One of the things we really need to understand - there is no peace in the Middle East - anywhere! It's a mess and that's not going to change so anything done by the government of the United States over Jerusalem isn't going to make it better or make it worse. There may be a small blip on the peace radar for a nanosecond for propaganda purposes - but like flying saucers - that will quickly disappear.
The fact of the matter is these Muslim groups are just looking for some excuse to exacerbate their violent activity - ergo - any excuse will do. So, let's stop worrying about the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the legitimate capital of Israel - after all - it is! Any other view was pandering to the myth that if world governments ignored that fact it would keep the peace process in place. What peace process? I've been watching this for most of my life and nothing has changed. There's not one iota of harmony in the views of any of the parties involved. How can there be a peace process? Answer: There Can't!
Russia is now providing air support to the Syrian militias, and apparently that includes some of the Kurdish groups battling the Islamic State in Syria - and the Turks are silent on this, yet Turkey considers the Kurds a major risk to the security of their government. So, can they be happy about this? That seems unlikely to me, since their situation with the Kurds has "strained U.S. and Turkish relation", which I consider another myth. There was no harmony with the Turks before, there's no harmony now, and there will be no harmony in the future. The ideological foundation for modern Turkey was the idea of keeping Islam out of government. That no longer exists! So why are they silent?
The Middle East is a quagmire of Byzantine political intrigue. Turkey has so many problems they're not going to challenge Russia (although demographically that may change in not too many years), which will make the Caucasus a problem area.
The Caucasus was taken over by the Russian Empire in nineteenth century as a buffer between Turkey and ethnic Russia, the same foreign policy being practiced by Russia today. But Northern Caucasus regions are dominated by Muslim groups who've been conducting military action against the Russian government for centuries, hence the current instability.
The vast majority of those in Southern areas of the Caucasus are Christians adhering to the Orthodox religion, who seem to me to be caught in a vise of Muslims to the North and South. The only advantage they have is the lack of harmony between these Muslim groups in those regions. They will happily kill competing Muslims as they would Christians. Maybe more so as they consider them corrupted heretics.
Also, there are agreements in place that's created areas of interest in Syria between Turkey, Russia and Iran, but the U.S. is involved with Russia in negotiations over that and Turkey can't start something with Russia and then be left out of any deal between the Russians and the U.S.
Turkey is silent now, but they understand Russia desires a much-weakened Turkey over issues involving surrounding territory in the Caucasus, Black Sea, Caspian Sea, which also involves Iran, which borders the Southern Caucasus. Russia wants to protect what they perceive as their interests, hence, they want to continue to play the "big dog" role in the region. With their demographic problems - this may be their last chance. Turkey surely sees this as threat, and they can't and won't remain silent forever, and Russia is no longer is the Soviet Union.
We need to understand something else. Trump is far smarter than Obama and knows how to negotiate. He understands what he wants and will drop anyone not part of his solution. Make no mistake about this - this leftist clabber about how foreign leaders respected Obama more that Trump is nonsense. Respect is a mixture of fear and affection. They don't "respect" any American President. The only form of respect we get from these thugs is the fear we can and will exert American economic and military power in ways that will have a negative impact on them.
Obama's politics were confused, and confusing, creating mixed signals that actually enabled the lunatics in the region to become stronger. That's going to change now and make no mistake about this - the world's leaders believe that.
America will never have their affection, so the U.S. needs to have them fear what America may do - and has the will, the courage and tenacity to do it. Trump's actions in many ways reflect Teddy Roosevelt's comment - "Walk softly but carry a big stick".
They fear the "Big Stick" Trump is carrying.
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