The Biden administration said it intends to move forward with the long-promised sale of F-16 jet fighters to Turkey, hours after that country’s president withdrew his objections to extending membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Sweden.
National-security adviser Jake Sullivan rejected suggestions that advancing the sale to Ankara was directly linked to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to let Stockholm into the alliance, saying there was no such quid quo pro.
Translation from diplo-speak: We could hold out as long as those bastards could. It's been planes for Sweden all along, and they bloody well knew it.
Alternative: Turkey never really cared about barring Sweden from NATO. It was just performative bullshit for the home crowd. And the US never cared about the F-16s. It's just an ancient design for the export market anyway. So Blinken and Erdogen finally got together, breathed a collective "Meh," and that was that.
Our dilly-dallying over ancient design F-16s to Ukraine was also performative then?
That's different, people are worried about Article 5 implications. (Apparently; I'm pretty sure that's just an acceptable excuse for a lot of useful idiots and fellow travelers. But there seem to be a few people who sincerely worry about it.)
One-day-after announcement; they didn't care at all about pretending.
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That was evidently the real dual concern of
(1) training and ramp up needs for Ukraine to handle the more complex logistics train (and completely de novo one) for F-16s versus using modernised versions of ex-Soviet fighters in E. European stock which was on hand.
(2) concerns relaitve to Russian escalation risk
Of which (1) is important as logistics, logistics, logistics [parts, availability] and maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. Modernised Soviet stock was and is much faster Plug and Play for Ukraine as their parts etc logistics train is already in place.
Handing fancy new toys to people when the infra is not in place is more PR than success.
No. Aside from what Lounsbury said, it was the budgetary implications. The U.S. didn't, and still doesn't, want to transfer F-16s because the program through which those transfers are made, the Presidential Drawdown Authority, is capped at a total value of equipment given to Ukraine at about $25 billion. More than $20 billion of that has already been used up. Given that a squadron of F-16s would count about $1.5 billion against that account before sending any ammunition and spare parts, it isn't a good idea to use so much of that value to send them. We have to fit every piece of ammunition and maintenance capacity we send under that figure.
Until such time as Kevin McCarthy sees fit to bring an expansion of the PDA to a vote in the House (at which point it will almost certainly pass, and then the Senate quickly), you will not see any fancy new weapons systems transferred to Ukraine.
If Ukraine can't join NATO while it's having a war, Russia can simply keep randomly firing missiles into the country for the rest of time and keep them perpetually at war.
They may never be able to join. North and South Korea are still at war.
Good points, and a very ominous thought. On the other hand, perhaps Vladimir Putin isn't immortal. Does he have any offspring? Has he lined up a successor? (Unlike the Kim Dynasty in North Korea)
All his offspring are in Switzerland, far away and well insulated.
Once he's gone the oligarchs will shoot it out for a generation, then there will be something more like a semblance of a real parliament, but only the semblance.
The actual wording isn't that they (US and Germany, primarily) will allow Ukraine to join after the war is concluded; it's that they'll decide what to do after the war has ended.
Here we go:
That's purposeful ambiguity to prevent Russia from finding a reason to maintain a forever war against Ukraine. There is a level of subterfuge in foreign policy that isn't always apparent.
"Russia can simply keep randomly firing missiles into the country for the rest of time". What I've been saying for a long time. Stating that Ukraine may not join NATO in such a case even creates an incentive for Russia to do so. Plus that it already would prefer a devastated buffer zone next to it than a prosperous foe. That's what makes me sick about victory talk. Booting Russia back to its borders won't save Ukraine. I don't see any way around that. Plus demographics: those of Russia are bad but those of Ukraine were already worse, and with all the people fleeing catastrophic. Time alas is on Russia's side.
True, but the US won't be allowing the sale of F-35s to Turkey anytime soon and it's still effective against almost every Russian fighter jet except their "stealth" model (which is so "stealthy" you'll barely spot it anywhere. (/S))
So, Turkey has to make do with what it can get, all thanks to the dumb decision to buy an S-400 from Russia.
You second explanation has some merit. Erdogan won reelection just a few weeks ago so he doesn’t have to work so hard to please Turkish voters who hate the Kurds.
Precisely, Erdogan pulled out a skinny win and the Swedes have genuinely irritated the Turkish government over the past decade
So quid pro quo post election
Erdogan got his narrow win on the hard nationalist vote so his play was from his PoV correct.
The Turks will be able to bomb the Kurds all over Iraq and Syria now. And the Greeks too! What a world. I understand why they were admitted to NATO, but in retrospect, it's not a good fit.
It's much better to have them inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.
New F-16s won't meaningfully increase the Turkish military's ability to bomb the Kurds, whose own air force is nonexistent.