The strikes at Abu al-Duhur matter less for what happened than for what they revealed. Strip away the incident report and what is left is familiar rhetoric. Two regional powers reading the same accounting and drawing opposite lessons from it.

The fall of Assad did not create a vacuum so much as reveal one that existed for years, hidden by a regime too weak to project power but too entrenched to remove. Turkey and Israel are now the two actors with both the capability and the appetite to fill the power void, and they are filling it from opposite directions with opposite security theories. Ankara’s theory is based upon proximity, allowing for influence over Damascus, embedding advisers, directing infrastructure investment, and producing a client government that owes its stability partly to Turkish backing. Israel’s theory is based upon distance, leaving an emptied buffer zone, allowing minimal contention, and the right to strike anything that threatens these. Both theories will collide somewhere in Idlib or Hama. Abu al-Duhur is just where the collision appeared.

When Intent Becomes the Threat

What is more interesting than the Abu al-Duhur strike itself is how each side communicates about it afterward because the language reveals what each government fears. Turkish officials denied the specific claim of a permanent base, while Syrian officials said they had assured Israel that no Turkish presence was planned. Both statements can be true and still miss the point because the Israeli concern (a radar, an air-defense node, or a rotational advisory presence) does not require anything as formal as a “base” to change the operating environment. In short, Israel does not need Turkey to build a garrison to lose strategic value. They only need Turkish sensors to be present in their airspace to reduce Israeli air maneuver. This presents a much lower bar than the word “base” implies, which is why the denials satisfied no one.

When Strategic Ambiguity Becomes a Trigger

The question of whether Turkey was building a pincer is also interesting. The public evidence that Turkey posed a deliberate two-front strategy against Israel is thin and treating this as evidence of one risks manufacturing a conspiracy out of two states pursuing separate, self-interested expansions that happen to be converging. The more useful approach is to question what happens structurally once any two states with unresolved historical friction start operating in the same 200-mile strip of contested territory without a shared rulebook. That is a problem independent of intent. Even if Ankara is not trying to encircle Israel and Israel is not seeking a war with a NATO-adjacent power, the lack of agreed rules leaves each side to interpret future moves through worst-case assumptions. That is what almost happened here. Turkish forces are watching unannounced Israeli jets approach their border and had to decide in real time whether they were witnessing an isolated strike or the opening move of something larger, with no immediate channel to ask.

This interpretation is the part that gets lost when the coverage focuses on “was this an imminent threat?” Whether or not the Abu al-Duhur strikes specifically mattered is only a part of what happened. The mechanism by which it almost escalated one side into acting unilaterally and the other side was forced to guess at intent is likely to recur as long as Turkey keeps deepening its role in Syria and Israel reserves the right to strike in the region, all without an agreed set of boundaries. The airbase is almost incidental. The pattern is the story.

Managing a Rivalry That Won’t Disappear

The outcome desired is not necessarily a settlement of who is “right” about Syria, as both Ankara and Jerusalem are not going to agree on what kind of country a post-Assad Syria should become, and there is no likely version where their interests fully align. Instead, what is achievable and worth pursuing is a much narrower path. They should seek a standing arrangement or a formal conflict-avoidance mechanism where neither side is forced to act on assumptions when it has no knowledge of the other’s intentions. That means real advanced notice or advanced provisions before strikes near the Turkish frontier, instead of an after-the-fact explanation. This means Turkey must be willing to declare, rather than deny, the scope of its military footprint in Syria so that ambiguity stops creating unintended outcomes. It means Damascus, the government with the least power and the most to lose from being squeezed between two much larger militaries, has some voice in such an arrangement that it is not reduced to a battleground that occurs to its detriment.

Conclusion

An arrangement as described herein does not resolve the underlying rivalry. Turkey will keep building influence in Syria because that is what a rising regional power with a long land border does. Israel will retain the right to strike because that has provided security since 1973 and they have no intention to abandon it. However, managed rivalry through a known channel provides a fundamentally different kind of danger than rivalry managed through guesswork under time pressure. The best and most realistic outcome here is not peace between Ankara and Jerusalem. Instead, it is peace by ensuring the next Abu al-Duhur results in a diplomatic phone call instead of deployed border unit deciding if it is watching the start of a war in real time and must react.

Dr. Yashwant Singh is an Indian sociologist working at the intersection of urban studies, development, nature and geopolitics. He holds an M.Phil. in Sociology from the University of Delhi and a Ph.D. from the University of Hyderabad. He has published in Across Voices, Modern Diplomacy, Geostrategic Media, South Asia Journal, World Geostrategic Insights, and IA-Forum.  The views represented in this article are the author’s own.

Turkey, Israel and the Dangerous Vacuum in Post-Assad Syria was originally published on Global Security Review.

The containers were then placed far inside Russia before launching the drones. One hundred seventeen drones were able to strike targets up to 2,500 miles away from Ukrainian territory. The hurdle of communicating with the drones and powering them was accomplished with local SIM cards and solar panels.

While the results are disputed, many Russian aircraft were damaged at a significant cost, especially since production lines for many of Russia’s bombers shut down decades ago. There is also the cost of embarrassment and the concern that Russia cannot protect its forces from drone threats. Understandably, there may be a concern that a similar follow-on attack is likely.

Those fears were proven correct, but in another country—Iran. Israel was able to strike numerous military and nuclear installations, as well as target specific individuals in air strikes throughout Iran, with minimal resistance and no known losses.

Despite Israel being only hours into a purported weeklong operation, they revealed they had a network within Iran that used drones to incapacitate anti-air defenses.

Incorporating covert use of drones into suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) doctrine is a critical development in air warfare. While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) used in SEAD was theorized, this is the first time it was employed for that purpose. Unlike Ukraine, Israel used personnel within Iran to operate the drones. While increasing risk to their operatives, it most likely allowed more precise control of pre-placement and planning and minimized communications that could be intercepted or disrupted.

In the future, it is likely that covert pre-placement and distant operation will be used to “shape the environment” for more conventional strikes and attacks. The hurdles to overcome are power supply, detection, and communication. There is also the need to overcome any particular anti-drone technology that may exist.

Regardless, use of drones as a preliminary and surprise strike weapon works. It is a threat that will work particularly well against soft targets as well as military targets. While the US needs to develop its own capabilities, and fast, it absolutely needs to prioritize defeating drones and defending infrastructure from them. Whether they are pre-programmed or operated by fiber optics, radio, or lasers, the US must develop affordable ways to stop them.

The days of relying on a handful of military police to guard installations at home should have ended on September 11, 2001. In some cases, it did, but in others it did not. In the civil sector, not much has changed despite the increasing threat environment.

There are additional challenges that make attacks like Ukraine’s asymmetric attack more likely. The United States has seen tens of millions of illegal aliens enter the country, many from nations hostile to the United States. Many that do come legally come from every background imaginable and hold various ideologies, faiths, and allegiances that are not friendly to the United States. China’s extensive use of Chinese students and work visa holders to commit industrial espionage is another example of what can be turned into a fifth column.

Additionally, with only 6 percent of cargo entering American ports facing inspection, ports are also an easy target for exploitation. And as if this were not enough, Americans also allow hostile nations to purchase land next to military installations.

It is only a matter of time until such an attack happens on American soil. A terror attack, perhaps in retaliation for the recent air strikes in Iran or by Mexican drug cartels is possible. More likely and troublesome is the use of drones in conjunction with other strikes on infrastructure and installations, all to cripple the military in advance of conflict in the Pacific. The US Air Force and Navy are particularly at risk, as air frames and ships are expensive and take time to replace. The Navy, for example, struggles to build ships and submarines.

Today, the nation’s only defense against this threat is relying on signals intelligence to intercept communications, praying for defectors, and dumb luck. This is certainly no way to plan for asymmetric threats that are predictable. The time to find solutions is now, not after the attack.

Michael Fincher is a Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

Ukraine’s Drone Attack: What It Means was originally published on Global Security Review.

These early civil defense measures were eventually neglected and then forgotten after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union ended in 1991. Such measures were mirrored in the USSR under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, but by no means neglected afterward.

Civil defense is, by nature, a community-wide activity. The more people participate and help, the better the results for the entire citizenry. This includes improved morale and will to resist, fewer combat casualties, and prolonged lifespans in case of conventional or nuclear war.

The organization of processes, the laying down and buildout of infrastructure, the first-responder rehearsals, and pervasive homefront readiness drills all require group dedication in the face of natural popular skepticism, even active resistance by a vocal few.

Although there is ample room for volunteerism, and for more formalized national service (especially for those well above military draft age), governments at different levels do need to take overall charge. This ensures efficient coordination, direction of available funding into the most pressing needs, and arranging for efficient communication and reasonable compliance.

With Vladimir Putin’s many nuclear threats, it is once again time to ensure the nation has effective civil defenses against nuclear employment. It may not be the 1950s and 1960s, but civil defense matters.

This is perhaps a prime case where today’s financial-industrial and high-tech oligarchs (billionaires) can work with and/or under contract to the federal government, or even on their own initiative, to assure that, for example, America is hardened against electromagnetic pulse attack, cyber assaults, and nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction attacks. These may not be traditional civil defense measures, but they are civil defense for the modern era.

This collaboration is already happening in the space domain where President Putin’s “Sputnuke” threatens to totally disrupt space operations, and where President Xi Jinping’s growing space-dominance capabilities threaten to disrupt current civil society.

Effective civil defense measures are as central to effective nuclear deterrence and ally assurance as is nuclear modernization. Effective civil defense also includes ensuring the societal supporting infrastructure, such as housing, hospitals, and food stocks, are secure and survivable under even the most highly stressed circumstances.

In fact, an essential component of a truly superb American deterrence strategy must be a comprehensive program of being able to absorb an attack and nevertheless survive. Only in this way can the United States make it clear to adversaries, as President Richard Nixon said, “Not today, Comrades. Not ever.”

Church and synagogue groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Red Cross or Doctors without Borders, and fraternal organizations, such as the Shriners or the Boy Scouts can also play a significant role in providing the ultimate in community civil defense. Examples of such efforts abound from the current conflict in Ukraine and Israel.

Exactly how much civil defense is the right amount? Nuclear strategists Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn were never able to agree. Such agreement is even less likely today.

The right answer to civil defense is likely a programmatic solution that is affordable and optimizes the strengths of local communities. The right amount of civil defense should be a discussion between the federal, state, and local governments. The challenge for any civil defense effort is that more than two-thirds of all federal spending and about half of all state spending are dedicated to mandatory social programs. This leaves very little room for civil defense programs, which must compete with all other government functions for an ever-dwindling percentage of federal and state budgets.

For most Americans, the threat of nuclear strikes on the homeland is an abstract threat. Thus, they would rather have immediate government services than look to an event that may never happen. This leaves the prospects for improving civil defenses low. Much as in the Cold War, it may be up to Americans to look to their survival in the event of the unthinkable.

Joe Buff is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. The views expressed are his own.

Modernizing Civil Defense Is Wise was originally published on Global Security Review.