By Max Frankel, Smithsonian magazine, October 2002

It was a lovely autumn day 40 years ago this month, a day not unlike September 11, 2001, when Americans realized that the oceans no longer protected us from enemy attack. Those old enough that October 22, 1962 to know the name John F. Kennedy will never forget the fear that swept through homes and cities when the president appeared on television, grave and gray, to proclaim a crisis. Reading a stern ultimatum to the Russians that called them nuclear cheats and liars for placing offensive missiles in Cuba, he also left the impression that his counteractions might any minute provoke a rain of Soviet missiles. The news terrified the public for six days and nights (though less for those of us trained to parse the bellicose words and signals flying urgently between Moscow and Washington). And as Hollywood has demonstrated time and again, the drama of the Cuban missile crisis has the power to instruct, beguile and entertain Americans in every decade.

The 2000 film version, with Kevin Costner playing an absurdly fictionalized role as Kennedy’s aide Kenneth O’Donnell, was called Thirteen Days, referring to the period of public alarm plus the period of frantic, secret debate that preceded it as Kennedy planned a response to the discovery of the nuclear rockets in Cuba. If the moviemakers had bothered with the Soviet and Cuban sides of the crisis, they could have made a vastly better film, reasonably called Thirteen Weeks. And had they examined the calamitous miscalculations on all sides, it might have been titled Thirteen Months.

Most accounts of the crisis concentrate only on the Washington players, led by the glamorous, nervous president and his shrewd younger brother, Robert. A view of Havana would feature the humbling of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s bearded Robin Hood, and his scheming younger brother, Raúl. In Moscow a bombastic Nikita Khrushchev was drowning in sweat as his boldest Cold War maneuver collapsed into retreat. This is a tale about a fateful triangle.

Like the attacks of 9/11, the missile crisis had deep political roots that were unwittingly nourished by our own conduct. Also like 9/11, our failure to imagine the threat beforehand caused us to ignore the few available warnings. Yet the 1962 showdown left us ill prepared for an Osama bin Laden, because our Soviet foes 40 years ago—though we demonized them as evil aggressors—were rational rivals who valued life. We played nuclear poker against them but shared a common interest in the casino’s survival.

As a reporter in Washington I covered the Cuban drama for the New York Times and have studied it faithfully since. Over the years, our knowledge of it has been enhanced by autobiographies written by many participants, by a great deal of scholarship and by nostalgic, on-the-record gatherings of Soviet, American and Cuban officials. We also have had credible reports on the contents of Soviet files and, most recently, verbatim records of crisis deliberations in the Kennedy White House.

In hindsight, I think two common views need correction. It is clear now that Nikita Khrushchev provoked America not from a position of strength, as Kennedy first feared, but from a chronic sense of weakness and frustration. And it is also clear from the historical record that the two superpowers were never as close to nuclear war as they urgently insisted in public.

Calamitous Miscalculations

Khrushchev, the soviet leader, was a gambler who had expected great returns from his radical economic reforms, denunciation of Stalin, release of political prisoners and gradual engagement with the rest of the world. He had visited the United States preaching coexistence and vowing to compete peacefully. But he was under tremendous pressure. The Soviet hold on Eastern Europe, a vital zone of defense against hated Germany, remained tenuous; Khrushchev’s generals were clamoring for more expensive weaponry; his people were rioting to protest food shortages; and China’s Chairman Mao was openly condemning Khrushchev for undermining Communist doctrine and betraying revolutionaries everywhere.

After the launch of Sputnik in 1957 revealed the sophistication of Soviet rockets, Khrushchev acquired the habit of rattling them at his most stubborn problems. Thanks to his missiles, which cost far less than conventional forces, he was hoping to shift money from military budgets into the USSR’s backward food and consumer industries. By aiming medium-range missiles at West Germany, France and Britain, he hoped to force NATO to acknowledge Soviet domination over Eastern Europe. Toward that end, he kept threatening to declare Germany permanently divided and to expel Western garrisons from Berlin, which lay vulnerable in Communist East Germany. By also rattling longrange missiles at the United States, Khrushchev expected finally to be dealt with as an equal superpower.

Although President Eisenhower had not directly challenged the Soviets’ sway over Eastern Europe, he had not yielded to any of Khrushchev’s other ambitions. A new and inexperienced President Kennedy, therefore, struck the Soviet leader as a brighter prospect for intimidation.

Kennedy had arrived at the White House in early 1961 visibly alarmed by Khrushchev’s newest bluster, a promise to give aid and comfort—though not Soviet soldiers—to support “wars of national liberation” in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Then, in April of that year, Kennedy stumbled into the fiasco of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, the humiliating failure of a CIA-sponsored invasion aimed at overthrowing Fidel Castro. So when Kennedy and the Soviet leader met in Vienna in June 1961, Khrushchev pummeled the American leader with threats to end Western occupation rights in Berlin and then watched with satisfaction when the president acquiesced in the building of the Berlin Wall.

Kennedy’s response to Khrushchev’s taunts was to flex his own missile muscle. During his presidential campaign he had criticized Republicans for tolerating a “missile gap” in Khrushchev’s favor. Now he abandoned that pretense. As both governments knew, the Russians held only 20 or 30 intercontinental missiles, of unreliable design, and were having trouble building more. By contrast, the United States’ missile, bomber and submarine forces could strike 15 times as many Soviet targets. The Kennedy team began to boast not only of this advantage but also to hint that it might, in a crunch, resort to a “first use” of nuclear weapons, leaving Russia unable to strike American targets.

Thus stung in the spring of 1962, Khrushchev came up with a bold idea: plant medium-range missiles in Cuba and thereby put most of the United States under the nuclear gun. Without having to wait a decade for long-range missiles that he could ill afford, the Soviet leader would give Americans a taste of real vulnerability, save money for other things and strengthen his negotiating position.

Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the Soviet defense minister, embraced the idea and helped sell it to dubious Soviet colleagues. Khrushchev’s old chum and American expert Anastas Mikoyan predicted an unpleasant reaction from Washington and a tough sell in Cuba. But Khrushchev thought he could hide the buildup from Kennedy until the missiles were mounted and armed; he hoped to reveal his new poker hand in November during visits to the United Nations and Havana.

The Castro brothers were desperate for Soviet weaponry to protect them from American invaders, but they didn’t want sealed-off bases under alien control. To overcome their resistance, Khrushchev forgave Cuba’s debts, promised more economic aid and insisted his missiles would help defend the island and support Castro’s dream of inspiring other Latin revolutions.

Castro was not fooled. There were easier ways to deter an invasion; Soviet ground troops in Cuba could serve as a trip wire to bring Moscow into any conflict, or Cuba could be included in Soviet defense agreements. Castro knew he was being used, but agreed to the bases to show “solidarity,” as he put it, with the Communist bloc and to win more aid for his people.

In Washington as in Moscow, domestic politics fueled the drive toward confrontation. Through the summer of 1962, the U.S. Navy had tracked a large flotilla of ships from Soviet ports to Cuba, while the CIA heard confusing reports about sightings of military equipment on the island. Heading into a close Congressional election, Republicans saw a chance to repay Kennedy for his past attacks on their Cuba policy by mocking his tolerance for a Soviet buildup just 90 miles from Florida. But the administration’s intelligence teams detected only nonnuclear “defensive” weapons—MIG fighter planes, torpedo boats and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), which had a range of only 25 miles. Having roundly misread each other, Khrushchev and Kennedy brought this diplomatic stew to a boil.

The Making of a Crisis

Hearing the republican alarms about missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev sent his ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, to Robert Kennedy with assurances that the Soviets would do nothing provocative before the American election. And when RFK complained that the buildup in Cuba was bad enough, the ambassador insisted—in innocence, it would turn out—that his government would never give another nation control over offensive weapons.

To fend off the Republicans, the Kennedy brothers hurriedly produced a statement saying that if any nation’s forces were to achieve a “significant offensive capability” in Cuba, it would raise the “gravest issues.” In a deceptive riposte, Khrushchev responded that his long-range missiles were so good he had “no need” to send big weapons “to any other country, for instance Cuba.” OK, then, Kennedy countered, if Cuba ever became “an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union,” he would do “whatever must be done” to protect American security.

American analysts concluded that the president’s strong warnings made it highly unlikely that the Soviets would install a missile base in Cuba. After all, they had never placed nuclear weapons outside their own territory, not even in Communist Europe.

That fixed American mind-set caused Kennedy to dismiss reports from spies in Cuba of missiles much larger than “defensive” antiaircraft SAMs. Then a dumb coincidence delayed photoreconnaissance. Because on September 9 the Chinese shot down a U-2 plane photographing their terrain, the White House ordered U-2 pilots over Cuba to steer clear of areas protected by SAM defenses.

Equally ill timed was the marriage of CIA chief John McCone, a Republican and former businessman who was the only Washington official to have reasoned his way into Khrushchev’s mind. Before embarking on his honeymoon at the end of August, McCone had tried to persuade Kennedy that the SAMs in Cuba could have only one purpose: to prevent U-2 spy planes from observing Khrushchev’s probable next step—the installation of mediumrange missiles capable of striking American cities. McCone’s absence meant his suspicions, and insights, were not heard in Washington for most of September.

Once McCone returned, he learned that an intelligence analyst had indeed spotted, in a photograph, suspicious bulldozer patterns in the terrain in western Cuba—patterns resembling the layout of missile bases in Russia. McCone insisted on more aggressive reconnaissance, and finally, on October 14, in the suspect area near San Cristóbal, U-2 cameras 13 miles up snapped remarkably clear pictures of medium-range missile transporters, erectors and launchpads. It was compelling evidence of imminent deployment of nuclear weapons capable of striking Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Dallas. Khrushchev, deeply committed to defying Kennedy’s warnings, was, in fact, installing at least 24 medium-range ballistic missile launchers (MRBMs), plus 16 intermediate- range missiles (IRBMs) that could reach any point in the continental United States except the northwest corner.

Kennedy, in turn, was just as deeply committed to prohibiting such bases. Upon seeing the U-2 photographs the morning of October 16, he first envisioned an air strike to destroy the missiles before they became operational. His more sober second thought was to keep the news a tight secret until he could take counsel and sift his options. Gauntlets thrown, here began the historic “thirteen days.”

The President’s Men Convene

What appears in retrospect to have been a quickly devised and effective American plan of action was actually the product of chaotic, contentious debate among official and unofficial advisers. They functioned as a rump “executive committee of the National Security Council,” soon jargonized as “ExComm,” and often met without Kennedy, to free up the discussion.

The ranking ExCommers were the president and his brother, the attorney general; Dean Rusk, secretary of state; Robert McNamara, secretary of defense; McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser; Douglas Dillon, secretary of the treasury; Gen. Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the other chiefs; John McCone of the CIA; and United Nations representative Adlai Stevenson. They all made a show of keeping their public schedules while moving in and out of secret meetings. From Tuesday, October 16, through Sunday, the 21st, they gulped sandwiches for lunch and dinner and kept their own notes in longhand, without secretaries. They shuttled among meeting sites by crowding circus-style into a few cars, to avoid a telltale herd of limousines. They lied to their wives, to subordinates and to the press. For the climactic hours of decision, the president cut short a campaign visit to Chicago, feigning a bad cold and a slight fever.

All this undemocratic secrecy served a policy purpose. The president was afraid that his options could be dangerously reduced if Khrushchev knew he had been found out. Kennedy worried that the Soviet leader might then stake out a preemptive threat to retaliate for any attack on his missiles, either by firing some of them or attacking American forces in Berlin or Turkey. Alerting Congress could have provoked demands for swift military action without allowing time to study the consequences.

The more the ExComm members talked, the less they agreed on a course of action. Every day brought more evidence of Soviet haste. Some of the missiles, the ExComm members speculated, would surely be armed with nuclear warheads within days, and all within weeks.

So what? the president asked provocatively at one point. He had once said a missile was a missile, whether fired from 5,000 or 5 miles away. And Defense Secretary McNamara held throughout the discussion that 40 or 50 more missiles pointed at U.S. targets, while perhaps quadrupling the Soviets’ strike capacity, did nothing to alter our huge strategic advantage. The Joint Chiefs disagreed, insisting that by dramatically increasing America’s sense of vulnerability, the Soviet weapons would greatly limit our choices in any future exchange of threats or fire.

Everyone soon acknowledged that Soviet bases in Cuba were, at the very least, psychologically and politically intolerable. They would embolden Khrushchev’s diplomacy, especially when it came to his designs in Berlin. They would also enhance Castro’s prestige in Latin America and erode Kennedy’s stature at home and abroad. As if the missiles themselves were not challenge enough, Khrushchev’s deception was seen as undermining U.S.-Soviet negotiations.

The president kept posing the issue starkly, insisting there were only two ways to remove the missiles: bargain them out or bomb them out.

Bargaining might entail painful concessions in Berlin or the withdrawal of American missiles from NATO bases in Turkey; though the weapons were technically obsolete, they represented commitment to an ally. Bombing Cuba would surely kill Russians and risk Soviet counterattack against American bases in Florida or Europe. (Our southern coast lacked radar defenses; as General Taylor observed prophetically at the time, “We have everything, except [the capability] to deal with a simple aircraft coming in low.”) In any case, a strike at Cuba was bound to miss some missiles and require a follow-up invasion to seize the island.

Small wonder the advisers changed opinions as often as they changed clothes. For every possible “if,” they conjectured a discouraging “then.” If we withdrew our missiles from Turkey, then the Turks would shout to the world that American guarantees are worthless. If we sent a Polaris missile submarine into Turkish waters to replace the missiles, the Turks would say we always slither out of harm’s way.

What if we warn Khrushchev of a coming air strike? Then he’ll commit to a violent response. And if we don’t warn him? Then he’ll suffer a surprise attack, seize the moral high ground and announce that the United States would rather risk world war than live with the vulnerability that all Europeans have long endured.

Round and round they went. What about a U.S. naval blockade of Soviet weapons coming into Cuba? Well, it would not remove missiles already in place or prevent deliveries by air. A total blockade? That would offend friendly ships but not hurt Cuba for months.

Time grew short. Many Soviet missiles were installed, and the scent of crisis was in the air. At the New York Times, we heard of canceled speeches by the Joint Chiefs and saw officials being summoned away from their own birthday parties. Lights at the Pentagon and State Department blazed at midnight. We clamored for enlightenment, and officials mumbled about trouble in Berlin. Kennedy heard us approaching and asked our bureau chief, James “Scotty” Reston, to call him before we printed anything.

Thursday, October 18, was the day for a double bluff when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko paid a scheduled visit to the White House. He sparred with the president over Berlin but held tightly to his written-out claim that only “defensive” weapons were going to Cuba. Though angry, Kennedy and Rusk pretended to be fooled.

The president had told ExComm earlier that morning that he discounted the threat of a nuclear attack from Cuba—“unless they’re going to be using them from every place.” He most feared nonnuclear retaliation in Europe, probably in Berlin. But as McNamara put it to the group, firm action was essential to preserve the president’s credibility, to hold the alliance together, to tame Khrushchev for future diplomacy—and by no means least—to protect the administration in domestic American politics.

Most important, ExComm had the benefit of the considered views of Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson, Jr., the just returned ambassador to Moscow who knew Khrushchev better and longer than any Western diplomat. He thought the Soviet leader intended for his missiles to be discovered—to invigorate his campaign against the West. Thompson felt that Khrushchev might well respect a U.S. weapons blockade and was unlikely to risk a fight in faraway Cuba. While he might strike impetuously at Berlin, that was a gamble he had been reluctant to take for four years.

Returning Saturday from Chicago with his “cold,” Kennedy seemed to buy Thompson’s assessment. He was ready to risk a Berlin crisis because, as he had told the Ex-Comm, “if we do nothing, we’re going to have the problem of Berlin anyway.” A blockade would buy time. They could always ratchet up tougher action if Khrushchev didn’t back down.

Kennedy was plainly haunted, however, by the Bay of Pigs and by his reputation for timidity. So he ended the week’s deliberation by again cross-examining the Joint Chiefs. Would an air strike destroy all the missiles and bombers? Well, 90 percent. And would Russian troops be killed? Yes, for sure. And couldn’t Khrushchev just send more missiles? Yes, we’d have to invade. And wouldn’t invasion provoke countermoves in Europe?

The president decided to avoid violent measures for as long as possible. But he did not want to reveal the tactical reasons for preferring a blockade. He insisted his aides use “the Pearl Harbor explanation” for rejecting an air strike—that Americans do not engage in preemptive surprise attacks—a disingenuous rationale that Robert Kennedy piously planted in histories of the crisis.

Story of a Lifetime

When I learned from his butler that the west German ambassador was fast asleep before midnight Friday, I became certain that the agitation in Washington did not concern Berlin, and so my Times colleagues and I focused on Cuba. And if it was Cuba, given all the recent alarms, that had to mean the discovery of “offensive” missiles. On Sunday, October 21, as promised, Scotty Reston called the White House. When Kennedy came on the line, Scotty asked me to listen on an extension.

“So you know?” Kennedy asked Reston, as I recall it. “And do you know what I’m going to do about it?”

“No, sir, we don’t,” Reston answered, “except we know you promised to act, and we hear you’ve asked for television time tomorrow night.”

“That’s right. I’m going to order a blockade.”

I was tasting a great story when Kennedy dropped the other shoe. If he lost the element of surprise, he went on, Khrushchev could take steps that would deepen the crisis. Would we suppress the news in the national interest?

Reston called a meeting. For reasons patriotic or selfish, I at first resisted granting the president’s request. A blockade is an act of war. Did we have the right to suppress news of a superpower war before Congress or the public had even an inkling of danger?

Reston phoned the president again and explained our concern. Did Kennedy want secrecy until after the shooting had begun?

“Scotty,” the president said, “we’ve taken a whole week to plan our response. I’m going to order a blockade. It’s the least I can do. But we will not immediately attack. You have my word of honor: there will be no bloodshed before I explain this very serious situation to the American people.”

Given the president’s word of honor, I believe to this day that we were right to defer publication by 24 hours. Kennedy’s reasons were persuasive: our disclosure could have led the Soviets to threaten a violent response against the blockade and thus provoke a violent conflict. But I took my name off the fudged story I wrote for Monday’s paper: “Capital’s Crisis Air Hints at Development on Cuba,” which, without mentioning missiles or a blockade, said the president would deliver news of a crisis. Like the Washington Post, which had been similarly importuned by the president, we held back most of what we knew.

Kennedy’s speech that Monday evening, October 22, was the most menacing of any presidential address during the entire Cold War. Although the senate leaders whom he had just briefed deplored his reluctance to attack, Kennedy stressed the danger implicit in the moment:

“[T]his secret, swift, and extraordinary build-up of Communist missiles . . . in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy . . . is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe. . . . Should these offensive military preparations continue . . . further action will be justified. . . . It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Americans certainly did not underrate the gravity of events; families drew close, planned emergency escapes, hoarded food, and hung on every news bulletin. Friendly governments supported the president, but many of their people feared his belligerence, and some marched in protest. In a private letter to Khrushchev, Kennedy vowed to stand firm in Berlin, warning him not to misjudge the “minimum” action the president had taken so far.

The Kremlin’s response encouraged both ExComm and diplomatic observers. While denouncing America’s “piracy” at sea and instructing Soviet agents abroad to fan the fear of war, the Kremlin obviously had no ready plan for counteraction. Berlin was calm; so were our bases in Turkey. Moscow’s government-controlled press pretended that Kennedy had challenged little Cuba rather than the Soviet Union. Khrushchev assented at once when the U.N. Secretary General, U Thant, tried to broker a pause for negotiation, but Kennedy decided to balk. In fact, Washington prepared a blunt notice about how the United States planned to challenge Soviet ships and fire dummy depth charges to force submarines to surface at the blockade line.

More good news came on Wednesday, October 24. The president kept some of his nuclear bombers airborne for the Russians to notice. And suddenly word arrived that Khrushchev had ordered his most vulnerable Cuba-bound ships to stop or turn tail. Recalling a childhood game in his native Georgia, Dean Rusk remarked, “We’re eyeball-to-eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.”

Washington also soon learned that the Soviets had instructed the Cubans not to fire antiaircraft guns except in self-defense, giving American reconnaissance unhindered access. Kennedy now stressed that he, too, wanted no shots fired. He also wanted the Pentagon generals eager to enforce the blockade (officially designated a “quarantine”) to know that although it was a military action, it was intended only to communicate a political message.

Public tension, however, persisted Thursday because work on the missile sites continued. But Kennedy let a Soviet oil tanker pass through the blockade after it identified itself and its cargo. And Friday morning, October 26, a Soviet ship allowed Americans to inspect what they knew would be innocent cargo. At the prospect of negotiation, however, Kennedy still could not decide what price he was willing to pay for a Soviet withdrawal of the missiles. ExComm (and the press) debated removing the U.S. missiles in Turkey, but the Turks would not cooperate.

The most unsettling hours were the next 24, which brought a maddening mix of good and bad news that once again rattled nerves in both Washington and Moscow. Three separate unofficial sources reported a Soviet inclination to withdraw from Cuba if the United States promised publicly to prevent another invasion of the island. And Friday night, in a rambling, highly emotional private message that he had obviously composed without the help of his advisers, Khrushchev implored Kennedy “not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war.” He said his weapons in Cuba were always intended to be “defensive,” and if Cuba’s safety were guaranteed, “the necessity for the presence of our military specialists in Cuba would disappear.”

“I think we’d have to do that because we weren’t going to invade them anyway,” Kennedy told ExComm. But early Saturday, Moscow broadcast a colder message asking as well for an American withdrawal from Turkey. The Turks publicly protested and urged American officials not to capitulate.

The Russians seemed to be upping the ante, and Kennedy feared that he would lose world support and sympathy if he held out against the reasonable-sounding proposal to trade off reciprocal missile bases. Then came the shocking news that an American U-2 pilot had been shot down over Cuba and killed, presumably by a Soviet SAM, and another U-2 was chased out of Soviet Siberia, where it had accidentally strayed. Were accidents and miscalculations propelling the United States and the Soviet Union toward war after all?

In another Kennedy-Reston conversation that night that I was invited to listen in on, the president expressed his greatest fear that diplomacy might not resolve the crisis after all. He said the reconnaissance simply had to continue, and if his planes were again molested, he might be forced to attack antiaircraft installations.

With the Pentagon pressing for just such an attack, the president made doubly sure that no one assumed he had already decided to strike. He told ExComm that unless more planes were shot down, he envisioned the slowest possible escalation of pressure on the Soviets—starting with a blockade of oil shipments to Cuba, then of other vital supplies—taking great care to avoid the nuclear conflagration that the American public so obviously feared. Eventually, perhaps, he would take a Russian ship in tow. And if he had to shoot, he thought it was wiser to sink a ship than to attack the missile sites.

Plainly neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev was anywhere near risking anything like a nuclear shoot-out.

Still, without much hope for negotiations, Kennedy yielded to advice from several ExComm members that he accept Khrushchev’s no-invasion bargain and ignore the bid for a missile swap in Turkey. The president signaled his readiness to guarantee that the United States would not attack Cuba if the missiles were withdrawn, but simultaneously sent his brother to tell Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin that the time for diplomacy was running out, that work on the missiles had to stop at once.

In delivering this ultimatum, however, Robert Kennedy also offered Khrushchev a sweetener: an oral promise to withdraw the missiles from Turkey within a few months, provided that this part of the deal was not disclosed. Only a half dozen Americans knew of this promise, and they, as well as the Russians, kept the secret for more than a decade.

A Collective Sigh of Relief

The sun shone bright in Washington Sunday morning, October 28, as Radio Moscow read out Khrushchev’s response to Kennedy’s offer. He said he had wanted only to protect the Cuban revolution, that work at the bases on the island had now stopped, and that he had issued orders to dismantle, crate and bring back “the weapons which you describe as offensive.”

Castro, bypassed in all the negotiations, threw a fit and refused to admit U.N. inspectors sent to the island to verify the de-armament, forcing homebound Soviet ships to uncover their missile cargoes for aerial inspection at sea. For a month, Castro even refused to let the Russians pack up their “gift” to him of several old Ilyushin bombers, which Kennedy also wanted removed.

President Kennedy, sensing Khrushchev’s discomfort in retreat, immediately warned his jubilant aides against gloating. He had now earned his spurs as a Cold Warrior and the political freedom to reach other deals with the Soviets, starting with a crisis “hot line,” a ban on aboveground nuclear tests and a live-and-let-live calm in Berlin. Thirteen months later he would be killed in Dallas—by a psychotic admirer of Fidel Castro.

Khrushchev emerged from the crisis with grudging respect for Kennedy and tried to share in the credit for moving toward a better relationship. But his generals and fellow oligarchs vowed never again to suffer such humiliation. Two years later, denouncing Khrushchev’s many “harebrained schemes,” they overthrew him, going on to spend themselves poor to achieve strategic weapons parity with the United States.

The Soviet Union and the United States never again stumbled into a comparable confrontation. Both nations acquired many more nuclear weapons than they would ever need, but they kept in close touch and learned to watch each other from orbiting satellites, to guard against surprise and miscalculation.

Condemned to Repeat?

The Cuban crisis had profound historical implications. The arms race burdened both superpowers and contributed to the eventual implosion of the Soviet empire. Other nations reached for the diplomatic prowess that nuclear weapons seemed to confer. And the ExCommers wrongly assumed that they could again use escalating military pressure to pursue a negotiated deal—in Vietnam. They failed because none of them could read Ho Chi Minh the way Tommy Thompson had read Khrushchev.

The philosopher George Santayana was obviously right to warn that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This past, however, acquired a rational, ordered form in our memories that ill prepared us for new and incoherent dangers. In our moments of greatest vulnerability—40 years ago and again last year—it was our inability to imagine the future that condemned us to suffer the shock of it.

The Associated Press

PARIS — A Senate panel says it would be unconstitutional for France to make it illegal to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago constituted genocide.

Relations between France and Turkey have soured since the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, passed such a bill last month and sent it to the Senate.

The Senate’s Commission of Laws voted Wednesday that such a law, if passed, would violate constitutional protections, notably freedom of speech. The vote was 23 Senators for and 9 against, with 8 abstentions.

The panel vote — a nonbinding recommendation — was the first legislative setback for the controversial bill. The measure goes to the full Senate for debate on Monday.

Updated at 4:20 p.m. CET

For Turkey, busy riding an economic boom and preoccupied with soccer scandals and revolutionary shifts across its borders, the race for the U.S. Republican nomination hasn’t exactly been a box office draw.  Until Tuesday, that is …

Late Monday, Texas governor and presidential hopeful Rick Perry said that Turkey was governed by “what many perceive to be Islamic terrorists,” and suggested the country should be booted out of NATO.

The governor’s remarks, made during the Fox News Channel and Wall Street Journal GOP debate in South Carolina, came in response to a question from the moderator over whether Turkey still belonged in NATO amid international concern over media reports of declining press freedoms, deteriorating relations with Israel and a rising murder rate of women.

“Obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then … not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it,” Mr. Perry said.

In Turkey, a long-time ally of Washington and NATO’s only majority-Muslim member, the comments were too late to make the Turkish dailies, but early Tuesday, news websites and Twitter feeds here were abuzz with Turks’ angry and confused reaction. Turkish daily Milliyet ran a banner on its website calling the comments “scandalous.” Hurriyet said the governor’s words were “offensive.”

Readers comments were a little less diplomatic. “America really must be a land of opportunity if this man has managed to become governor,” one reader commented on the website of Vatan newspaper.

A Turkish government spokesman said: “I’m not going to comment, but I think you can imagine what my comment would be,” adding that the Turkish embassy in Washington would be studying the remarks to formulate a response.

Turkey’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement that the remarks were “untrue” and “inappropriate,” and stressed that presidential candidates should be “more careful when they are making statements.”

“Turkey has been a NATO member since Perry was 2 years old,” the statement said.

Mr. Perry’s campaign, which has faltered in recent months after entering the race as favorite in August, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Some voters and international observers have been unnerved by the policies of Turkey’s Islamically-influenced AK Party government, as the country appeared to reorient toward the Middle East and clamp down on press freedoms. But the ruling party, under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, remains popular, successfully presiding over rapid economic growth and expanding diplomatic clout while maintaining good relations with NATO allies.

Analysts said Mr. Perry’s musings were all the more curious since Washington and Ankara’s alliance has been bolstered in recent months by Turkey’s strong backing of pro-democracy movements during Arab Spring uprisings.

“Ankara and Washington are now walking in lockstep… The essence of the new relationship is one where Turkey is more empowered, and more crucial to the U.S. because of its leverage,” said Atilla Yesilada, of Istanbul Analytics, an Istanbul-based political risk consultancy.

Turkish and U.S. diplomats say they cannot remember a time when cooperation between Ankara and Washington was closer, citing that President Barack Obama called Turkey’s prime minister more than any other leader except Britain’s prime minister in 2011.

What analysts call an increasing symmetry of Washington and Ankara’s policies has formed after a period of significant strain in 2009-2010, when Turkey moved closer to Iran and tensions with Israel were at boiling point over the killing of seven Turkish nationals by Israeli commandos on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara flotilla.

In a crucial shift, Turkey agreed last fall to host a North Atlantic Treaty Organization missile-defense system, which was designed by the U.S. to contain Iran.

Turkish media outlets on Tuesday were keen to claim that Mr. Perry’s infamous “oops” moment, when he failed at a November campaign debate to recall the name of a government department he would ax if elected U.S. president, undercut the credibility of his comments.

Mr. Perry’s campaign will likely consider Monday’s comments as significantly less of a stumble, unless the Texan is planning a visit to Istanbul.

Chelsea and England captain John Terry will face charges over allegations he racially abused another player.

The player will appear in court on February 1 following the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Alison Saunders, Chief Crown Prosecutor for London said:

“I have today advised the Metropolitan Police Service that John Terry should be prosecuted for a racially aggravated public order offence following comments allegedly made during a Premier League football match between Queen’s Park Rangers and Chelsea on 23 October 2011.

“The decision was taken in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors and after careful consideration of all the evidence I am satisfied there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest to prosecute this case.”

Videos of the alleged incident were circulated online and last week the CPS were handed previously unseen footage.

The Chelsea star has always denied making a racist comment to QPR’s Anton Ferdinand.

Reacting to the CPS statement he said:

“I am disappointed with the decision to charge me and hope to be given the chance to clear my name as quickly as possible.

“I have never aimed a racist remark at anyone and count people from all races and creeds among my closest friends.

“I will fight tooth and nail to prove my innocence. I have campaigned against racism and believe there is no place for it in society.”

Ahead of the CPS decision Terry’s manager Andre Villas-Boas said the defender had his “full support” of both himself and the Chelsea club.

n a statement, Terry’s club said:

“Chelsea FC has always been fully supportive of John in this matter and will continue to be so.

“The club finds all forms of discrimination abhorrent and we are proud of the work we undertake campaigning on this important issue.”

If convicted, the multimillionaire would face a fine of around £2,500.

Sky

A new bill criminalizing the “denial” of the unsubstantiated “Armenian genocide” claims was introduced in the French National Assembly with the barely implicit support of Mr. Sarkozy.

The co-chairmen of the Coordination Council of France’s Armenian Associations, namely Jean-Marc “Ara” Toranian, former spokesman of the terrorist group ASALA, and Mourad Papazian, unrepentant sympathizer of another Armenian terrorist group, the JCAG/ARA, did not expect that anymore, at least not in 2011. The level of knowledge of the MPs supporting the bill is exemplified by Richard Mallie (UMP), who still uses the crude forgeries of Aram Andonian that have been proven to be fakes since 1983.

The bill is not the result of the Armenian nationalists’ real influence in France; on May 4, 2011 they suffered a humiliating “fiasco”(this is their word) in the Senate after several other failures to obtain any discussion of the old, now defunct, criminalization bill (2008, 2009, 2010). The new bill is not the expression of a wave of anti-Turkish, or still less, anti-Islam sentiment. The Turkish season (2008-2009) in France was a success. According to a recent Gallup survey, 64 percent of the French have a good opinion toward Islam. There is indeed nothing in France like the Protestant fundamentalism in the U.S. and Germany or the vehement anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish demagogy of the so-called “Party for Liberty” in the Netherlands. The French colonial tradition, despite obvious shortcomings, was pro-Islamic and even largely pro-Turkish. The background is so completely different.

In a sense, the reasons for the bill are sadder than that. Mr. Sarkozy is afraid – not without reason – of losing the presidential election and as a result is ready to do anything to obtain more votes. His initiative is a serious error, even in a strictly electoral perspective. Assimilation leads many French Armenians to vote out of ethnic considerations. Even the majority of the nationalist activists and sympathizers vote traditionally for the same party because they prefer to show an electoral fidelity with the hope of being awarded – at least by subventions – for their associations.

So, the oldest alliance still existing in the world – the alliance of François I and Süleyman the Legislator, perpetuated in 1921 by the Ankara agreement and again in October 2011 by the Franco-Turkish agreement against terrorism – is not jeopardized by prejudices but prejudices toward prejudices and in addition toward the personal ties of a few dozen Armenian activists with a few dozen MPs. Similarly, the blog opened on the website of Le Monde by the author of this article was censored because of Armenian pressure. This is merely the result of social intercourse of a few Armenians with one or two editors. The failure of French Turkology to produce works comparable to the ones of Edward J. Erickson, Guenter Lewy and Justin McCarthy, or the passivity of most French Turks until very recently, also has something to do with the problem.

But this is not the time for a blame game. Political irresponsibility can provoke irreversible damages in the context of the Arab Spring – especially the repression in Syria, which makes Franco-Turkish cooperation so desirable – and the unresolved problems in the Caucasus. The French language was studied in Turkey for decades, but especially since the “recognition” of 2001 there has been a dramatic decrease, and that is why this text is written in English. The “recognition” of the “genocide” claims and the irresponsible statements of Mr. Sarkozy about Turkey cost France many contracts and its place in Nabucco. The vote of the liberticidal bill would still be worse. Even if it has nothing to do with any deep anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim feelings in France, the vote on the censorship legislation proposal would be interpreted like that by many Turks and not only by the less educated people.

Armenian nationalism has been used since its revival in 1965 as a tool by powers which have agendas other than European – or more generally Western – unity. Alas, it is also helped by the miscalculation of some Western politicians. As a result, the French deputies have a heavy responsibility. They can choose to damage irremediably the relations with a rising regional power and as a result seriously hurt the European Union policy, the French economy and their prestige and diplomacy. They can also choose to prefer French and European interests, as well as the value of free speech, to the cries of former supporters of Armenian terrorism.

*Maxime Gauin is a researcher at the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK-ISRO) and a Ph.D. candidate at the Middle East Technical University department of history.

Hürriyet Daily News

A real “diplomatic boxing” match has started between Armenia and Turkey, and while formally the reason was the latest statement by Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, it seems that Turkey is simply nervous because of growing international pressure.

Meeting with some senior representatives of the Armenian community in the French city of Marseilles on December 7, President Sargsyan said: “One day the Turkish leadership will find the strength to reconsider its approaches towards the Armenian Genocide… Sooner or later Turkey, which considers itself a European country, will have leadership which will bow at Tsitsernakaberd.”

The statement caused a stormy reaction from Turkey.

Chairman of the Turkish Grand National Assembly Cemal Cicek said that “the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations entirely depends on the solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem.” Speaking at an event in Ankara commemorating Azerbaijan’s late leader Heydar Aliyev on December 12, Cicek accused the president of Armenia of organizing the “Khojalu tragedy” in Karabakh in 1992 in which Azerbaijan claims the Armenian military killed Azeri civilians – an accusation strongly denied by Armenians. “We all know who Serzh Sargsyan is. He is one of the authors of the Khojalu genocide,” Turkish media quoted Cicek as saying.

For his part, Turkish State Minister for EU Affairs Egemen Bagis said that Sargsyan went beyond the limits by making that statement. He stressed that the Armenian people cannot be strong “due to poverty and hunger”. As quoted by the Turkish Anadolu news agency, Bagis said that some Armenians were working in Turkey which showed “the sincerity of Turks.”

An official response came from Armenia. Commenting on Turkey’s EU affairs minister, Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan said: “Such a response from the mouth of an official responsible for the integration of Turkey into the European Union proves that today’s Turkey does not yet have the leadership befitting a European country, and some Turkish officials are not bearers of European values and espouse the mentality in the spirit of the worst traditions of the Ottoman Empire.”

For his part, Deputy Speaker of Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov said that Cicek “repeated the legends of Azerbaijani propaganda about a million refugees and occupied territories.” “What a cynic one has to be to talk about occupation when your country has for decades occupied the territory of an EU member state (Cyprus)? To talk about genocide when your country has turned the denial of crimes against humanity into a state policy?!” said Sharmazanov.

But international pressure on Turkey and at the same time on Azerbaijan seems to be gradually building up. The U.S. Senate is voting on Resolution 306, which calls on Turkey to return the confiscated Armenian, Greek and Assyrian church property.

France’s position on Turkey’s membership in the EU has not changed, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirming that he would not approve Turkey’s entry bid.

Also, in France a draft law criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide seems to have reached the homestretch. MPs from the French president’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party that has a parliamentary majority on December 8 submitted a bill to the legislative committee of the National Assembly aiming to criminalize the denial of the Armenian Genocide.

And in her December 9 statement in connection with International Human Rights Day U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mentioned Azerbaijan, along with Zimbabwe, as one of the negative examples in the field of human rights and countries where there are political prisoners.

via Armenia-Turkey: Genocide, Karabakh issues cause fresh round of ‘diplomatic boxing’ between Yerevana and Ankara – Genocide | ArmeniaNow.com.

The Pentagon has admitted the RQ 170 Sentinel drone is lost somewhere in Iran.

But the US disputes Iranian claims to have shot down the state-of-the-art spy aircraft.

An unverified report on Iranian state radio has claimed that the US drone was flying deep inside the country’s airspace, over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225km) from the Afghan border.

News of the CIA involvement is causing controversy in Washington.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich told Sky News the involvement of America’s spy agency was a worrying development.

“We have to be very careful that we don’t stumble into a wider war here. If we are in Iran’s airspace with anything that belongs to the US, that’s a provocation,” he said.

The revelation coincides with speculation that a covert war is being waged in Iran by America and Israel to thwart Iranian nuclear ambitions.

A series of events remain unexplained. Iranian scientists have been assassinated, including one case where a man was killed by a bomb strapped to his vehicle by a hit team on a motorbike.

A huge explosion at a top secret missile base in the Iranian desert appears to have killed the lead scientist on missile development.

Mr Kucinich said he is worried these events mean the region is sliding towards greater conflict.

“The events have been confirmed, so when you start to connect the dots, those dots start to spell the word war,” he said.

The US has justified the use of drones in Afghan airspace as necessary to keep watch over American forces, but CIA involvement seems to confirm their use to gather intelligence beyond the border with Iran.

The Sentinel drone, thought to be 65ft in wingspan, is one of the world’s most secret aircraft. Packed with surveillance electronics, it is capable of staying in the air for days.

By Jeremy Salt – Ankara

Nov 18/2011

Possibly for the first time in the life of the Turkish republic, a Turkish government has adopted a policy of open, unprovoked confrontation with a neighboring country. The citizens of that country, Syria, are flabbergasted.  Turkey spent years repairing relations with neighbors under the banners of soft power, strength in depth and ‘zero problems’. At every level, the outcome was very positive. Some months ago, however, under the impact of the so-called ‘Arab spring’, that policy was abandoned virtually overnight. It has been replaced by threats, belligerence and support for an armed group seeking the overthrow of a government with which Turkey had friendly relations until very recently.

While calling on the Syrian government to ‘end the violence’, the Turkish Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister make no mention of the violence for which the Syrian government is not responsible. Armed gangs – some apparently salafists and some apparently causing chaos for money – have been attacking soldiers, police and civilians virtually since the beginning of the protest movement. The government can pull all its tanks off the streets  but that won’t stop the violence of these gangs (and now ‘army defectors’) and may even be seen as a sign of weakness and encourage it. Of the 3500 Syrians said to have been killed in the past seven months, a great many, including many civilians and more than 1100 soldiers, have fallen victims to these gangs.  The violence has completely undermined the peaceful movement for reform, and together with the recent attack on Libya has alerted Syrians to what is in store for their country if the US and its allies ever get their foot through the door. Bashar al Assad has an undeniably strong base of personal popularity and if anything, especially after the hostile decisions taken by the Arab League, under the influence of Qatar, the Syrian people are closing ranks behind the government.  They are facing the spectre of armed intervention in their country and devastation on a scale that would eclipse what has just been delivered to Libya in the name of a ‘responsibility to protect’.

Syrians are well aware of the brutality of the mukhabarat and corruption associated with high places in government. It is probably safe to assume that most support reform. The question is how to get it and at what price. Many are demonstrating but there is no sign that the majority of the people (and this largely includes the internal opposition) want anything other than evolved political reform. They are strongly opposed to foreign intervention and they object to Turkey’s aggressive involvement in their affairs. Once upon a time Syria gave sanctuary to Abdullah Ocalan. Turkey threatened war unless it got rid of him. For decades Turkey has had to put up with PKK attacks  on its soldiers and civilians from across the border, yet its government is now supporting a man, Riad al Assad,  whose ‘Free Syrian Army’  is doing exactly the same across the Syrian border. In confronting Syria, furthermore, Turkey has put itself at odds with Syria’s ally, Iran, whose cooperation it needs in dealing with the PKK. It certainly would be unwise to trust the US, which has played ducks and drakes with the Kurds for decades.

The violence being directed against soldiers and civilians is not ‘recent’ but has been going on for months. The stockpiling of weapons in a mosque in Dar’a, where the protests were sparked off by the arrest of children for writing anti-government graffiti on a wall, suggests that groups inside Syria were ready and waiting. Large quantities of weapons – pump action shotguns,   Israeli machine guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers – are being smuggled into Syria along with money in various currencies and sophisticated communications equipment. There is evidence of Syrian army uniforms being worn in an attempt to throw the blame for killings on to the government. Arrested men have confessed to shooting into demonstrators for the same reason. Of course, there are two narratives here – the Al Jazeera version where the violence was all one way until army ‘defectors’ began shooting back and the Syrian government version in which armed gangs were causing chaos across the country well before the ‘defectors’ joined in. Like most narratives neither is likely to be completely true or untrue, but there is abundant if unreported evidence in support of the case being made by the Syrian government. Many of the accusations against the Syrian government are coming from exiled groups such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Al Jazeera reports them with little or no attempt at verification. Its bias in its ‘reporting’ of Libya and Syria was so great, in the eyes of its Beirut bureau chief, Ghassan bin Jiddu, that he resigned in disgust.

What is happening in Syria bears the hallmarks of an orchestrated plan put into action by the US and its gulf allies. Reform is not the objective because that might still leave the Ba’ath Party in a position of power. The destruction of the government and therefore the removal of a long-standing obstacle in the way of US and Israeli policies is the objective. In addition the Saudis would like to see the power of the Alawis – heterodox Shia – broken forever.

On its past record the US would never miss an opportunity like this.  It has been interfering in Syrian politics ever since the CIA helped to bring Husni al Zaim to power in the first of three coups in 1949.  The State Department put Syria on its list of states that ‘sponsor terrorism’ in 1979.  In the 1980s the US and Israelconfronted Syria in Lebanon but were outsmarted by Hafiz al Assad.  In 2005 the US and its Lebanese proxies tried to blame Syria for the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. They succeeded in using the killing as leverage to get remaining Syrian troops out of Lebanon but their accusations felt flat four years later when the four generals who had been arrested were released for lack of evidence.  The struggle with Syria also embraced Hizbullah.   In 2000 Hizbullah finally forced Israel to end its long occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel waited for revenge and in 2006 – with the backing of the US – launched a devastating attack on Lebanon with the intention of destroying Hizbullah. It failed in the most humiliating fashion. Even with air cover its soldiers could not hold villages a few kilometers from the armistice line.  The collapse of the government of Saad Hariri in January this year underlined the strength of Hizbullah and its ability to outflank its enemies. Soon afterwards, the Bahrain uprising seems to have convinced the Saudis that something had to be done against resurgent Shi’ism.  The end target, of course, remains Iran.

In this struggle with the Syrian regime the US has used every weapon at hand. In 2003 the US Congress passed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (SALSA) of 2003, preventing US companies from trading either in or with Syria. The Israeli lobby was chiefly responsible for pushing this legislation through Congress.  Through the State Department’s Middle EastPartnership Initiative (MEPI) the US has been funding Syrian exiles and movements as well as funneling money into Syria through proxy organizations. One would not expect to find footprints let alone a ‘smoking gun’ but according to well placed sources, the former Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the former US ambassador to Lebanon, and now the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, began working on a plan to destabilize Syria as far back as 2008. The plan was multilayered and involved a range of actors as well as the spending of $2 billion.

Caught off guard by the wave of popular revolutions breaking out across the region, the US and its allies soon scrambled to their feet and started doing their best to turn the ‘Arab spring’ to their advantage. Ben Ali and Mubarak had to be abandoned but once an uprising broke out in Benghazi, they moved swiftly. On the basis of lies told to the UN Human Rights Council the UN Security Council passed a ‘no fly zone’ resolution which was quickly converted into the pretext for a general aerial assault on Libya aimed at bringing down Muammar Gaddafi. Qatar played its part alongside the US, Britain and France, providing hundreds of troops as well as the propaganda support of its satellite broadcast channel. There was no popular revolution in Libya.   There was not the slightest indication that anything but a small minority of Libyans wanted outside intervention in their country. Gaddafi had a genuine base of popularity, whatever the outside world thought of him, but seven months later the US and its allies had got what they wanted.  The government in Tripoli had been overthrown and Gaddafi done to death in the most vile way. The centre of Sirte lay in ruins and tens of thousands Libyans had been killed in the name of protecting them. The most advanced country in Africa had been disabled not through the actions of its own people but through the intervention of three outside powers. Now they were free to concentrate their attention on Syria.

Apart from its support and funding of Syrians in exile, and apart from the covert support it is giving to the opposition inside Syria, the US has openly sought to inflame the situation in Syria at every turn. Its ambassador travelled to Hama before Friday prayers and let it be known in advance that he would be there.  When the Syrian government offered an amnesty to people who handed in their weapons, as long as they had not committed serious crimes, the US intervened by advising Syrians not to hand in their weapons.

Behind the screen of the ‘Arab spring’ the US appears to have embarked on a spring-cleaning program. Iraq went in 2003 and now Libya has been dealt with but there are still three bumps on the road – Hizbullah, Syria and Iran – that need flattening. Strategies for dealing with them, alongside economic warfare, subversion and the possibility of direct military attack, include ‘dialogue’ with Sunni Muslim movements hostile to both Iran and Shia Islam. At the top of the list is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is about to come power in Egypt. The ideology of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey is a modified liberal version of the brotherhood’s policies as they are bound to take shape in Egypt. The connecting link between both of them is Saudi Arabia, which is a major investor in Turkey and will be a financial mainstay of the brotherhood if (more likely when)  it takes government in Egypt. In summer the Turkish Prime Minister was reported (by Agence France Presse, a reputable source) to have told Bashar al Assad that if he brought the Muslim Brotherhood into government, he would help him control the opposition. As the Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Syria, this was roughly the same as someone telling the Turkish Prime Minister that if he brought the PKK into government, he would be given help to control the Kurds. Of course Bashar was reported to have said no. The way in which the Turkish Prime Minister is attacking the Syrian president – feeding on his own people’s blood and so on – suggests that he was personally offended by this rebuffal.

Some of the most extreme voices in the Muslim world are now calling for the overthrow of the ‘heretical’ secular government in Damascus. They include the ranting Yusuf Qaradawi, whose home is in Qatar. Al Jazeera, the house organ of the Qatari government,  is playing its part by beaming propaganda around the world,  as it did following the attack on Libya  (an Arab critic described it as the ‘voice of NATO’). .

Now the Arab League, a useless organization if ever there was one, is issuing ultimatums which the Syrian government cannot comply with.  It cannot end the violence because it is not responsible for all the violence but the script has been written and the lines must be recited. The Arab League is simply putting an Arab face on western designs.  The interference of an Arab organization which has done nothing in its life for Palestine or any other Arab cause has infuriated the Syrian people.  Stage by stage, the crisis is being deliberately deepened with the intention of driving Syria further into a corner and setting the scene for armed intervention. If the US cannot get the resolutions it wants  from the UN Security Council, because of the Russian and Chinese veto, the focus of action will come to rest even more firmly on Turkey.

Ultimately Libya was as defenceless against aerial attack by Britain, France and the US as any small country would be.  In any case, Syria is not Libya. It has a much bigger army and it will defend itself against armed attack. It has had to fight for its existence against the French, the Americans and the Israelis, so there should be no illusions about how it is likely to  react if any attempt is made to cross its border and set up a ‘buffer zone’. No country has any right to sequestrate the territory of another country and any such move would probably end in war.   There is no knowing where or when or how such a war would end and who it would ultimately involve.  Iran has a defence treaty with Syria so its involvement should be anticipated.  Hizbullah has already threatened to respond with an attack on Israel. Any conflict between Turkey and Syria would open the door to NATO intervention. Against the background of US military encirclement of the Middle East and penetration of Central Asia and the Caucasus, Russia andChina might decide to draw a line in the sand.  Bashar’s warning that Syria is the fault line should be taken seriously. The US and its allies have delivered devastation to two Arab countries in the past eight years and now they have their sights on a third.  This is not just about the Middle East or the region but the global balance of power. One has to ask whether Turkey’s leaders have really thought this situation through.

A short list of  the players  who think they would benefit from this war would include the US, Saudi Arabia and its gulf state allies, Israel (although opinion is divided),  the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted salafists across the Middle East whose goal is the establishment of Islamic states. In Washington the same discredited bunch of people – the neo conservatives – who campaigned for war against Iraq and now want war on Iran, are very happy with developments on the Turkish-Syrian border. They might not think too far into the future but their planning for wars on Syria and Iran go back a long time.  The destruction of the Syrian government and of the strategic alliance between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah would be a strategic victory of incomparable value for the US and its Arab world allies. Most of these governments would never give their own people the freedoms they are demanding for the Syrian people.  Saudi Arabia does not even allow women to drive. Qatar does but otherwise has no constitution, no parliament, no unions and a system of ‘sponsored’ labor (the qafil,  a word which comes from the wooden yoke fixed around the necks of Africans as they were led into slavery) which allows employers to  prevent workers from entering or leaving the country.

As negotiator and facilitator between the Syrian government and the internal opposition, Turkey has a role to play but provoking Syria along the border,  lecturing Bashar al Assad as if he were a refractory provincial governor during Ottoman rule and giving support to people who are killing Syrian citizens is not the way ahead.

- Jeremy Salt teaches the history of the modern Middle East in the Department of Political science, Bilkent University, Ankara. He previously taught at Bogazici (Bosporus) University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne. His publications include The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California”

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By Safak Timur (AFP) – 16 hours ago

ISTANBUL — Syria’s failure to respond to an Arab League ultimatum for an observer mission raises concerns Damascus is trying to conceal a worsening humanitarian situation, Turkey said Friday.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had described the ultimatum to accept a mission of several hundred observers or face sanctions as a last chance for President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“Syria was expected to yes to the observers… unless there is a reality it hides about the situation in Syrian cities,” Davutoglu was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency after the deadline’s expiry.

“As it said no, it increased… the concerns on the humanitarian situation,” he said.

Humanitarian organisations and journalists have had very little access to much of Syria since the regime started cracking down on protests in March, killing at least 3,500 people, according to the United Nations.

“It is a last chance, a new chance for Syria,” Davutoglu had told reporters in Istanbul shortly before the 1100 GMT deadline for Syria to comply with the notice.

“We think it is now vital to put an end to the suffering of the Syrian people… and the bloodshed,” he said at a joint press conference with his Jordanian counterpart Nasser Judeh.

The new Arab warning was issued Thursday at a meeting of foreign ministers in Cairo, where the 22-member bloc also for the first time called on the UN to help resolve the crisis.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Jordan’s King Abdullah II have both called on Assad to quit over the violence.

“I hope that Syria will sign this accord,” Judeh said, referring to the Arab peace plan, adding that it represented “the collective will of the Arab world”.

Davutoglu warned that Syria would be isolated by Turkey, Arab states and the entire international community if it rejected the Arab proposals, and warned that Ankara could adopt further measures against the regime.

“Today is a day for an historic decision… and is a test of the good will of the Syrian administration,” he said after talks with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi.

Davutoglu said the foreign ministers of the Arab countries might meet on Sunday to discuss further on Syria, according to the developments, and he would be participating as well.

Turkey has been increasingly strident in its criticism of the regime in neighbouring Syria, once a close ally, and has already halted joint oil exploration and threatened to cut electricity supplies.

But despite the strong rhetoric, Turkish deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc said Ankara ruled out any military intervention.

“We are absolutely opposed to any intervention in Syria and reject any operation that would involve Turkey against this country,” Arinc told journalists Thursday.

In his blunt call this week for Assad to step down, Erdogan branded him a coward and warned he risked the same fate as dictators who met bloody ends.

Turkey has ratcheted up the its criticism of Assad since its diplomatic missions came under attack by pro-government demonstrators in several Syrian cities earlier this month.

Tensions were heightened further on Monday when two busloads of Turkish pilgrims travelling through Syria on their way back from the hajj in Mecca were attacked by Syrian gunmen.

Turkey, which is already sheltering about 7,000 Syrian opposition activists who fled their home, is however mulling plans for a buffer or no-fly zone on its border with Syria.

Among those on Syrian soil is Riyadh al-Asaad, who defected from the Syrian army and is now leading a group of deserters in the rebel Free Syrian Army.

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved

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Summary
The aim of the Sunni army defectors who make up the Free Syrian Army is to sow divisions within the military that will ultimately bring down the Syrian regime from within. A number of foreign players share this agenda, but they are reluctant to provide military cover for an opposition still struggling under the weight of the Syrian security apparatus. A closer examination of the dilemmas faced by the main stakeholders in the conflict reveals how the current dynamics of the conflict leave ample room for error as each tries to read the other’s intentions.

Analysis
With months of demonstrations failing to dislodge the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, military defectors who make up the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are trying to exploit Alawite-Sunni divisions in the army to bring the regime down from the inside while asking outside powers for military assistance. Though no outside country has intervened in Syria on the FSA’s behalf, a number would like to see the end of the Iranian-allied regime in Damascus. Turkey has been particularly aggressive in condemning the Syrian regime, even threatening to create a buffer zone extending into Syrian territory.

The FSA hopes to convince Ankara that helping Syrian defectors can prevent border instability — Turkey’s primary concern. Meanwhile, al Assad and Iran may use their influence over Kurdish militant proxies as leverage to forestall Turkish involvement. Though the Syrian regime appears for now to be holding together, the confusion surrounding each party’s intentions has the potential to lead to miscalculations and bring about the very situation each player hopes to avoid.

The Free Syrian Army

The Free Syrian Army loosely refers to a group of mid- to low-ranking Sunni army defectors. They are led by Col. Riad al-Asaad, who is believed to be based in Turkey. The FSA claims it has 22 “battalions” of soldiers throughout Syria capable of launching attacks on symbolic targets; in the past week, the FSA has claimed to have attacked an air force intelligence facility and Baath Party offices. The FSA’s leadership has said its main strategic aim is to elicit further defections and, by splitting the army, cause the regime to collapse from within. With Syria’s Alawite-dominated army units concentrated on urban opposition strongholds, the FSA has been able to transmit messages, facilitate cross-border travel and coordinate defections among the mostly Sunni army soldiers manning checkpoints and border posts. The attacks claimed by the FSA so far suggest the group is not receiving arms from outside the country but is waging its resistance primarily using the arms and ammunition with which members defect.

A significant propaganda campaign is part of the FSA’s efforts to seek assistance, but the group is still operating under the weight of Syria’s pervasive security and intelligence presence. In reaching out to countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia that may want al Assad to fall, the FSA has stressed the need for military cover — much like that provided by NATO in Libya, which allowed rebels time and space to develop their resistance in the eastern stronghold of Benghazi. This is why FSA leadership has emphasized the Syrian regime’s allegedly heavy use of the air force to bombard civilians — the FSA hopes to create a justification for humanitarian intervention. (STRATFOR has not seen any indication that the regime has chosen to use its air force against demonstrators, likely out of fear of Sunni air force pilot defections.)

The exact nature of this proposed military intervention is deliberately ambiguous, varying from the implementation of buffer zones extending into Syrian territory to air cover provided by no-fly zones. Though the FSA has sought to avoid creating the perception it is inviting foreign “occupiers” into Syria, the group undoubtedly hopes to bring about a replication of the Libya model of intervention. In the FSA’s view, if the opposition can draw external forces into forming buffer zones in Syrian territory, it will bring them one step closer to receiving the more significant tactical support they are seeking, such as the insertion of foreign special operations forces, to help split the army and topple the regime.

Turkey’s Reluctance

The FSA is having trouble finding military powers willing to intervene. Turkey has been the most vocal in pressuring al Assad, with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Nov. 22 calling for al Assad’s resignation and on numerous occasions threatening to implement a buffer zone extending into Syrian territory. Turkey also openly hosts FSA leadership, along with other defectors who have fled into Turkey. However, while Ankara has a broad spectrum of options for supporting the opposition from its own side of the border,  Turkey has not indicated it will follow through on its threat of military intervention.

Rather than deal with the near-term security implications of hastening al Assad’s fall, Turkey prefers to gamble on the regime’s inability to crush the resistance. Turkey could use a protracted political crisis in Syria to cultivate an opposition to Ankara’s liking, while avoiding direct involvement. The risk for Turkey is that al Assad will survive the crisis with Iranian aid. But Turkey also wants to avoid the near-term threat of becoming vulnerable to Syrian and Iranian militant proxy attacks, especially as the country has recently seen a significant rise in Kurdish militant activity.

Turkey’s primary interest in Syria is to ensure that instability there does not cause a refugee crisis or encourage Kurdish separatist activity within Turkey’s borders. Any eventual military intervention by Ankara — and its absorption of the associated risks — would be driven mainly by these concerns and not by the welfare of Syrian citizens. The United Nations estimates that roughly 7,600 Syrians currently live in Turkish refugee camps, but Turkey does not face an imminent crisis from thousands more refugees flooding across the border. This is largely because Syria has concentrated military crackdowns in opposition strongholds further south in the cities of Homs, Hama and Daraa.

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Constraints in Creating a Refugee Crisis

The FSA could try to spur Turkey to militarily intervene by creating just such a refugee crisis. By focusing activity in and around the northern strategic cities of Aleppo (an opposition stronghold) and Idlib, the FSA could draw harsher crackdowns by the Syrian army that would send civilians fleeing toward the Turkish border. This would also fixate Syrian forces on one location while thinning out the concentration of forces in other areas where the FSA may be trying to operate.

Similarly, the FSA could attempt to draw Jordan into the Syrian conflict by provoking stronger crackdowns in the southwest, where Syrian forces have concentrated much of their strength since the beginning of the uprising. Rumors circulated in the past week that the Jordanian government was also contemplating a “safe zone” on the Syria-Jordan border in the event of a refugee crisis, but a STRATFOR source in the Jordanian government strongly denied this. At the same time, the source said Jordan might have to contemplate such a measure if tens of thousands of refugees came across the border and if Jordan’s forces were augmented by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) troops.

This is unlikely in the near term. An estimated 3,000 Syrians have fled to Jordan, and the Jordanian government is just now starting to set up refugee camps. Jordan does, however, share an interest in weakening the al Assad regime. STRATFOR has received indications from Syrian sources that GCC money and supplies have moved through Jordan to opposition forces in Daraa and the Damascus suburbs. But despite significant opposition activity near the Jordanian border, the refugee flow in the south has not reached the level that would warrant a Jordanian intervention, and Amman likely will continue to exercise caution when it comes to escalating its limited involvement in Syria.

While the FSA needs to accelerate a crisis to compel outside intervention, potential interventionists have a strategic interest in staving off such a crisis. Though Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States all share an interest in supporting the Syrian opposition and sowing rifts within the regime, none appear ready to step up their involvement. Should a neighboring country like Turkey (or possibly Jordan) detect that the FSA is trying to create a refugee crisis on its border, that government could take measures to restrict FSA activity on its territory to avoid being led toward military confrontation with Syria. In the meantime, it remains unclear whether the FSA can survive without a refuge near the main areas of resistance and solely with the weapons taken when they defected, while at the same time trying to lure the Syrian army into intensifying its crackdowns.

Al Assad’s Dilemma

Syria and Iran want to prevent further support from reaching Syrian dissidents by making clear to Turkey that there are repercussions for trying to split the Syrian regime. The most direct way to capture Turkey’s attention is through Kurdish militancy. Syria and Iran may not have the ability to directly orchestrate attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party core based out of the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, but they can potentially exploit splinter factions. The Turkish government takes this threat seriously and it is likely a major factor in Turkey’s reluctance to escalate its confrontation with Syria. But Syria and Iran would also need to exercise a great deal of caution — using Kurdish militant proxies could inadvertently give Turkey a compelling reason to intervene in Syria.

Al Assad’s strategic interest is simple: to ensure the survival of the regime. This is an interest shared by Iran, which needs Syria to complete an arc of influence running from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. Though the Alawite-dominated forces are so far holding together, they are being stretched thin trying to maintain intensive security operations across the country. This strain does not bode well for the regime’s ability to bring an end to the crisis soon. At the same time, the amorphous FSA does not appear able to threaten the Syrian regime without significant outside help. This dynamic gives Turkey and others time to develop a more coherent strategy on Syria, but it will leave the FSA in a tenuous position as it attempts to get its insurgency off the ground with limited foreign backing.

Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.