Turkey, the NATO alliance's second major military power, plans to start independent operations in Syria due to the USG's ongoing entanglements with Kurdish militias preventing an effective collaboration (archived). In recent years Turkey has pivoted from being a US safe haven for aiming threats at Russia to a less concretely alligned power, finding itself ejected from the F-35 boondogle because Russian S-400 batteries present a better value. The USG's hard on for promoting instability in Syria at the apparent request of a small, unreliable ally seems to have inflicted greater loss to NATO than any actual accumulation of casualties in combat.