JohnRawls wrote:Russia and China are natural allies at least for now. China needs Russia because it is a modern version of the Great Wall for them. If Russia exists and is friendly/Neutral to China then they do not have to worry about resources or incercilment in an emergency.
The Soviets thought pushing communist ideology into China would make them natural allies too. It didn't work. China is overpopulated. Russia is underpopulated, particularly in the East near China. The US was successful in opening China to trade with the West--effectively making China the power it is today. Russia, by contrast, has not reformed or opened up significantly and as a result is a commodity exporter in spite of its well-educated population. Russia should be a significant player in electronics and software much more than it is.
JohnRawls wrote:To a degree can be said about Russia, who is worried about Nato encirclement.
Yes, and Russia has humiliated NATO multiple times now--invading Georgia, annexing Crimea, stirring up shit in the Donbass, and sending troops to Syria. The reality of the situation is that NATO IS the United States with Britain able to defend itself. Nations like Poland legitimately need US help. Nations like Germany and France have been free riding and padding their welfare systems. That is no longer tenable.
One Degree wrote:Yes, but that is my point. Without the US in the Mideast to limit both possible Russian and Chinese influence, how do they each react to the influence of the other in the area? What if the Chinese go into Afghanistan? Will they both compete in Iran? The void created by the US will appeal to both Russia and China to expand their influence. It must result in conflict between them, imo.
It's not unlikely. The Sino-Soviet war could have been a real disaster had they not been ideologically intertwined, and they aren't at this time.
JohnRawls wrote:I am pretty sure Russia is okay with China taking most of the influence in the ME besides some places honestly. For them it is better than the US nor do they have the capability to maintain a permanent presence/strugle in all of the ME. Better the big boss in some and be a kind of broker between local countries and China. I believe that this situation would suit Russia the best. I guess it is a kind of best possible outcome for them.
Russia has long wanted strong influence in Central Asia. Nothing changes that. As Napolean said, you can tell a country's foreign policy by its borders. China taking the Middle East would be seen as no different from the Mongol Khanates that nearly wiped Russia out in the past. Russia will remain paranoid, because it has no other choice.
One Degree wrote:I think they would view any increase in Chinese influence as a potential threat to all their Eastern territory. I might be outdated in my thinking, but I believe only their common cause against the US in the area is preventing their border disputes from reigniting.
The US is simply too far away to project power into the Russian heartland, but it can thwart Russian ambition. So the US pisses Russia off. China, on the other hand, has enough man power and short enough supply lines to cause Russia some very real problems.
Rugoz wrote:It's 2000 troops. I don't have to put together an argument because the idea that Trump is a non-interventionist purist is dumb as fuck.
Nobody is saying that Trump is a non-interventionist purist. A lot of presidents have just gone along with deep state ambitions, but it has led to serious political fights. For example, Bill Clinton passed the "regime change" doctrine--making official US policy. George Bush implemented that in Iraq with Hillary Clinton voting for the Iraq War. Hillary then railed against Bush, as did John Kerry. When Obama won, he ceased ongoing interaction with Al-Maliki's government, whereas Bush was on the phone with him every day. Obama pulled troops out--arguably prematurely--because there was no SOFA agreement in place and he did not want to negotiate one. Anti-US powers--many of them in Europe--convinced the Iraqi government to let US troops stay only if US troops would be subject to Iraqi law and to not reward US companies with oil concessions. So the US left. Iran filled part of that vacuum, and ISIS filled the other part.
Obama's "regime change" policy included Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. I've argued in the past that we could leave things unstable--which we could do effectively BUT barring the utterly stupid idea of open borders, that's likely to lead to new and multiple Hitlers in the future. Obama's moves in Syria were tragically stupid and probably a product of his own hubris. The deep state's covering his obvious failure by 2012 allowed him to be re-elected and continue his Syria adventure. It has led to the demise of the political consensus in the EU among other things.
Trump is calling the deep state on their bullshit, and they clearly don't have a coherent answer for him. As I said, I hold General Mattis in high regard, and I understand the thinking behind alliances. However, the number of countries supporting ISAF is somewhat meaningless if the fighting is done by the US, UK, and Canada with nominal help from NATO allies like Italy and Germany. France still acts like it's not a part of NATO. The "we'll do the cooking and hold down the fort while you are out engaging the enemy" is not exactly confidence inspiring considering the bloodshed the US and UK have endured in alliances. It's nice to have air support from the Dutch too, but combat troops would be nice too. In that context, I have to say that Trump is deserving of respect for calling NATO out and calling the deep state out--even though he may turn out to be wrong. We shall see.
Istanbuller wrote:ISIS is an American proxy which was used to name a valid reason to intervene to Syria. It was about making Syria's bloody dictator Assad leave or murdering him. Later Obama abandoned Sunni Arabs who favour democracy against Assad. You see the US always sell out it allies.
There is a big difference between a proxy and an ally. However, you are correct that Obama was in fact continuing the "regime change" policy enacted by Bill Clinton (Milosevic being his big act, before the regime change policy was formalized) and implemented by Bush. Obama's attempt to use Al Qaeda to arm the Free Syrian Army has to be one of the dumbest ideas in modern memory by people who considered themselves smarter than everyone else.
Istanbuller wrote:Let's see what happens in coming days and months. I think we are going to back the original plan now. It will be all about FSA.
Yes, but without Western support, they will be easily mowed down by Assad's forces if he gets help from Russia. The Syrian Army is pretty ramshackle, which is the real reason we see the use of barrel bombs.
Istanbuller wrote:It will be a good chance for Turkey to test its military functions.
Turkey has a bigger and arguably better military than Germany or France. It will be interesting to see if they use it outside of their borders. Back to the question of NATO, though, it is clear that the alliance against the Soviet Union made sense. The idea that all of these powers are simply going to take direction from Washington pols in the absence of a Soviet threat is deeply misguided in my opinion.
Istanbuller wrote:China has no military power to intervene to anywhere.
China doesn't have nearly as competent a blue water navy. Historically, it scuttled its own Navy in the era of Zheng Ha--perhaps some Muslim treachery? China could enter Afghanistan easily, but intervening in Syria is not an option for them.
Beren wrote:I'd believe pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan has more to do with Trump's own preference of a reduced US military presence abroad, which resonates with his base and large parts of the broader electorate too anyway, and winning Putin's approval than any grand geopolitical strategy.
I still find it amazing that people believe that Trump is Putin's puppet. The political problem is that nation-building is unpopular in the United States as there are plenty of areas in the US that could use those investment dollars. The US government is hostile to many areas and peoples within the United States--holding them generally in contempt as was evidenced by Hillary Clinton's "deplorable" remark, Mitt Romney's "47%" remark and Obama's "bitter clinger" speech. It's a bi-partisan contempt too. Trump has to keep those people in his coalition to win again, so he cannot go along with what the establishment wants to do around the world. He is also exposing the bi-partisan establishment around immigration too.
Beren wrote:He'd also like to pull out of South Korea and would abandon Europe too if he could perhaps.
Trump has increased the military presence in South Korea. If anything, he's ready to go to war with North Korea. That's why having Mattis leave now is an interesting development. Mattis is ultimately signalling to North Korea that it can rest easier, depending on who replaces Mattis.
Ter wrote:A decision like pulling troops out of Syria and Afghanistan should not be made on a whim.
Mattis is right not to want to be part of this any more.
I don't think it is a whim. Basically, the current world order is what dictates the rise of groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Until the current world order faces that fact, expensive global military operations with no end game is untenable. To get a glimpse of political thinking in Washington from officers and intel guys in the field, read
Outlaw Platoon and
Left of Boom. Contrast how someone from the regular army tells a story and how the CIA blacks out everything one of its officers says so you have to fill in "Pakistan" as though you couldn't figure out what they were trying to keep from you. When you see it from the standpoint of corporate culture or organizational behavior (the proverbial 50k foot view), you can see how ridiculous things got after WWII. If the enemy crosses the border into Pakistan, you have to go into Pakistan and kill the enemy. Today, we cannot do that because of politics. Our military leaders cannot make practical military decisions like that. During the Vietnam War too, the NVA just re-routed their supply lines into Laos and Cambodia. Hell, bin Laden's last hideout was a few miles from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point. Consider all the abuses of the NSA as revealed by Snowden and then watch
Zero Dark Thirty. I spent a lot of time working in mass data storage, and the NSA used our stuff for the cloud systems (I don't work for them, by the way). What they depicted in Zero Dark Thirty is largely true. Yet, they still needed to bribe a lot of people to get the numbers they were looking for; otherwise, they are not looking for a needle in a haystack, but looking for a particular needle in a stack of needles. As it stands today, no military power can beat the US military in conventional battle. Unconventional warfare is another matter.
Building nations as in Afghanistan is expensive, and to do that with the military pisses people off because you aren't chasing the enemy. Read
Hammerhead Six. As an exercise in denying territory to the enemy and stabilizing an area, it was a success. As far as getting bin Laden or other Taliban/Al Qaeda targets, they come up empty. Handing over the Pech Valley to a 20-something captain with 50 guys to run it (it's the size of Connecticut) brings Rudyard Kipling's
The Man Who Would Be King. Sean Connery and Michael Caine depict it in
The Man Who Would Be King.
Think all of our soldiers are war criminals? Read
Level Zero Heroes and get a picture of what types of shit the Taliban will pull--deliberately killing a woman and child with the intent to blame it on US airstrikes, for example. Pacifists and anti-imperialists fall for that type of shit every single time. The media doesn't cover it either, so that they don't "demonize" Muslims. You also get a good idea of the problems of trying to involve local leadership when their cousins are the enemy in that book.
12 Strong depicts all of that too, if you would prefer to watch a movie. Want a special ops perspective of the whole thing from beginning to end--with a bunch of stuff in between that has nothing to do with it--read
Zero Footprint: The True Story of a Private Military Contractor's Covert Assignments in Syria, Libya, And the World's Most Dangerous Places. Zero Footprint was the code meaning that Obama didn't want the FSA to look like a US-UK backed fighting force when in fact it was. The effort to purchase arms from Ansar Al Sharia, an Al Qaeda affiliate, led to the killing of Ambassador Stevens, which you can watch in
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, leading to Hillary Clinton's efforts to hide what was going on from Congress--criminally deleting classified emails which were criminally negligently on her "secret" email server that was hacked by every US adversary.
If you read or watch all of that and more as I have, you don't come away with a great deal of confidence in the Washington establishment. We saw Barack Obama win re-election in 2012 by chiding Mitt Romney AFTER Russia had invaded Georgia, only to watch Russia annex Crimea without firing a shot, stir up shit in the Donbass, and put troops into Syria to confront American troops there. Then, when Trump won, the very same establishment cooked up a completely bullshit "Russian Meddling" scare for Donald Trump. I think it is fair to question Trump's actions, but we've had 17 years of this shit going sideways from establishment actors in both parties. They are arrogant, condescending and incompetent.
Again, I have a great deal of respect for James Mattis. However, Trump's hard-nosed approach shouldn't be dismissed either. He's right that there is a lot of bullshit going on in Washington that just needs to be called out and people who have performed badly need to get fired.
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:What Putin wouldn't like seems to be the new basis on which to make foreign policy.
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:Progressive respectable media's fever dream:
Russia did what they did, because the US elected Barack Obama. I'm surprised they didn't do much more. Yet, trying to warn us on Russia after ridiculing Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney and then getting completely schooled by Putin is par for the course.
One Degree wrote:I don’t know what Trump thinks, but my guess is he doesn’t believe in limited conflict.
Limited conflict--as I'm sure Trump has figured out--is that you are limited and your enemy is not. An alliance where you bear all the heavy lifting isn't a bi-directional alliance. Western Europe is an American Protectorate, not really an ally in the strict sense of the word.
Basically, Trump is president because the establishment has no clothes and Trump is the only one other than Russia calling them out on it. Why they don't want to clean up their act given their dismal performance for 25 years now is anyone's guess.
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