US Cowboys, Middle Eastern Airspace and Reliable Partners

America has spent decades assembling one of the world's most impressive collections of allies, strategic partners, military bases and security agreements across the Middle East.

The NATO summit was hosted by Turkey. Leaders were reaffirming their “ironclad” collective-defence commitment. Turkey was being treated as a strategically indispensable ally, Trump was talking about potentially restoring its access to F-35s, and Turkish forces were actively guarding the summit airspace.

And yet the US assessment of the Iranian threat was apparently serious enough that they still did not want the President’s actual departure aircraft to be identifiable. They publicly announced that the new Qatari Air Force One was not yet ready, loaded him onto the older Air Force 747, secretly removed him using a catering vehicle, put him aboard a C-32A, and sent the two obvious presidential aircraft away as decoys.

The deception was prompted by what was regarded as a credible Iranian assassination threat.

The world’s largest military alliance gathered in the capital of its second-largest army to discuss collective security, while the President of the United States required three aircraft and a catering truck to safely leave the country.

Turkey has spent years hosting senior Hamas figures, refusing to designate the organisation a terrorist group, and treating its political leadership as legitimate interlocutors. At the same time it has maintained the usual complicated relationship with Iran - historic rivalry mixed with energy deals, trade, and the ability to keep talking even when missiles are flying. All of it sits next to the recurring phrase “reliable NATO partner.”

Turkey’s problem has never been that it is useless to NATO. Turkey is enormously useful.

Its geography alone makes that unavoidable. It sits between Europe, the Caucasus and the Middle East, controls access between the Black Sea and Mediterranean, borders Iran, Iraq and Syria and possesses one of NATO’s largest militaries.

Useful, however, is not quite the same word as reliable.

Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Russia and even the EU, which has spent years disguising protection money as migration cooperation, could probably explain the distinction.

In the Middle East, a reliable partner is often the one that remains reliable as long as the rewards are being discussed.