This is an incredible debacle. NATO members are bickering with and sanctioning fellow NATO member Turkey. There are even reports of Turkish artillery shelling positions near American special forces to cut them off from their former Kurdish ally.
Meanwhile, Turkey's Erdogan has basically told Washington and the Europeans to shove their sermonizing and hypocrisy. Erdogan knows that the Americans and Europeans have blood on their hands from sponsoring Syria's covert war, just as he does too.
Washington has no moral authority whatsoever to unravel the mess it has engendered in Syria.
Russia can salvage the disastrous situation because it has earned respect from all sides due to its principled and powerful military deployment in Syria. Moscow will want to avoid delving in too deeply whereby it ends up in a war with Turkey on Syria's border. Somehow, however, Russia has the right balance between respect, diplomatic intelligence and power to salvage the morass made by America and its NATO cronies.
If peace can be settled between Syria and Turkey and Syria's territorial integrity restored, then Russia stands to emerge with newfound status in the Middle East as an honest broker and neighbor unlike the scoundrels barking in Washington and European capitals.
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