Cyprus, Greece and Egypt Move Closer Contra Turkey

As we briefly reviewed last summer, Turkey's bullying action from the Aegean to Cyprus to Libya was having the effect of pushing surrounding nations closer together - and getting the attention of larger powers on the other side of the Mediterranean as well.

After a series of provocations by Turkey, it was only natural that the nations of the Eastern Mediterranean would either have to fold or stand up.

They've taken the later option; 

Egypt, Cyprus and Greece have demanded respect for the sovereignty and sovereign rights of states in their maritime areas in the eastern Mediterranean.

The demand came in a joint statement from the three countries’ foreign ministers during their meeting in Athens, where they discussed cooperation to deepen their political and economic commitment, regional challenges and delivering a clear message that the region had the potential to be peaceful and stable.They welcomed the preparations for the establishment of a Tripartite Secretariat, based in Nicosia, Cyprus, that launches later this year, and for the founding charter of the EastMed Gas Forum that enters into force on March 1.

The charter establishes the forum as a regional organization based in Cairo. The forum is open to all countries that share the same values ​​and goals and have the desire to cooperate for regional security and prosperity.

...

They stressed the importance of respecting the sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction of each state over its maritime areas in accordance with international law, while condemning any activities that violated international law.

Their statement said the expected words about Syria, Israel, the Palestinians, and Libya, but there is no question here the concern revolves around their mutual history with the Turks/Ottomans. 

On balance, this is good for the international community. Turkey needed to be checked, and these neighbors - in an East Med "community watch" - put their obnoxious neighbor at the end off the cul-de-sac on notice. 

Good.

Fullbore Friday

It's been about nine years since I finished Xenophon's Anabasis on audio and it still sticks with me.

Almost 2,400 years old and its lessons on leadership are timeless. There is really nothing new under the sun.

This book is a perfect example of the critical importance of a classical education. We wouldn't have to learn the hard way if we realized the truth that has been there from the dawn of history ... not to mention the lessons of 20 years ago ... move the decimal place two spots over.

Here is just one bit.

Rely upon this then, all you who are here assembled, now is your great opportunity. The soldiers outside have their eyes fixed upon you; if they think that you are faint-hearted, they will turn cowards; but if you show them that you are making your own preparations to attack the enemy, and setting an example to the rest--follow you, be assured, they will: imitate you they will. May be, it is but right and fair that you should somewhat excel them, for you are generals, you are commanders of brigades or regiments; and if, while it was peace, you had the advantage in wealth and position, so now, when it is war, you are expected to rise superior to the common herd--to think for them, to toil for them, whenever there be need.

"At this very moment you would confer a great boon on the army, if you made it your business to appoint generals and officers to fill the places of those that are lost. For without leaders nothing good or noble, to put it concisely, was ever wrought anywhere; and in military matters this is absolutely true; for if discipline is held to be of saving virtue, the want of it has been the ruin of many ere now.

Well, then! when you have appointed all the commanders necessary, it would only be opportune, I take it, if you were to summon the rest of the soldiers and speak some words of encouragement. Even now, I daresay you noticed yourselves the crestfallen air with which they came into camp, the despondency with which they fell to picket duty, so that, unless there is a change for the better, I do not know for what service they will be fit; whether by night, if need were, or even by day.

The thing is to get them to turn their thoughts to what they mean to do, instead of to what they are likely to suffer. Do that, and their spirits will soon revive wonderfully. You know, I need hardly remind you, it is not numbers or strength that gives victory in war; but, heaven helping them, to one or other of two combatants it is 42 given to dash with stouter hearts to meet the foe, and such onset, in nine cases out of ten, those others refuse to meet.

This observation, also, I have laid to heart, that they, who in matters of war seek in all ways to save their lives, are just they who, as a rule, die dishonorably; whereas they who, recognizing that death is the common lot and destiny of all men, strive hard to die nobly: these more frequently, as I observe, do after all attain to old age, or, at any rate, while life lasts, they spend their days more happily.

This lesson let all lay to heart this day, for we are just at such a crisis of our fate. Now is the season to be brave ourselves, and to stimulate the rest by our example."

The March of the 10,000, or if you wish - Anabasis: The March Up Country. Nothing but hardcore. If you don't know the story - buy the book or read it online here.

A Pre-Thanksgiving Turkey Problem

Hopefully everyone is keeping at least a glancing eye on the developments around Mosul, especially the fact that Turkey has an outpost there. She isn't helping all that much, she rarely does, but she is there.

A dispute between Iraq and Turkey has emerged as a dramatic geopolitical sideshow to the complicated military campaign to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from the Islamic State.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has insisted on a role in the battle for Mosul, trying to ramp up an involvement in Iraq that has already alarmed the Iraqi government.

“We have a historical responsibility in the region,” Mr. Erdogan said in a recent speech, drawing on his country’s history of empire and defeat, from Ottoman rule of the Middle East to its loss in World War I. “If we want to be both at the table and in the field, there is a reason.”

In response, the normally mild-mannered Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, warned last week of a military confrontation between Turkey and Iraq. If Turkish forces intervene in Mosul, he said, they will not “be in a picnic.”
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Turkey has already angered the Iraqi government by keeping a unit of troops at a base in Bashiqa, an area of northern Iraq near Mosul and surrounded by Islamic State territory. For more than a year, the Turks have also been training Kurdish pesh merga forces and Sunni Arab fighters in Iraq, including a militia led by a former governor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi.

The Turkish military deployment, even just to train local forces, has been bitterly opposed by the Iraqi government, and Mr. Abadi has demanded that the troops leave.

Now that the battle for Mosul has started, Mr. Erdogan has given a number of incendiary speeches in which he has seemed to suggest that he is itching for the Turkish military to become directly involved in the fighting.

I want to show you two maps. First, the Turkish Republic as we know it;

There is another map that I've seen in a few places over the summer and fall. At first, I did a raised eyebrow eye-roll, but as I saw it more, just pursed my lips at seeing it. Even when one version or another showed up in newspapers, I dismissed it as standard issue populist chest thumping. Here, take a look;

Greece, Iraq, Syria (whoever you are), Armenia - call your office.

Now I want you to watch the video below. I'm not eye-rolling anymore, I'm watching a bit closer.

Turkish president says "we did not accept current borders voluntarily." pic.twitter.com/XFuwBJQiyJ

— Turkey Times (@turkey_times) October 25, 2016

The Waves Have Already Started

Throughout the undeveloped and the fail-to-launch world, there are teaming masses driven by war and economics to look for some part of the world where they can escape the dysfunction and violence from where they came.

They are taking advantage of modern transportation and porous borders to move at a scale and speed no one is prepared to deal with. Lacking the desire, ability, or ethos to stand where they are and change their home nations, they are instead hitting the trail, the rail, the open ocean, and even the aircraft to come to the only places on this planet that function and will take them in - the West and its global outposts, most notably, Western Europe and the primary Anglosphere (CANUKUS+AUS/NZD).

There are problems with this in the 21st Century, there are no more open spaces. There are no longer small diverse groups coming in manageable numbers to a nation where in a generation they can be absorbed in the vast underpopulated frontier, earn their own living by the fruits of their own labor, and assimilate in to the culture.

No, this is new. The migrants are coming in waves 100,000 strong, month by month to already crowded nations under economic stress and beset with welfare state largess.

These nations do not demand new arrivals assimilate, and in a large measure, the new arrivals don't want to. With modern communication and entertainment a satellite dish away, they don't have to break from the home language and culture they are bringing and keeping is the same culture of violence, sectarianism, corruption and dependence that caused the source country's dysfunction in the first place.

Their foreign and often hostile culture, if not checked to manageable numbers and smart policies, will overwhelm their target nations and inside half a century. Those nations as well will fail as their civil society fractures and loses its ability to function as designed for a nation and culture that no longer exists.

A few decades ago there was a SCIFI futurist novel, the title escapes me, where one of the pivotal points was a memorial on a beach in Australia where thousands of refugees died - more to the point, killed.

Forgot the reason, but it was an opening for to author to describe a new age of migration. Especially in Europe, and to a lesser effect and different context here, we are reaching that point outlined in the book. A point where a densely populated economically failed and violent world rushes, like drowning people all trying to get in the last remaining lifeboat, to the few places that work, and will force those working parts of the world to do what was in living memory unthinkable - kill to save their nations from being destroyed by charity.

Greece appealed to its European Union partners on Tuesday to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with a growing migrant crisis as new data showed 21,000 refugees landed on Greek shores last week alone.

That number is almost half Greece's overall refugee intake in 2014 and brings total arrivals this year to 160,000, even as it struggles with a debt crisis that has forced it to accept a third international bailout.
...
A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR in Geneva said Greece needed to show "much more leadership" in dealing with the crisis.

But Greek officials said they needed better coordination within the European Union. "This problem cannot be solved by imposing stringent legal processes in Greece, and, certainly, not by overturning the boats," said government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili.

Nor could it be addressed by building fences, she said.

This is madness. What does the UN propose that the already bankrupt Greece do? Why Greece? Why not Turkey? Why not Iran. Of course we know why - those are not Western nations.

The West, you see, it must be ... well ...

"The situation is already volatile and we have started seeing increased tensions with the local authorities and between different refugee groups," said Kirk Day, the aid agency's emergency field director on the island.
...
The Greek state eventually charted a passenger ship to house and process migrants in an attempt to ease conditions onshore, where many are living in tents, some in shelters made from cardboard boxes.

Gerovassili said more reception centers were required.

"We must have new reception facilities ... We cannot continue to see these tragic images of children, people living under such circumstances."

This will not end well. The migration wave will not slow down any time soon. Growing anarchy, extremism, economic stagnation, and demographics will keep the pressure building.

Western nations are at the point where they must enforce firm policies now, or they will be forced to implement the harshest remedies later - that is, of course, if there is a desire to keep those nations together as founded.

The time for easy solutions is past. The last generation or two threw that opportunity away. Doing nothing is not an option because, eventually, this migration will shift to invasion in the mind of a plurality of each nation's citizens. When that happens, if good political leaders do not act, the people will turn to whatever leader promises actions. That rarely is the better outcome.

No nation is required to commit suicide, and leaders who desire to fundamentally transform their nations should not expect for their population to allow that change to be done against the will of the people - if indeed the people ever decide their national culture is worth defending anymore.

Some nations are already going Honeybadger and are taking the steps they need to.

Earlier this month construction began on a 175 km (110 mile) razor wire border fence in Hungary to deter migrants, ...

History if far from over - and is far from teaching the copybook headings with a ruler to the knuckles.