Buying Russian Missile Systems Would Be a Political Breakthrough for Turkey

... deputy defense secretaries, back in the days of Donald Rumsfeld, told me: “You can sell rifles, automatic weapons, armored vehicles, even tanks to a NATO member state, but you will never sell aircraft, warships, air defense systems, because this is not military-technical cooperation, not commerce – this is politics.” Therefore, if Russia succeeds to supply the S-400s to Turkey, it will be a fundamental political breakthrough. The Americans will do everything to prevent this. The point is that the integration of the Russian systems into NATO’s air defense is technically feasible, but very difficult organizationally,...