NATO Survived Cold War, But Downed Russian Jet Provides Biggest Threat
Washington (CNN)The cool, calm, clear thinking that kept the NATO alliance intact as it weathered the Cold War with the Soviet Union has been shattered.
Decades of careful diplomacy and nail-biting inaction during the potentially world-annihilating nuclear arms race of the 1950s, 60s and 70s appears to have been sacrificed in a few brief seconds by Turkey.
During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the deployment of nuclear weapons in western Europe in the 1980s and many other causes of strife, NATO did not take on the Soviet Union or Russia directly; nor did Moscow attack.
That all changed when Turkish air force jets shot down a Russian bomber Tuesday -- the first time a NATO country has taken such action since 1952. And in those moments, Russian President Vladimir Putin was given a strategic goal: Destabilize and divide NATO.
More may have been sacrificed, too. Any chance of a quick end to the war in Syria seems to have gone up in smoke.
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/25/europe/nato-putin-turkey-syria-analysis/
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