Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Turkey Set for Lone War in Syria After U.S. Rules Out Re-entry

Friday, February 28, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats National Preparedness

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Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the U.S. has no plans to re-engage in Syria’s civil war, where NATO ally Turkey is facing off against Russian-backed Syrian government forces to try to prevent the fall of the last major rebel bastion.

Thousands of Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels launched a counteroffensive earlier this month to free four Turkish units in the northwestern province of Idlib cut off by a Syrian government advance.

An airstrike killed two Turkish soldiers on Wednesday, the Defense Ministry said without pinning the blame on Russian or Syrian aircraft. A total of 17 Turkish soldiers and one civilian have been killed this month in Idlib, which borders southern Turkey.

Turkey’s state-run TRT television reported Thursday that Turkey-backed rebels captured the town of Saraqib, where at least one of the outposts is located. If the clashes heat up further, Esper’s words make it clear that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would stand alone.

“At this point in time, I don’t see any likelihood that we would be back along the border,” Esper said Wednesday when asked if the U.S. would reinsert American troops withdrawn last year from the Turkish-Syrian frontier. U.S. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the primary U.S. mission in Syria remains against Islamic State in the country’s east. Both men commented in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.

Erdogan has already acknowledged that his request to deploy U.S. Patriot air-defense missiles on the Syrian border to back any Turkish airstrikes isn’t likely to be fulfilled. That’s raising the risk for about 10,000 Turkish soldiers deployed in Idlib.

Erdogan vowed to break the encirclement of Turkish units by Syrian government forces and repel their offensive on Idlib by the end of the month. He’s also said he’d look for ways to strike Syrian government forces from the air despite Russia’s control of Syrian airspace. He’s angling for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 5 but a Kremlin spokesman on Thursday played down the possibility.

Turkish soldiers were stationed in Idlib under a 2017 agreement with Russia and Iran to monitor a combat-free zone. In February, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dramatically stepped up his military drive in the province, and Turkey, fearing enormous bloodshed and a massive refugee exodus into its territory, massed thousands of troops backed by tanks in its biggest move to counter the Syrian government offensive.

Russia has accused Turkey of failing to eliminate the threat from onetime al-Qaeda militants who control Idlib as it promised to do under the 2017 accord. A Russian delegation is in Ankara for a second day of talks on the situation in Idlib after a previous round in Moscow yielded no results.

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