance we may not properly measure (the situation of ethnic Turkmen Syrians in areas the Russians are bombing), or which we have shamefully ignored (a million refugees in camps in Turkey). Russia is an ally of the Assad regime, and it opposes ISIS, but it, too, has other interests. Russia is also, to put it mildly, a country whose tensions with our own take many forms and could escalate in devastating ways. Russia says that it is fighting terrorists in Syria, but, although it has conducted some airstrikes in ISIS-controlled areas, the Obama Administration has said that it is mostly bombing non-ISIS rebels. What complicates things is that the category of non-ISIS rebels can include the remnants of the Free Syrian Army and also the Al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra. Today, in Washington, when President Obama, in a joint press conference with French President François Hollande, was asked whether the downing of the Russian plane might cause the situation in Syria to spiral, he said that everything would be easier if the Russians stuck to fighting ISIS and stopped going after “the moderate opposition that might be future members of an inclusive Syrian government.” But the President certainly recognizes that there is some hopefulness attached to the modifiers in that phrase, from “moderate” to “future" and "inclusive.” It would be easier, but it wouldn’t be easy.
Who would be willing to shoot down more Russian planes in order to enforce a no-fly zone? Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Presidential candidates have called for a no-fly zone in Syria. But ISIS does not, at the moment, have an air force, and so the no-flyers would be the parties who are flying now: the Russians and the Syrian government. The candidates have either avoided acknowledging this or elided it with talk about making our “priorities” clear to Putin through diplomacy (Clinton), or finding a way "to take out ISIS and to deal with Assad at the same time"(Jeb Bush). (Trump has been less clear; he talks most loudly about unleashing the Russians to bomb more things in Syria.) As the Times noted in a survey of the candidates’ comments even before the Paris attacks, they seem to treat “no-fly” as a cue for toughness. The piece quoted Bush, when asked about the potential for a conflict with Russia, as saying, “Well, maybe Russia shouldn’t want to be in conflict with us." Often, the talk descends to some version of a line that Chris Christie delivered last month: “My first phone call would be to Vladimir, and I’d say to him, ‘Listen, we’re enforcing this no-fly zone.’ ” But, if Vladimir shrugged, what would each of them do next? For that matter, what happens if American special-operations forces encounter Russian forces? Or a Russian pilot is held by rebels America supports?
Which downed plane makes Vladimir Putin the angriest? In a way, the story of Russia’s involvement in Syria might be a tale of two planes. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombing of a plane filled with Russian tourists that crashed in Egypt last month. Two hundred and twenty-four people were killed. The Obama Administration, along with others, has hardly concealed its hope that this tragedy would result in a Putinesque awakening, which might make the other two questions easier to answer. “The Russians have had several hundred of their own people killed by ISIL,” President Obama said, meaning that “there is a potential convergence of interest.” Maybe there will be, in which case it would be helpful to have a clear sense of what bargains coöperation with Russia might entail. Or maybe Putin will send more planes to Syria, with plans of his own.
