Rubio Campaign Press Release - WATCH: Marco Rubio Reacts to Turkey Shooting Down a Russian Plane (Just the Kind of Chaos He'd Predicted)

After Turkey reportedly shot down a Russian jet in Turkish airspace today, Marco Rubio said that, while he has differences of opinion with the Turkish government, the U.S. must stand by its allies, and that doing so will deter aggression from foes like Russia.

"Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance," he said. "If the NATO alliance is to remain vibrant then we have to live up to our commitments in that alliance."

Marco noted that he does have concerns about the direction of the Turkish government:

[Prime Minister] Erdogan has taken that country in a more radical direction. They have broken from a long standing good relationship with Israel. You have seen him kowtow to some of the more Islamist elements of their political party in their country, so there is deep concern about what is happening internally within Turkey. And quite frankly, a little bit of lack of cooperation on their part in the fight against ISIS up until very recently.

But he warned that letting chaos unfold in Syria would have exactly this consequence:

It's the reason why I warned about having Russia in the Middle East . . . . I warned exactly, specifically this could happen, that there could be an incident with Turkey, a NATO ally. . . .

So what would a confrontation look like? Well first of all, you are already seeing it.

What will the Russian response be? This is a critical moment: If Russia believes that they can respond and retaliate against Turkey because NATO is not going to do anything about it, what they are basically doing is making the argument that NATO is no longer viable, that it is a feckless alliance.

So what can the U.S. do? Back up our allies if it comes to that, Marco says:

My sense is that in fact if we were true to our word and showed that we were going to be supportive of Turkey in this engagement, my sense is that the Russians would not test it. . . .

I don't think Russia, so at end of the day, although Vladimir Putin is a gangster and a criminal, he is also a geopolitical actor who makes decisions on a cost benefit analysis.

He will have to do something to save face but ultimately he is not going to test the alliance if he believes the alliance is going to stand up to him, because he will lose in that confrontation.