US Politics Megathread

[Dolan]

No, the Kurds aren’t treaty allies, but treaties alone don’t make allies. The US military has not yet declared the ISIS threat to be entirely removed, since there are more than 10,000 of their fighters still active in the field who are now joined by escaped detainees. Even after ISIS is fully defeated, the US can use the Kurds to curtail the Iranian influence in Syria, so the US still has a very good reason to keep the Kurds as allies for the foreseeable future.

So, as long as there's one guy on the planet who might be an ISIS member, the US must keep boots on the ground in that region, huh. Why would the US care about Iranian influence in Syria? Assad has always been Iran's ally, so seriously what are you even proposing here? It's like saying you want to remove China's influence in North Korea. That bird has flown a very long time ago. There's nothing to curtail now, Assad is Iran's ally and he's being kept in power by Russia.

American policymakers want US foreign policy to be predictable and clear cut for everyone else in order to minimize the risk of miscalculation. US deterrence posture around the world relies on not just US military capability, but also on the fact that other countries understand what key US interests are and therefore know what redlines not to cross. Trump is making the world more conflict-prone by casting doubt on US credibility with his “unpredictability” and undermining US deterrence posture. It has nothing to do with the US being held hostage to its commitments. Trump claims that his motive is political to fulfill his campaign promises, but if that’s the case it has backfired severely, seeing how he is being roundly criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Well, what can I say? Should I defend Trump's concept of strategy? I don't feel like it's worth doing it. I guess we'll see if his approach works better than Obama's bumbling hesitation. I don't think Trump cares what the rest of the world thinks about the USA. He cares about what US voters think about the US more. Because he's not getting voted by the French, the BBC or global experts.

I literally said European integration is in US interest to balance a resurgent Russia. Tell me, what part of that sounds altruistic to you?

That's so 1980s-early 1990s. Maybe a bunch of neocons still believe in this, but my impression is that current US policy makers are pretty much actively working to dismantle the EU. Not to mention the US financial press that never misses an opportunity to mock the euro and announce its soon-to-come demise.
I also thought that even some Democrats think that Russia is no longer the threat that it used to be. China is the new Cold War Russia now. If you ask n0el for example he'll say Russia is no longer the enemy, China is. And I don't think he's a Trump supporter. I think this attitude is quite common among many Democrats and Repubs alike in the US. They think Russia is no longer the bogeyman it once was.
So does the EU really contain Russia? Then why is Germany buying gas from Russia? They're basically keeping a huge chunk of their revenue stream alive by doing that. Nice contain...

Also, most of the reasons you listed for US involvement in the Middle East are either minor or flat out wrong. Russia had little to no influence left in the region after the Soviet Union collapsed, so you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.

Russia never stopped supporting Assad and keeping friendly relations with Iran. They even had joint drills with Iran on different occasions. Iran has been getting supplied with Russian missile systems too. During the 1990s Iraq war, Soviet Russia provided military assistance to Saddam Hussein's regime. Little to no influence, huh?

The US isn’t even very concerned about the spread of Russian influence now, because it is mostly limited to Syria and even there Moscow is competing with Tehran over the Assad regime.

Competing... Lol. That's like saying the US and UK are competing over who gets more defence contracts with the German government. They're all part of the same regional network of interests. Probably even more convergent than the Western alliance.

The only real concern was that the Russian incursion prolonged the Syrian Civil War and exacerbated the refugee crisis, which like I said set back the plans for European integration to check Russia.

Nah, this never concerned anyone in the White House. If it did, they would have actually done something to stop the wave of migration that was headed to Europe. They didn't because they didn't really care. It wasn't their problem.
Obama made it clear when he took office that his geopolitical priorities didn't include any special plans for Europe. He was mostly focused on the Pacific and improving relations with other regions like Latin America and Africa. When some European NATO countries got involved in Lybia, he remained hesitant and later regreted, becayse Lybia fell apart as a result of a half-hearted, unfinished intervention. It really shows that Europe hasn't been the focus of any of the past recent US administrations, neither Obama's nor Trump's. So I really doubt that what you're saying was actually a priority for any of the recent US presidents. You're basically saying typical stuff that policy buffs in Washington believed in, but that wasn't necessarily translated into policy.

Plus, the US didn’t “start” the civil war in Syria. In fact, Obama refused to be directly involved like in Libya and only armed the rebels to fight Assad. And this was all before the refugee crisis began in earnest with the Russian intervention in 2015, so the US had no idea how the civil war would impact Europe. And sure, Russia and Assad “won” the civil war, although a sizable chunk is still under Kurdish control and the Syrian government is fighting Turkish-led forces as we speak.

Armed them and sent CIA operatives to train them too. Some of the weapons got in the hands of groups that later turned into ISIS. That's what you get for not understanding much about the region and thinking you do. And if you fund and support them, expecting them to not switch sides at any point. But hey, you gotta stick with your "allies". Those Kurd allies actually organised terror attacks in Turkey. It's not for nothing that Turkey has beef with them. There's literally bad blood between them, we're talking about many deaths over the years.

As for all the other “reasons” you brought up for US involvement in the Middle East, no, the US isn’t very worried about Iran attacking Israel because of the sheer distance between the two, not to mention that Israel is strong enough to defeat Iranian proxies.

That sheer distance is not something that can't be overcome with the right technology. Why do you think there's been so much energy invested in making sure Iran doesn't produce uranium that could be usable in warheads? Because they're not a real concern for Israel, right.

Contrary to popular belief, oil was not one of the main reasons why the US invaded Iraq, if at all; otherwise the US wouldn’t be the biggest producer of oil today.

Oh but I didn't claim that. I'm well aware that the US doesn't really need Middle Eastern oil. This had nothing to do with why American companies got involved in Iraq and elsewhere, thought. Haliburton, the company in which Dick Cheney (who was US defense secretary during the first war in Iraq) was involved up to a point, gained access to contracts in Iraq after the war, since there were plenty of money-making opportunities in different areas, like bringing burning oil wells under control. Later Cheney was vice-president in W Bush's administration. And they led another operation of removing Saddam Hussein from power. Just a coincidence. I mean, when a country gets destroyed by war, lots of opportunities for rebuilding are left after war operations end. And if you install the right, friendly administration there, they will probably also lend a friendly eye to your companies' business propositions. Which is what happened in Iraq.

It’s also ridiculous that you think the US wants bases in the Middle East to contain Russia and China, when the US is doing precisely the opposite to redeploy forces in Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Despite the protests and setbacks, Iraq has made long strides to stabilize itself since 2003 and it’s too early to tell if its democratic experiment is a failure. Egypt is still an American ally and hardly the first autocratic one. Libya is a cesspool, but that doesn’t matter since it’s hardly a key US interest.

One doesn't preclude the other. The US already has Eastern Europe in the bag, it doesn't need to go to great lengths just to secure its allegiance. The Middle East is an ongoing effort for the US, it's always been this way. Your administrations never really managed to get a grip on this region, but that doesn't mean they ever stopped trying to install your own friendly governments there and so encircle Asia or preemptively remove a potential strategic interest from them.

[Dolan]

Kurds should have their own land, including part of turkey.

There are actually more ethnic groups and nations without a country than ones with a country. Russia for example has more than 160 ethnic groups. 97 million Bengalis live in India, although they do have their own nation state (Bengal). Javanese people number 100 million, but they don't have a country of their own either. Etc etc, there are literally tens of examples of big ethnic groups without a country. So this is not a solvable issue. Unless you want to fragment almost every country on earth into smaller splinters, just for the sake of some illusionary nationalist utopia.

[Googol]

https://syria.liveuamap.com/ Here is a nice live map with Syria.

Although this is dem 2020 thread, posts about Syria should be probably moved to another thread, if mods can do that.

[Amsel_]

Do you plan to carve out a chunk of Syria? Would you go to war with Turkey and Syria to do this?

As the US? No? I don't think that would help my plan of stabilizing the region...

So what happens to SDF territory in the long-run?

[Goodspeed]

I don't know, I'd have to talk to the people in power around that region... This is way above my pay grade lol

[occamslightsaber]

So, as long as there's one guy on the planet who might be an ISIS member, the US must keep boots on the ground in that region, huh. Why would the US care about Iranian influence in Syria? Assad has always been Iran's ally, so seriously what are you even proposing here? It's like saying you want to remove China's influence in North Korea. That bird has flown a very long time ago. There's nothing to curtail now, Assad is Iran's ally and he's being kept in power by Russia.

Did I say we should hunt down ISIS to the last man? I said there’s still more than 10,000 of their active fighters, but you elected to ignore that for no reason. Also, no shit Assad is Iran’s ally, he has been for decades. I obviously meant Syria as the territory, no the government in power. Before the Kurds struck a deal with Assad, they controlled a good chunk of Syria themselves. That would have been enough for the US to frustrate Tehran’s ambition in that corner of the Middle East.

Well, what can I say? Should I defend Trump's concept of strategy? I don't feel like it's worth doing it. I guess we'll see if his approach works better than Obama's bumbling hesitation. I don't think Trump cares what the rest of the world thinks about the USA. He cares about what US voters think about the US more. Because he's not getting voted by the French, the BBC or global experts.

Thanks, Captain Obvious. I think we are all perfectly aware how much Trump cares about what the world thinks about him. My point was that your explanation about Trump trying to prevent the US from being held hostage to commitments makes no sense at all. Entangling alliances are only dangerous when allies behave recklessly thinking the US has their backs in a war, but this was obviously not the case with the Kurds.

That's so 1980s-early 1990s. Maybe a bunch of neocons still believe in this, but my impression is that current US policy makers are pretty much actively working to dismantle the EU. Not to mention the US financial press that never misses an opportunity to mock the euro and announce its soon-to-come demise.
I also thought that even some Democrats think that Russia is no longer the threat that it used to be. China is the new Cold War Russia now. If you ask n0el for example he'll say Russia is no longer the enemy, China is. And I don't think he's a Trump supporter. I think this attitude is quite common among many Democrats and Repubs alike in the US. They think Russia is no longer the bogeyman it once was.
So does the EU really contain Russia? Then why is Germany buying gas from Russia? They're basically keeping a huge chunk of their revenue stream alive by doing that. Nice contain...

I don’t think you know what “neocon” even means. A neocon wouldn’t call for European integration to balance Russia, he would instead want America to confront it directly with an arms race or forward deployment. Proponents of European integration would instead be those from the Clinton administration that led the “enlargement” of NATO in the mid-1990s. It’s true that the Trump administration has been dismissive of the EU, but the foreign policy establishment has largely been successful in moderating Trump’s hostility toward the EU. Regardless of what happens in the 2020 election, the establishment will stick around longer than Trump will and the US will continue to be supportive of the EU for the foreseeable future.

It’s also true that China is a greater threat than Russia. After all, Russia has a weak economy and an aging population. While the US is preoccupied with China, however, Russia may have a chance to reassert itself in Eastern Europe again. Europe needs to respond to Russian revisionism, but it doesn’t necessarily have to resort to a containment strategy like it did with the Soviet Union. The only real threat from Russia is its armed forces, which has more or less successfully modernized in the last decade. The EU can manage a resurgent Russia with increased military spending and better coordination among its members. By the way, the gas pipeline can become a leverage for the EU on the long run since it’d be easier for the Germans to find another supplier (US) than for the Russians to find another buyer. Plus, Russian revisionism is a rather new phenomenon that happened in the last 5 years or so, which means NATO needs some time to adjust as well.

Russia never stopped supporting Assad and keeping friendly relations with Iran. They even had joint drills with Iran on different occasions. Iran has been getting supplied with Russian missile systems too. During the 1990s Iraq war, Soviet Russia provided military assistance to Saddam Hussein's regime. Little to no influence, huh?

Don’t be dense. We all know how Soviet assistance to Saddam Hussein turned out during the Gulf War. In fact, the Soviets supported the UN resolution against Iraq while their advisers were still in the country. This was obviously before the Soviet Union collapsed, not after like I was saying. Russia in the 1990s and 2000s was in no place to flex its influence. It was an economic basket case and could barely throw its weight around in its neighborhood, seeing how poorly the Russian military performed in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. The weapon sales by themselves don’t mean any influence and they were more of an economic necessity for Russia to sustain its military-industrial complex after the collapse of the Soviet Union; by your logic, Russia must have tremendous influence over India, which it clearly doesn’t. Same goes with the joint military drills, which indicates solidarity more so than one country’s influence over another. You are really scraping the bottom of the barrel if you think those mean influence.

Competing... Lol. That's like saying the US and UK are competing over who gets more defence contracts with the German government. They're all part of the same regional network of interests. Probably even more convergent than the Western alliance.

Those two situations aren’t even remotely comparable. The UK isn’t even a great power like Russia or Iran and the stakes are much bigger since they are competing for the future of Syria. It’s unlikely that their competition will result in outright hostility, but that doesn’t mean Russia and Iran are not competing for influence (some of which do involve money for reconstruction) in the Assad regime. Great powers have their own interests and neither Russia nor Iran are likely to yield Syria to each other easily after helping the Assad regime win the civil war. A more accurate comparison would be the Sino-Soviet competition over North Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Nah, this never concerned anyone in the White House. If it did, they would have actually done something to stop the wave of migration that was headed to Europe. They didn't because they didn't really care. It wasn't their problem.
Obama made it clear when he took office that his geopolitical priorities didn't include any special plans for Europe. He was mostly focused on the Pacific and improving relations with other regions like Latin America and Africa. When some European NATO countries got involved in Lybia, he remained hesitant and later regreted, becayse Lybia fell apart as a result of a half-hearted, unfinished intervention. It really shows that Europe hasn't been the focus of any of the past recent US administrations, neither Obama's nor Trump's. So I really doubt that what you're saying was actually a priority for any of the recent US presidents. You're basically saying typical stuff that policy buffs in Washington believed in, but that wasn't necessarily translated into policy.

It’s true that the Obama administration paid less attention to Europe, but to Obama’s credit, his options were limited. The refugee crisis coincided with the Russian intervention in 2015, which meant that the US couldn’t end the Syrian Civil War without confronting Russia directly. Of course, Obama was not willing to risk another war in the Middle East, much less against a major military power. By that point, the US couldn’t solve the refugee crisis any more than Europe could. Also, it took the Obama administration a while to recognize Russian intentions until the invasion of Crimea in 2014. That’s not to say that the US forsook its transatlantic ties or just didn’t give a shit about Europe. The US remained supportive of the EU and urged it to pull its weight more in security matters with a resurgent Russia; the US just didn’t have the answers to all of EU’s problems.

By the way, that Libya intervention (2011) was way before the refugee crisis and the Russian intervention in Syria (2015). The US couldn’t have known how it would contribute to the later crisis and Obama was more concerned that the US would be dragged into another Iraq War. So it hardly qualifies as an example of the US not seeing Europe as a priority, because at the time the intervention was not about Europe.

Armed them and sent CIA operatives to train them too. Some of the weapons got in the hands of groups that later turned into ISIS. That's what you get for not understanding much about the region and thinking you do. And if you fund and support them, expecting them to not switch sides at any point. But hey, you gotta stick with your "allies". Those Kurd allies actually organised terror attacks in Turkey. It's not for nothing that Turkey has beef with them. There's literally bad blood between them, we're talking about many deaths over the years.

Thanks again, Captain Obvious. That still doesn’t explain why you falsely claimed that the US started the Syrian Civil War. I think US policymakers understand the Middle East way better than you do, even with hindsight 20/20. The US has dealt with worse kinds than the Kurds as long as they were in line with US national interest. No matter how much you claim “but muh treaty”, there’s a consensus here in the US that Trump sacrificed national interest to fulfill a campaign promise.

That sheer distance is not something that can't be overcome with the right technology. Why do you think there's been so much energy invested in making sure Iran doesn't produce uranium that could be usable in warheads? Because they're not a real concern for Israel, right.

If you think Iran is actually going to just nuke Israel (which also has nukes), then you have no clue what nuclear weapons are for. This is also assuming that the US and Israel will sit idly while Tehran procures and tests its nuclear devices, which is not going to happen.

Oh but I didn't claim that. I'm well aware that the US doesn't really need Middle Eastern oil. This had nothing to do with why American companies got involved in Iraq and elsewhere, thought. Haliburton, the company in which Dick Cheney (who was US defense secretary during the first war in Iraq) was involved up to a point, gained access to contracts in Iraq after the war, since there were plenty of money-making opportunities in different areas, like bringing burning oil wells under control. Later Cheney was vice-president in W Bush's administration. And they led another operation of removing Saddam Hussein from power. Just a coincidence. I mean, when a country gets destroyed by war, lots of opportunities for rebuilding are left after war operations end. And if you install the right, friendly administration there, they will probably also lend a friendly eye to your companies' business propositions. Which is what happened in Iraq.

Hmm... you almost sound like you are insinuating that corporate interest in oil had something to do with the causes of the Iraq War after all. It’s hard to make out what you are really saying behind all that weird prose though.

One doesn't preclude the other. The US already has Eastern Europe in the bag, it doesn't need to go to great lengths just to secure its allegiance. The Middle East is an ongoing effort for the US, it's always been this way. Your administrations never really managed to get a grip on this region, but that doesn't mean they ever stopped trying to install your own friendly governments there and so encircle Asia or preemptively remove a potential strategic interest from them.

What makes you say the US has Eastern Europe in the bag? Because the US is clearly unhappy that America’s NATO allies aren’t pulling their weight to balance Russia. The US doesn’t even want to fight Russia in Europe when it’s supposed to be focusing on China. Also, how is the US encircling the entire continent of Asia? Like I said before, the US doesn’t need bases in the Middle East to contain China. It instead needs to be in the Pacific, where Beijing is trying to overturn the regional balance of power. Not sure why these have been brought up but if the US is propping friendly governments and removing potential threats in the region, then it’s acting entirely rationally and according to its national interest.

[bittersalt123]

It's looking a lot like Elizabeth Warren vs the Donald.

[Dolan]

Did I say we should hunt down ISIS to the last man? I said there’s still more than 10,000 of their active fighters, but you elected to ignore that for no reason. Also, no shit Assad is Iran’s ally, he has been for decades. I obviously meant Syria as the territory, no the government in power. Before the Kurds struck a deal with Assad, they controlled a good chunk of Syria themselves. That would have been enough for the US to frustrate Tehran’s ambition in that corner of the Middle East.

ISIS is a false target, their weak claim to statehood has been demolished. They were no match for millitary big players like Russia or the USA. You don't need boots on the ground in Syria to chase some partisans hiding in remote villages in Iraq or Pakistan. They have gone into hiding, they're now in the al-Qaeda mountain retreat phase. Except much less funded and coordinated than al Qaeda.
Syria is a lost cause, Assad won't be removed from power, so it's all just a question of time until Assad regains his grip on most of the country. And now that Kurds are allying with him, that will hasten the inevitable. Which is probably another reason why Trump decided to pull out, it was a great opportunity for him to score electoral points with his voters, while killing a couple of other birds with one stone.
Kurds don't just "control territory" in Syria, they live in it. They've been living there and elsewhere in neighbouring countries for a long time (Iraq, Syria, Turkey). They participated in the war because those territories were their whereabouts, where they were living. They didn't really have much choice, they weren't just teleported there from some other parts, like some other insurgents. They are locals. Whether you agree with their claim to have a country or not, I don't think they cared much about who they allied with, they would have allied with any side that would have been useful to their cause. Which is the same thing the US did in Syria. There's nothing really heroic about their participation in this war, everyone who lived there one way or another participated in it, because they had no choice. And Kurds aren't exactly saints either, they've been organising terror plots in Turkey for decades. With lots of casualties. Their political-military organisations are like local IRAs in that region.

My point was that your explanation about Trump trying to prevent the US from being held hostage to commitments makes no sense at all. Entangling alliances are only dangerous when allies behave recklessly thinking the US has their backs in a war, but this was obviously not the case with the Kurds.

It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, it's not my conception of geopolitical strategy, it's Trump's. And he's making such decisions based on it. It's not my job to justify his cognition on this subject. Trump doesn't care about any "allies". He thinks the USA is still the most powerful country on earth and it doesn't really need allies to project power or to thrive economically. The only alliance he still has a soft spot for is the Anglosphere. But even that is somewhat contingent on the relations he has with their leaders (like he can't abide people like Trudeau). When did you last hear Trump calling a country "our ally"? Maybe he used it when talking about Israel or Saudi Arabia, but that's not because he relies on those countries to participate in military actions, it's more about flattering them because he has some particular interest in securing their goodwill. But other than that, Trump never talks about other big military powers or global powers as "our ally". Because he knows they're more interested in keeping a beneficial relation with the US than the US is. So he doesn't feel like he has to be thankful, he's just going to take that for granted. Nothing to gain there, nothing to lose either.

By the way, the gas pipeline can become a leverage for the EU on the long run since it’d be easier for the Germans to find another supplier (US) than for the Russians to find another buyer. Plus, Russian revisionism is a rather new phenomenon that happened in the last 5 years or so, which means NATO needs some time to adjust as well.

Europe is not interested much in buying US gas, especially now when the US is hiking tariffs on European products. It makes no sense to serve US economic interests when yours are getting undermined.

Don’t be dense. We all know how Soviet assistance to Saddam Hussein turned out during the Gulf War. In fact, the Soviets supported the UN resolution against Iraq while their advisers were still in the country. This was obviously before the Soviet Union collapsed, not after like I was saying. Russia in the 1990s and 2000s was in no place to flex its influence. It was an economic basket case and could barely throw its weight around in its neighborhood, seeing how poorly the Russian military performed in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. The weapon sales by themselves don’t mean any influence and they were more of an economic necessity for Russia to sustain its military-industrial complex after the collapse of the Soviet Union; by your logic, Russia must have tremendous influence over India, which it clearly doesn’t. Same goes with the joint military drills, which indicates solidarity more so than one country’s influence over another. You are really scraping the bottom of the barrel if you think those mean influence.

Russia continued to sell weapons in this region and that's the most significant litmus test of their influence. If you want to see who is a country allied with, check where they're buying weapons from. It's hillarious that you think Russia's arms sales reflect their desperation to prop up their economy, because it's not like Russia can create demand for their weapons out of thin air. And if they can, it further proves the point that arms sales are pretty much a clientelist scheme. It's supposed to strengthen relations between a major power and its vassal states.

Those two situations aren’t even remotely comparable. The UK isn’t even a great power like Russia or Iran and the stakes are much bigger since they are competing for the future of Syria. It’s unlikely that their competition will result in outright hostility, but that doesn’t mean Russia and Iran are not competing for influence (some of which do involve money for reconstruction) in the Assad regime. Great powers have their own interests and neither Russia nor Iran are likely to yield Syria to each other easily after helping the Assad regime win the civil war. A more accurate comparison would be the Sino-Soviet competition over North Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Russia competing with Iran over Syria is just a comical idea. Iran can't match whatever Russia can put on the table on any conceivable measure. And Iran is actually just another vassal state for Russia, except that Iran knows this is a symbiotic relationship: Russia needs to keep Iran free from US+allies influence just to make a point about the extent of its geopolitical influence. And Iran is currently playing poker with the US and the rest of the international community, knowing well that Russia has a critical interest in not letting them have the same fate as Iraq. Russia would surely intervene if any military offensive was prepared against Iran. Even moreso than it did for Syria. By comparison, Syria is such a small actor in the grand scheme of things. Saying that Iran and Russia are competing over Syria is just hillarious, as you probably already realised. Iran doesn't need unimpeded access to the Mediterranean for their aircraft carriers and submarines, like Russia does.

It’s true that the Obama administration paid less attention to Europe, but to Obama’s credit, his options were limited. The refugee crisis coincided with the Russian intervention in 2015, which meant that the US couldn’t end the Syrian Civil War without confronting Russia directly. Of course, Obama was not willing to risk another war in the Middle East, much less against a major military power. By that point, the US couldn’t solve the refugee crisis any more than Europe could. Also, it took the Obama administration a while to recognize Russian intentions until the invasion of Crimea in 2014. That’s not to say that the US forsook its transatlantic ties or just didn’t give a shit about Europe. The US remained supportive of the EU and urged it to pull its weight more in security matters with a resurgent Russia; the US just didn’t have the answers to all of EU’s problems.

That's a lot of nice words to say that Obama had basically no actual policy in the Middle East. No clear vision on what the US wanted to achieve there and no clear roadmap to achieving that. This became so obvious when he sent Kerry to make a last-ditch effort to broker a new agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. They were so thrilled about it, "we're getting real good at this" they were saying. They got played so hard by Netanyahu, who gave them this false impression.
What about Ukraine, now that you brought up the subject? What was Obama's bright answer to Russia's invasion? Sanctions, lol. I'm not saying that Europe's answer was better in any way, it was to be expected that it was going to be pathetic. Yeah sure, the Russian economy took some beating as a result of this, but it's not like their leadership cares that much, since they're filthy rich and the population is used to hardship. Meanwhile, Russia gets to keep Crimea and control Eastern Ukraine. Advantage secured.
"But hey, we did this because of these supersmart and insightful considerations, "Foreign policy" said so, so we should really pat each other on our backs for how smart we are."

By the way, that Libya intervention (2011) was way before the refugee crisis and the Russian intervention in Syria (2015). The US couldn’t have known how it would contribute to the later crisis and Obama was more concerned that the US would be dragged into another Iraq War. So it hardly qualifies as an example of the US not seeing Europe as a priority, because at the time the intervention was not about Europe.

The intervention wasn't about Europe but it showed how much commitment the US had for anything initiated by Europe. And btw, I think Lybia was just maybe one of the most stupid military interventions ever. It's incredible how Sarkozy managed to escape any consequences for the completely terrible decisions he made (compared to how Tony Blair is now treated as if he actively spreads malaria spores in the atmosphere).

That still doesn’t explain why you falsely claimed that the US started the Syrian Civil War. I think US policymakers understand the Middle East way better than you do, even with hindsight 20/20. The US has dealt with worse kinds than the Kurds as long as they were in line with US national interest. No matter how much you claim “but muh treaty”, there’s a consensus here in the US that Trump sacrificed national interest to fulfill a campaign promise.

Well, when you arm and fund the opposition to Assad's regime and then send CIA specialists to train them, how would you call that? Cultural exchanges? Those people armed, trained and funded by the US were instrumental in starting the civil war in Syria. Not to mention that the US, as usual, funded NGOs in Syria to oppose Assad, but that's just such a routine practice let's not even bring it up in the debate.

If you think Iran is actually going to just nuke Israel (which also has nukes), then you have no clue what nuclear weapons are for. This is also assuming that the US and Israel will sit idly while Tehran procures and tests its nuclear devices, which is not going to happen.

Nobody has any clue what nuclear weapons are made for. If I had a PhD in "international relations" I would probably be "smart" enough to talk about a "balance of terror", "deterrence theory", "nuclear blackmail" and other fancy terms whose only relevance is purely theoretical. Nuclear war is such an overrated concept. You're not going to defeat any country with just a few strikes here and there. You need hundreds of them to effectively shut down a country, because the destructive force of one single nuclear weapon is just not that powerful. Nagasaki and Hiroshima are doing fine today, despite the overblown narratives spread in the media to create the impression that one nuke is enough to bring ultimate inferno on earth.
And let's get real, there's just too much hyperbole about nukes. Nobody has the resources to maintain an arsenal of 10000 nukes, it's simply impossible. You have to replace the active cores periodically and dispose of them safely. The costs are just unconscionably high even for resourceful countries like the USA. It simply makes no sense to maintain hundreds, let alone thousands of warheads, especially if your policy luminaries believe they're there for "deterrence" purposes only. That would be some negative IQ territory, if they are actually doing that. I expect every nuclear power maybe maintains a few tens of them at best, if not fewer. It's all about keeping up appearances and credibility of threats.
However, in the hands of rogue states or states with not much of a tradition for rationalism in politics, where religious narratives trump reason, I wouldn't be surprised at all if one day they simply launch a couple of them in the direction of their arch-enemies. I actually expect that we are going to see some small-scale nuclear wars either in the Middle East or between India and Pakistan. And it's not going to be much of a muchness either.

Hmm... you almost sound like you are insinuating that corporate interest in oil had something to do with the causes of the Iraq War after all. It’s hard to make out what you are really saying behind all that weird prose though.

Am I? Wow, I must be very subtle, then. Linking money and political decisions. Who would have thought. Especially of Dick Cheney.

What makes you say the US has Eastern Europe in the bag? Because the US is clearly unhappy that America’s NATO allies aren’t pulling their weight to balance Russia. The US doesn’t even want to fight Russia in Europe when it’s supposed to be focusing on China. Also, how is the US encircling the entire continent of Asia? Like I said before, the US doesn’t need bases in the Middle East to contain China. It instead needs to be in the Pacific, where Beijing is trying to overturn the regional balance of power. Not sure why these have been brought up but if the US is propping friendly governments and removing potential threats in the region, then it’s acting entirely rationally and according to its national interest.

Because all you have to do is just watch which leaders Trump is gladly meeting in the White House and which leaders he is giving a cold shoulder to. He's been busy meeting with every head of state from Eastern Europe, lavishly praising the "special relation" with their small and barely significant countries, while making a big fuss about treating Merkel like a frog with bubonic plague. Where do you think Eastern European states are buying their weapons from?

[occamslightsaber]

Incredible, now you are back to arguing in circles again. I don’t feel like wasting too much time talking to a wall about something off-topic, so I’ll keep this one relatively brief and focus on the misinformation you are spreading.

Europe is not interested much in buying US gas, especially now when the US is hiking tariffs on European products. It makes no sense to serve US economic interests when yours are getting undermined.

European leaders know that they can’t trust the Russians and they are keeping their options open. They aren’t going to tolerate Russian revisionism against the regional order just because Russia sells them some gas that can be replaced. When the push comes to shove, they’ll always pick their security interest over short-term economic convenience and the US will be more than happy to oblige for a reasonable price, even if Trump has bad personal relations with those leaders.

Russia continued to sell weapons in this region and that's the most significant litmus test of their influence. If you want to see who is a country allied with, check where they're buying weapons from. It's hillarious that you think Russia's arms sales reflect their desperation to prop up their economy, because it's not like Russia can create demand for their weapons out of thin air. And if they can, it further proves the point that arms sales are pretty much a clientelist scheme. It's supposed to strengthen relations between a major power and its vassal states.

Russia competing with Iran over Syria is just a comical idea. Iran can't match whatever Russia can put on the table on any conceivable measure. And Iran is actually just another vassal state for Russia, except that Iran knows this is a symbiotic relationship: Russia needs to keep Iran free from US+allies influence just to make a point about the extent of its geopolitical influence. And Iran is currently playing poker with the US and the rest of the international community, knowing well that Russia has a critical interest in not letting them have the same fate as Iraq. Russia would surely intervene if any military offensive was prepared against Iran. Even moreso than it did for Syria. By comparison, Syria is such a small actor in the grand scheme of things. Saying that Iran and Russia are competing over Syria is just hillarious, as you probably already realised. Iran doesn't need unimpeded access to the Mediterranean for their aircraft carriers and submarines, like Russia does.

Again, do you actually know what a vassal state means? A vassal state subordinates its foreign policy to its great power patron in return for protection. How does Iran subordinate its foreign policy to Russia? They share a common interest in Syria to prop up the Assad regime and to reduce the US influence in the Middle East, but that’s pretty much all. Iran wants to dominate the Middle East as a regional hegemon eventually, which doesn’t sit well with Russia. And Russia certainly won’t come running to rescue its “vassal state” if the US invades Iran. And no, Russia can’t create demand for weapons out of thin air, but it can compete pretty well in terms of quality and price. Russia has been a lot more carefree than the Soviet Union in selling weapons, even at the risk of their weapons getting reverse engineered or falling into their potential enemies’ hands, because the weapon sales are about keeping the arms industry alive and up-to-date for the Russians.

I’ll throw in some articles for you to see how “hilarious” everyone else finds the competition over Syria to be.
https://www.mei.edu/publications/russia ... ias-future
https://www.memri.org/reports/struggle- ... ters-power

What about Ukraine, now that you brought up the subject? What was Obama's bright answer to Russia's invasion? Sanctions, lol. I'm not saying that Europe's answer was better in any way, it was to be expected that it was going to be pathetic. Yeah sure, the Russian economy took some beating as a result of this, but it's not like their leadership cares that much, since they're filthy rich and the population is used to hardship. Meanwhile, Russia gets to keep Crimea and control Eastern Ukraine. Advantage secured.
"But hey, we did this because of these supersmart and insightful considerations, "Foreign policy" said so, so we should really pat each other on our backs for how smart we are."

Yes, Obama’s answer was sanctions, but also a renewed effort to consolidate a balancing coalition against Russia in Europe. Did you actually expect the US to go to war with a major military power like Russia over Crimea and Eastern Ukraine? Putin certainly didn’t think so. Also, the Russian population is used to hardship? Tell that to the Soviet Union.

Well, when you arm and fund the opposition to Assad's regime and then send CIA specialists to train them, how would you call that? Cultural exchanges? Those people armed, trained and funded by the US were instrumental in starting the civil war in Syria. Not to mention that the US, as usual, funded NGOs in Syria to oppose Assad, but that's just such a routine practice let's not even bring it up in the debate.

The shooting war in Syria began long before the US started training and arming the Syrian opposition. Supporting one group in an ongoing war is hardly starting a war like you claimed.

Nobody has any clue what nuclear weapons are made for. If I had a PhD in "international relations" I would probably be "smart" enough to talk about a "balance of terror", "deterrence theory", "nuclear blackmail" and other fancy terms whose only relevance is purely theoretical. Nuclear war is such an overrated concept. You're not going to defeat any country with just a few strikes here and there. You need hundreds of them to effectively shut down a country, because the destructive force of one single nuclear weapon is just not that powerful. Nagasaki and Hiroshima are doing fine today, despite the overblown narratives spread in the media to create the impression that one nuke is enough to bring ultimate inferno on earth.
And let's get real, there's just too much hyperbole about nukes. Nobody has the resources to maintain an arsenal of 10000 nukes, it's simply impossible. You have to replace the active cores periodically and dispose of them safely. The costs are just unconscionably high even for resourceful countries like the USA. It simply makes no sense to maintain hundreds, let alone thousands of warheads, especially if your policy luminaries believe they're there for "deterrence" purposes only. That would be some negative IQ territory, if they are actually doing that. I expect every nuclear power maybe maintains a few tens of them at best, if not fewer. It's all about keeping up appearances and credibility of threats.
However, in the hands of rogue states or states with not much of a tradition for rationalism in politics, where religious narratives trump reason, I wouldn't be surprised at all if one day they simply launch a couple of them in the direction of their arch-enemies. I actually expect that we are going to see some small-scale nuclear wars either in the Middle East or between India and Pakistan. And it's not going to be much of a muchness either.

Is that a standard response for you when you have nothing else to say, that “nobody understands X anyway”? I saw it before in your posts about economists as well. Also, it’s quite ironic that you are now trying to sound like a political scientist and making wild predictions about nuclear wars in the future. Not that you are doing a good job pretending to be one. For example, the peak US stock pile for nuclear warheads during the Cold War was well in the 30,000s, which is quite a bit over your “simply impossible” amount of 10,000. Just fyi, that impossible number was needed to ensure a second strike (retaliatory) capability against the Soviet Union. The US has more than 3,000 active warheads now as well and the figure goes above 6,000 if you include the ones being retired. Also, even a theocracy like Iran isn’t stupid enough to willingly give nukes to terrorists, because they will be easily traced back to it and next thing you know the US is at its doorstep (if the US restrained itself to not use its own nukes, that is).

Because all you have to do is just watch which leaders Trump is gladly meeting in the White House and which leaders he is giving a cold shoulder to. He's been busy meeting with every head of state from Eastern Europe, lavishly praising the "special relation" with their small and barely significant countries, while making a big fuss about treating Merkel like a frog with bubonic plague. Where do you think Eastern European states are buying their weapons from?

Is that how you determine robustness of an alliance? By seeing who Trump shakes hands with? Talk about negative IQ! Also, US-made weapons alone won’t protect the Eastern European states against the Russians, who have weapons of similar capabilities (if not better in some cases) and who are much better trained and coordinated to use them. Well, at least you are consistent in your delusion about weapon sales = influence.

[Dolan]

Ha ha.

lol

[n0el]

Maybe I like Beto more than I thought. He’s shitting on Pete.

[fightinfrenchman]

Maybe I like Beto more than I thought. He’s shitting on Pete.

Probably because Pete murdered him by saying Beto's gun thing is just a ploy to stay relevant lol

[Goodspeed]

Maybe I like Beto more than I thought. He’s shitting on Pete.

Which you like why?

[fightinfrenchman]

Another debate tonight. Time to get this thread back on topic

[Riotcoke]

Another debate tonight. Time to get this thread back on topic

Funny coming from you

[fightinfrenchman]

Another debate tonight. Time to get this thread back on topic

Funny coming from you

Superdreadnought Rail Cannon Gustav Max

I hope you're disappointed by the result of the notification you clicked

[bittersalt123]

Trump Polling: The top 12 LOSERS take the stage tonight & Pres Trump wants your input. Take our Trump vs Dem Poll by 8PM TONIGHT: bit.ly/2BgYMJT

Text from Trump is kinda funny thought i'd show you non Americans what we see on our phones.

[Riotcoke]

Another debate tonight. Time to get this thread back on topic

Funny coming from you

Superdreadnought Rail Cannon Gustav Max

I hope you're disappointed by the result of the notification you clicked

Banned

[fightinfrenchman]

Debate predictions:

Gabbard makes a fool of herself
Biden goes hard on the fact that Trump is targeting him and every other serious candidate is too afraid to touch on it
Beto doubles down on unpopular positions via swearing

[Jam]

Another debate tonight. Time to get this thread back on topic

Funny coming from you

Superdreadnought Rail Cannon Gustav Max

I hope you're disappointed by the result of the notification you clicked

hi

[fightinfrenchman]

12 is way too many just to start. Ugh

[fightinfrenchman]

I hope someone calls out Trump for being responsible for Kurds dying

[fightinfrenchman]

I hope Beto calls out the media for acting like the Hunter Biden thing is a serious controversy

[fightinfrenchman]

I was right about Gabbard embarrassing herself

[fightinfrenchman]

Lol Tom Steyer "former hedge fund manager"