TENSIONS ESCALATE
Russian warplane downed, snarling ISIS fight
WASHINGTON — A united U.S.-French vow to expand the fight against the Islamic State in the wake of the Paris attacks was greatly complicated Tuesday by the shoot-down of a Russian warplane.
President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande emerged from meetings at the White House with a pledge to increase airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, bolster intelligence sharing and push commercial airlines to exchange passenger information to better block air travel by terrorists.
The French president’s brief visit to Washington, along with meetings this week with the leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia, is part of an aggressive push to get world leaders to escalate their campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, which took responsibility for the attacks in Paris that killed 130.
Hollande had wanted the United States and Russia to work more closely together. Already unlikely, that goal was made all the more
challenging when Turkey shot down a Russian military aircraft near the Syrian border after it ignored multiple warnings and entered Turkish airspace. Turkey is a NATO ally of both France and the U.S.
Obama and Hollande said Russia would be welcome in their global anti-extremist coalition — but only as long as it concentrates efforts on striking the Islamic State rather than on protecting the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad.
“France can work with Russia, if Russia concentrates its military action on Daesh, against ISIL, and if Russia fully commits to the political position in Syria,” said Hollande.
Obama touted the U.S.-led 65-country coalition fighting the Islamic State, which has conducted 8,000 airstrikes. He dismissed Russia and Iran, backers of Assad, as a “coalition of two.”
“Russia is the outlier,” Obama said. “We hope that they refocus their attention on what is the most substantial threat, and that they serve as a constructive partner.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin focused instead Tuesday on the loss of its aircraft and the fate of its crew.
He said the aircraft was downed over Syria as pilots were targeting “terrorists” in northern areas around Latakia, specifically militants with Russian origins, and posed no threat to Turkey. He threatened “serious consequences” for the incident.
In the remarks, carried by Russian news agency RT, Putin denounced the downing as “a stab in the back carried out by the accomplices of terrorists.”
Both Obama and Hollande said they would work with NATO and speak to the Turks and Russians to find out what happened.
“My top priority is to ensure that this does not escalate,” Obama said. “Hopefully this is moment where we can all step back.”
The downing of the SU-24 strike fighter could not have come at a worse time for the complex relationship between Russia, Turkey and the U.S.-led coalition as the Syrian civil war continues to draw in a series of outside actors with differing agendas.
“Russia and Turkey have a long history of rivalry, and the competition of claim and counterclaim about where the plane was flying when hit is no surprise,” said Barry Strauss, a military historian and chair of the Cornell University history department.
Karen Dawisha, director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University in Ohio, said Russia has been assessing NATO’s responses in several locations — the Baltic, the North Sea, southwest of the U.K. — and that Turkey was the latest test.
Russian officials had signed deals with Turkey to stop the violations and continued testing NATO’s patience. On Tuesday, she said, Moscow got its response.
“They can be under no illusion that NATO is wellprotected in the south and that Turkey is a reliable NATO member and that NATO is not going to put up with this,” Dawisha said. “The coolness of [Obama’s] response was, ‘You think we’re idiots? We know what you’re doing ... now stop it.’ ”