On Sunday it was revealed that the Syrian Army has made a deal to help the Syrian Kurds (who are technically rebels) fight the Turkish invasion of Afrin, a chunk of Syrian territory on the northwestern border with Turkey that has been held by the Kurds since 2012. And the Russians are allegedly brokering this new anti-Turkish alliance, even though they recently gave the Turks a green light for that invasion (or at least that was what the Turks thought they were getting).

The United States, which armed and supported those same Syrian Kurds because it needed them to fight Islamic State, announced three weeks ago that it would be training a 30,000-strong Kurdish-led force to patrol the borders of the large part of north-eastern Syria that has been liberated from IS.

But when Turkey objected, Washington dropped that notion, and is standing idly by while the Turkish Army tries to take Afrin from America's Kurdish allies. Washington does warn, however, that American forces might take a different line if the Turks invade other Kurdish-held territories in Syria.