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 ...