Well, there is no longer a Kissinger or Nixon to manage decent ( Not perfect) foreign policy anymore. So we are heading to a multipolar system. Stable or not is not the point. The failed handling of foreign policy by this current administration screw things up real bad.
In short, Neo Cons and Neo Liberals.

This post was edited by Hamsterbaby on Apr 8 2024 05:12pm

Empires have been duking it out over sphere of influence for thousands of years, subjugating their inferiors, great powers dividing those within their reach. When the polish-lithuanian commonwealth faded from greatness it got sliced up like a cake by prussia, russian and austria. The only real sovereignty comes to those competitive great powers, and that's one of those sticking points the kooky libertarians always want to shy away from, because once America cedes its hegemony, either we're left weaker and less competitive, or we lose our sovereignty entirely. And maintaining it can sometimes mean war/conflict, but the issue here is whether our cynical pragmatism is ever actually pragmatic to begin with. Getting into losing wars and trying to hold mutually exclusive incoherent positions on an alliance at a time of war is just dumb.

Agree with all except last part, i think many times the incoherency comes from different agendas rather than an individual or group of like-minded having cognitive dissonance

95% agreed.

The crux is that you rarely know which wars are losing ones before you get into them. Could we have known that a bunch of peasants roaming the jungle in makeshift sandals would kick the strongest military in the world out of Vietnam? Was it really a foregone conclusion that the intervention in Libya would end in chaos, rather than a tenuous but stable peace like former Yugoslavia?

And to take an example of a recent and successful foreign intervention: back in 2014 and early 2015, Assad's back was completely against the wall, his forces were only weeks away from crumbling under the pressure of the FSA and ISIS - did the Russians really know ahead of time when they came to his aid that their mission would be a thumping success, save their ally, secure the Russian base in the ME and strengthen its reputation as a powerful and reliable ally on the world stage? They deployed boots on the ground in a chaotic warzone, something we in the West don't have the guts or appetite for anymore... and it turned out to be a roaring success for them.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 8 2024 06:02pm

Assumptions you say?

Might be another nothingburger and I still think Iran's gona use its proxies but nevertheless:

In an official notice to airmen (NOTAM), authorities have announced a series of rocket launches scheduled to take place within a designated area of Iranian airspace. The NOTAM, identified as A1033/24, was issued on April 8, 2024, and outlines critical details concerning the operations set for early April.

Launch Details:

- Effective Period:
From April 10, 2024, at 03:30 AM to April 12, 2024, at 10:30 AM (local time). The launches will occur daily during this window.
- Location:
The designated area for these launches is detailed through a series of geographical coordinates, marking a significant portion of airspace over Iran. This area is pivotal for the safe conduct of the rocket launches.
- Elevation Concerns:
The minimum safe levels on specified airways, including B411, G208/L125, M715, and R659, have been raised to 16,000 feet above mean sea level (AMSL) to ensure safety during these operations.

This is great, I was talking about the Israeli American alliance with my friends the other day.
We all agreed that the alliance is one of the best things that happened to Israel after the weapon embargo of the 50s and beginning of the 60s
On the other hand it is also a feel like a bear hug, we live in the neighborhood we know how things work here and the Americans with their help also tie our hands to fight brutes who’ve been supported by Russian and Iran.
This will just cause continuous suffering for the next 50 years until the next war.



You should first learn what assumption is


This post was edited by Many_Names on Apr 9 2024 12:48am

There was plenty of pushback from smarter folks even before Vietnam but it was the first big quagmire to teach us a lesson, and everything after that was inexcusable. Both Libya and Syria came after Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq, we had every reason to expect a mideast intervention to backfire, and Obama had campaigned on opposing Bush's foreign policy. He even laid out an Obama Doctrine of not fucking shit up, before he fucked shit up just the same. And Hillary sure knew the reality of her 'pro democracy sunni freedom fighters'
From Russia's POV in Syria its important to remember: They didn't have Assad's back for a long time. Putin purposefully slow rolled support and held off the direct intervention to let the conflict fester and weaponize the flow of refugees to the EU. Russia only really moves as the US allied with the Kurds so everyone could crush ISIS at the same time, and thus Russia minimized its risk

My memory is vague regarding the Syrian civil war, but I remember that when some mortars fell on the Israeli side by mistake
the media said it was russian made mortar.
So, even without boots on the ground the Russian had assad back.
In my opinion Assad paid dearly for it, he is practically a puppet of the Russians and the Iranians.
Syria is a dead state

This post was edited by Many_Names on Apr 9 2024 02:33am

That's revisionist history. The Syrian civil war began in 2011, but notable waves of refugees didn't arrive in Europe until 2014. Also, what if Merkel doesn't lose her fucking mind in the late summer of 2015 and Europe quickly shuts its borders? In fact, we were very close to doing just that. During the last week of September 2015, the German interior minister (equivalent to the secretary of DHS in the US) had already flown out over one thousand federal police officers from quick response reserves to the border in helicopters, had already prepared mission orders stating that they shall reject any asylum claims. At the last minute, Merkel caught wind of it and reversed this order using her superior authority as the chancellor, effectively turning the border police into a "welcoming committee". The rest is history (and may she rot in hell).

The point of this is that the course of history during those weeks was balanced on a knife's edge, it wasn't a foregone conclusion at all that Europe would really end up taking in millions of Syrian refugees - and if it had decided against that, Assad would have been stuck with them and both his regime as well as the Russian interests in Syria would have been thoroughly doomed. So no, Putin isn't a diabolic master strategist who had planned on weaponizing the flow of refugees to the EU all along - that came only after he realized that the Europeans would allow the refugees to be weaponized against them, at a time when Russia had already deployed boots on the ground to Syria.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 9 2024 05:07am