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Russia is making moves in Iraq

Nicci said:
I still disagree, while unnamed informants are wonderful, there would need to be some truth to it first.
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Amazing that you would think that USFP is about "fixing" things. That's cute, if naive.

September 11 signaled the end of the age of geopolitics and the advent of a new age— the era of global politics. The challenge U.S. policymakers face today is to recognize that fundamental change in world politics and to use America's unrivaled military, economic, and political power to fashion an international environment conducive to its interests and values.

Power and control is the name of the game!

The Globalization of Politics: American Foreign Policy for a New Century - Council on Foreign Relations
 
DVSentinel said:
Ha, just think, if the majority of Americans had a working brain, Obama would be serving burgers at McDonalds.
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That's it, Americans brains don't work, because they don't function as DV's, lol.
 
Montecresto said:
Amazing that you would think that USFP is about "fixing" things. That's cute, if naive.

September 11 signaled the end of the age of geopolitics and the advent of a new age— the era of global politics. The challenge U.S. policymakers face today is to recognize that fundamental change in world politics and to use America's unrivaled military, economic, and political power to fashion an international environment conducive to its interests and values.

Power and control is the name of the game!

The Globalization of Politics: American Foreign Policy for a New Century - Council on Foreign Relations
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Attempting to fix the problem isn't the same as actually fixing the problem.

This whole area was majority destabilized after WWII and every since then we've been trying to stabilize it, but we should have stopped decades ago.
 
Montecresto said:
Why does Iraq need to be in somebody's "orbit".
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I think it's kind of naive to think that Iraq isn't going to be somebody's proxy.

They're broken, they're weak, they have no idea how to govern themselves, they're located in a strategically significant location geographically, and they're sitting on top of a ton of wealth.

In a perfect utopian world nobody would take advantage of that unfortunate confluence of circumstances, but in the real world somebody is going to take them for all they're worth.

Why would it be the United States?

Because we've already sunk a lot into the project and people with power who make decisions that change the world generally frown upon 0% ROI.

But if it isn't us it surely will be somebody else.

Which brings me to this:

Nicci said:
We've been fixing Iraq for decades, time to let them hate someone else.

We need to turn our attentions to our own country and stop messing with others.
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I don't necessarily disagree with this position.

If it were up to me we'd cut regulations, punch holes all over this country and in the Gulf, suck it dry of oil while we allowed industry to develop next generations energy technologies (which is going on to some degree, but we're still a LOOOOOONG way off from being totally fossil fuel independent), and be done with the Middle East except for punitive responses to their nonsense when necessary.

But I don't make the decisions around here.
 
Nicci said:
Attempting to fix the problem isn't the same as actually fixing the problem.

This whole area was majority destabilized after WWII and every since then we've been trying to stabilize it, but we should have stopped decades ago.
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If you call creating power vacuums across the region stabilizing, sure thing.
 
soot said:
I think it's kind of naive to think that Iraq isn't going to be somebody's proxy.

They're broken, they're weak, they have no idea how to govern themselves, they're located in a strategically significant location geographically, and they're sitting on top of a ton of wealth.

In a perfect utopian world nobody would take advantage of that unfortunate confluence of circumstances, but in the real world somebody is going to take them for all they're worth.

Why would it be the United States?

Because we've already sunk a lot into the project and people with power who make decisions that change the world generally frown upon 0% ROI.

But if it isn't us it surely will be somebody else.

Which brings me to this:



I don't necessarily disagree with this position.

If it were up to me we'd cut regulations, punch holes all over this country and in the Gulf, suck it dry of oil while we allowed industry to develop next generations energy technologies (which is going on to some degree, but we're still a LOOOOOONG way off from being totally fossil fuel independent), and be done with the Middle East except for punitive responses to their nonsense when necessary.

But I don't make the decisions around here.
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That cliche is what's broken. It doesn't require a perfect utopian world. It requires acknowledging the obvious. Nobody would be fighting over those sand dunes today were it not for what lies beneath.
 
Montecresto said:
If you call creating power vacuums across the region stabilizing, sure thing.
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The power vacuum was during an attempt to fix the problem of wrong power in wrong hands to begin with. We let the British decide who should own what after the war and we are still paying for that mistake. They thought they could "lord" over the countries like they used to do in the 1500s~
 
Nicci said:
The power vacuum was during an attempt to fix the problem of wrong power in wrong hands to begin with. We let the British decide who should own what after the war and we are still paying for that mistake. They thought they could "lord" over the countries like they used to do in the 1500s~
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The Middle East is not for the British nor the US to decide. It's odd that you think either has an interest in anything other than control. You may have the last word, I have no further interest in the subject.
 
Montecresto said:
That cliche is what's broken. It doesn't require a perfect utopian world. It requires acknowledging the obvious. Nobody would be fighting over those sand dunes today were it not for what lies beneath.
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I don't think that's true at all.

The fight today is between a weakened sovereign state and a fundamentalist Salafi militant organization attempting to establish an imperial Caliphate in order to restore, what they see as, legitimacy to Islam.

I mean, yeah, if we want to keep digging back we can blame the the Sassanids, the Abbasids, the Mongol, the Ottoman Turks, the Mamluks, and eventually we get to the British, Ba'athists, and finally the American where we can talk about oil.

But that place has been fought over since the Assyrian Empire fell in to decline in ~600BCE and the Medes, Persians, Scythians, Cimmerians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Scythians and Cimmerians rose up in open revolt.

For the record, oil was discovered in Iraq in 1927, so we're talking about roughly 3000 years of more-or-less continuous warfare before "what lies beneath the dunes" was even a consideration.

If you think people are going to stop fighting just because a couple major powers "acknowledge" something, if they stand up and say, "Heck, we admit it, we want that oil", I don't know dude, I don't think you could kid yourself any harder.

Acknowledgement or no acknowledgement the major powers which need oil to fuel their economies are going to take advantage of weaker, oil rich nations. Either outright or through proxy wars.

To think that's not going to happen is the idealist, utopian nonsense I was talking about.
 
RDS said:
Embarrassing situation for the US.



Russia is making moves in Iraq - Business Insider
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Uhhhh why?... A new Arms deal is embarrassing for the US? Russia and Iraq have had close relations and cooperation during Saddam's regime, and even continuing through the intern governmnets, and even today.
16hiv0k.png

http://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/html/export_values.php

And 4.2 billion? Thats nothing compared to the 5 billion deal back in 2013 What is behind Iraq's arms deal with Russia? - Al Jazeera English

Oh and why are they doing this? Because Iraq and Russia share the same view when it comes to Syria, they want a political solution and do not want regime change in Syria.
 
soot said:
I don't think that's true at all.

The fight today is between a weakened sovereign state and a fundamentalist Salafi militant organization attempting to establish an imperial Caliphate in order to restore, what they see as, legitimacy to Islam.

I mean, yeah, if we want to keep digging back we can blame the the Sassanids, the Abbasids, the Mongol, the Ottoman Turks, the Mamluks, and eventually we get to the British, Ba'athists, and finally the American where we can talk about oil.

But that place has been fought over since the Assyrian Empire fell in to decline in ~600BCE and the Medes, Persians, Scythians, Cimmerians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Scythians and Cimmerians rose up in open revolt.

For the record, oil was discovered in Iraq in 1927, so we're talking about roughly 3000 years of more-or-less continuous warfare before "what lies beneath the dunes" was even a consideration.

If you think people are going to stop fighting just because a couple major powers "acknowledge" something, if they stand up and say, "Heck, we admit it, we want that oil", I don't know dude, I don't think you could kid yourself any harder.

Acknowledgement or no acknowledgement the major powers which need oil to fuel their economies are going to take advantage of weaker, oil rich nations. Either outright or through proxy wars.

To think that's not going to happen is the idealist, utopian nonsense I was talking about.
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Can we agree that the Middle East is where empires go to die?
 
LeoVlaming said:
They are just trying to make some money selling arms. Can't really blame them for that.
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In the midst of a war and coalition air strikes with a major city just taken by ISIS the Iraqi PM flies to Russia to meet Putin? This is some desperate move.
 
soot said:
I think it's kind of naive to think that Iraq isn't going to be somebody's proxy.

They're broken, they're weak, they have no idea how to govern themselves, they're located in a strategically significant location geographically, and they're sitting on top of a ton of wealth.

In a perfect utopian world nobody would take advantage of that unfortunate confluence of circumstances, but in the real world somebody is going to take them for all they're worth.

Why would it be the United States?

Because we've already sunk a lot into the project and people with power who make decisions that change the world generally frown upon 0% ROI.

But if it isn't us it surely will be somebody else.

Which brings me to this:



I don't necessarily disagree with this position.

If it were up to me we'd cut regulations, punch holes all over this country and in the Gulf, suck it dry of oil while we allowed industry to develop next generations energy technologies (which is going on to some degree, but we're still a LOOOOOONG way off from being totally fossil fuel independent), and be done with the Middle East except for punitive responses to their nonsense when necessary.

But I don't make the decisions around here.
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What proxy war? No world power wants to see ISIS take over iraq. A proxy war would imply some power is siding with ISIS. Sure, russian involvement could lead to fighting over the loot like oil, but this is only supplying weapons. That's not guaranteed to work either, given the tendency of iraqi forces to run away from battle. So far as this conflict goes, neither americans nor russians are willing to really commit, so it's a long ways off from battling each other there.

As to your favored goal, i think this is fantasy even if such blatant theft went of a sovereign country's resources took place. The oil producers and distributors within the US have full incentive to prevent alternative fuel from becoming mainstream. We could easily have developed such technology by now, and other countries are doing so, but how exactly will you force all new cars to run on this new fuel for instance? How will you force gas stations to convert to it? All your pillaging would likely accomplish is to give some oil tycoons a fatter dividends check, and very slightly lower gas cost here

We can't "be done" with the ME either in that scenario, since "sucking it dry" would require a continuous presence, and other nations would also take this as permission to fight over the same resources. Then you have your proxy war
 
This sounds like another arms transfer to ISIS, with the Iraqis taking brief possession until they drop them and run away.
 
Montecresto said:
Can we agree that the Middle East is where empires go to die?
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I certainly wouldn't agree to that.

The Ottoman Turkish Empire held sway over much of the Middle East for over 600 years (~1300 - 1920s).

They were succeed by the British, French, and Italians following the First World War.

Those European nations maintained their territories in the ME until the end of the Second World War or (in some cases) until the mid 1960s.

But those European empires didn't "die" in the Middle East.

That time period saw a proliferation of nationalist movements all over the globe compounded by changes at home.

For instance, the British lost their colonies in the ME during this time, but they also lost their colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia as well.

It wasn't that the Middle East killed those empires as that the concept of empire became economically and politically untenable.

European nations were still recovering from the physical devastation of WWII, repaying massive loans to American banks, rebuilding their economies, and fighting among themselves politically as postwar alliances were forged. They were also dealing with a citizenry that was tired of war and a little bit incredulous about heading off in to the colonies to put down Middle Eastern/African/Asia rebellions against foreign European domination after having just come through the bloodiest war in history in order to save Europe from foreign domination.

The concept of a "graveyard of empires" is really a misnomer.

No empire has ever actually died as a result of colonialist ambitions.

Whether we talk about the Macedonian Empire in the 300s, or the European empires of the 19th and early 20th centuries, or the Soviet Union's and United States' imperial ambitions (such as they were/are and to the degree that they can realistically be called empires) none of them came to a screeching halt because they got involved in the Middle East.

At times they were bloodied, at times embarrassed, at times they overextended themselves, at times underestimated the indigenous peoples, and all eventually had to let go of their colonial claims, but none ended as a result of being involved there, and nothing happened in the Middle East that didn't also happen in Africa, Asia, India, the Americas, or even in Europe itself.

So, no, we don't agree that the Middle East is where empires go to die.
 
soot said:
I certainly wouldn't agree to that.

The Ottoman Turkish Empire held sway over much of the Middle East for over 600 years (~1300 - 1920s).

They were succeed by the British, French, and Italians following the First World War.

Those European nations maintained their territories in the ME until the end of the Second World War or (in some cases) until the mid 1960s.

But those European empires didn't "die" in the Middle East.

That time period saw a proliferation of nationalist movements all over the globe compounded by changes at home.

For instance, the British lost their colonies in the ME during this time, but they also lost their colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia as well.

It wasn't that the Middle East killed those empires as that the concept of empire became economically and politically untenable.

European nations were still recovering from the physical devastation of WWII, repaying massive loans to American banks, rebuilding their economies, and fighting among themselves politically as postwar alliances were forged. They were also dealing with a citizenry that was tired of war and a little bit incredulous about heading off in to the colonies to put down Middle Eastern/African/Asia rebellions against foreign European domination after having just come through the bloodiest war in history in order to save Europe from foreign domination.

The concept of a "graveyard of empires" is really a misnomer.

No empire has ever actually died as a result of colonialist ambitions.

Whether we talk about the Macedonian Empire in the 300s, or the European empires of the 19th and early 20th centuries, or the Soviet Union's and United States' imperial ambitions (such as they were/are and to the degree that they can realistically be called empires) none of them came to a screeching halt because they got involved in the Middle East.

At times they were bloodied, at times embarrassed, at times they overextended themselves, at times underestimated the indigenous peoples, and all eventually had to let go of their colonial claims, but none ended as a result of being involved there, and nothing happened in the Middle East that didn't also happen in Africa, Asia, India, the Americas, or even in Europe itself.

So, no, we don't agree that the Middle East is where empires go to die.
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Well I should have been more specific with Afghanistan, better?
 
chromium said:
A proxy war would imply some power is siding with ISIS.
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Why would that be so?

The fact that I have a proxy doesn't necessitate your having (or needing/wanting/being able to find) a proxy.

We (the United States) can find some dupe to serve as our proxy while our "enemy" stands on his own two feet (such as they are).

As to your favored goal, i think this is fantasy...
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As do I. I said that it's what I'd like to see happen, and what I think would be best for America. I have no expectation at all that we'll see it happen.

We could easily have developed such technology by now, and other countries are doing so, but how exactly will you force all new cars to run on this new fuel for instance? How will you force gas stations to convert to it?
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Whether we could have or couldn't have is besides the point. We haven't. I'm not going to wail and gnash my teeth over it or indulge in some crybaby ritual of blaming "the man".

The will had never really been there in the past.

Government didn't have the will, industry didn't have the will, and the frankly the American people didn't have the will.

For a number of reasons we're in the process of finding the will.

I don't think an alternative to fossil fuel on a large scale is right around the corner but it's definitely on the horizon.

We can't "be done" with the ME either in that scenario, since "sucking it dry" would require a continuous presence, and other nations would also take this as permission to fight over the same resources.
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You've touched on this misinterpretation of what I said several times throughout your comments but I figured I'd address them all in one lump sum.

What I said was:

soot said:
If it were up to me we'd cut regulations, punch holes all over this country and in the Gulf, suck it dry of oil...
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I can see how maybe I wasn't clear enough.

I'm talking about drilling in our own country and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Maybe when I said Gulf you thought I meant Persian Gulf.

I'm not talking about "blatant theft went of a sovereign country's resources".

I'm talking about taking full advantage of our own resources.
 
soot said:
I completely agree.

I'm not necessarily committed to any particular course of action.

My concern, such as it is, is that Iraq be able to take care of what needs to be done in iraq.
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Putin is nothing if not an opportunist. He sees that the Iraqi army is basically non existent. He also has ties with Iran as a proxy to go in and clean up - problem is, Iran are shia and ISIS is sunni. It's not going to go over well, so how best to grab Iraq as a puppet and not over commit, exacerbating the sunni / shia conflict into full civil war. Russia wants the oil, they want control through Iran. Russia already has Assad and the mullahs in their pocket but the sunni/shia problem is mucking up their plans. They also don't want to go in themselves and clean up - they learned their lesson there. Best case is sunni go with ISIS and their weak caliphate, Shia keeps control of the south and Baghdad and Russia get's the oil exports without having to get directly involved. Iran gets control of half of Syria, half of Iraq and continues to hold Yemen to expand their ME power base which will solidify once they have nukes on their short and medium range missiles. No one can significantly challenge them after that.

Helix said:
if Russia wants that war, let them go for it.
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They'll sit on the sideline as a supplier and cheerleader doing this by proxy. They don't want to play middle man in shia/sunni conflicts. The cost benefit analysis isn't high enough for direct intervention.

Nicci said:
The power vacuum was during an attempt to fix the problem of wrong power in wrong hands to begin with. We let the British decide who should own what after the war and we are still paying for that mistake. They thought they could "lord" over the countries like they used to do in the 1500s~
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However, we made mistakes twice which we should have learned - first, going into Iraq in the first place while at the time seemed like the right thing - was very wrong. Then leaving after Iraq was fairly settled down only to see it go into full on chaos again with very little dedication to a SoFA and a President who wanted the check mark on one of his campaign promises before he leaves office got us here. The best thing that could happen is contain ISIS, keep them killing each other in Syria and Iraq and maybe over the next 20 years it'll settle down and new borders can be drawn.
 
Islamic extremists which coalesced in Iraq back in 2006 (ISI) were precisely the lot that guys like Hussein, Mubarak, Gaddafi and Assad kept by way of containment, far better then the us could ever do, as evidenced by the chaos throughout the region at present.
 
Montecresto said:
Well I should have been more specific with Afghanistan, better?
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No.

Same thing, and why I brought Macedonia and the Soviet Union in to it.

No empire ever died after fighting in Afghanistan because they fought in Afghanistan.

While Alexander, the British, and the Soviets all fought through or in Afghanistan none came crumbling down as a result.

Alexander the Great fought through (the area that is today's) Afghanistan in 330 BCE during his war with the Achaemenid Persians. He never tried to "conquer Afghanistan", in large part because what we know as Afghanistan today didn't exist in 330 BCE. He marched through, fought a few skirmishes there, and moved on continuing his war of imperial acquisition for nearly another decade. When his empire fell it fell because he'd failed to secure a stable succession upon his death. Consequently the empire fractured among his subordinate commanders, all of whom thought that they should have been his successors. Ptolemy took the area that is (more or less) modern day Egypt, Seleucus took what had been the territory of the Achaemenid Empire, which became the Seleucid Empire, and so on. Marching and fighting in Afghanistan had nothing to do with it.

The collapse of the British Empire was largely a consequence of the things I've already mentioned, World War II, and so on. The British invaded Afghanistan in 1838–1842, 1878–1880, and in 1919. The British Empire didn't fall until the 1960s. If you can figure out some direct correlation between Afghanistan and the death of the British Empire I'd love to hear it.

The situation with the Soviet Union is a lot more complex but, again, the war in Afghanistan was not the primary cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union, though it did contribute. You also need to look at things like ethnic fragmentation along the lines of the non-Slavic peoples within the empire, the USSR's excessive focus on military spending unrelated directly to the war in Afghanistan (things like nuclear weapons and the build up of the armor necessary to fight a conventional war in Europe), the lack of economic incentives that resulted from socialism and the state-planned economy, the ideological crisis in Eastern Europe, Glasnost, and Perestroika. Again, the quagmire in Afghanistan contributed, but it wasn't the "nail in the USSR's coffin". The Soviet Union would have collapsed with or without a war in Afghanistan. Maybe the war there hastened the end, and in a legal sense would certainly be considered a consequent cause of the collapse, it was only one factor and not the most significant by a long shot.
 
Ockham said:
Putin is nothing if not an opportunist. He sees that the Iraqi army is basically non existent. He also has ties with Iran as a proxy to go in and clean up - problem is, Iran are shia and ISIS is sunni. It's not going to go over well, so how best to grab Iraq as a puppet and not over commit, exacerbating the sunni / shia conflict into full civil war. Russia wants the oil, they want control through Iran. Russia already has Assad and the mullahs in their pocket but the sunni/shia problem is mucking up their plans. They also don't want to go in themselves and clean up - they learned their lesson there. Best case is sunni go with ISIS and their weak caliphate, Shia keeps control of the south and Baghdad and Russia get's the oil exports without having to get directly involved. Iran gets control of half of Syria, half of Iraq and continues to hold Yemen to expand their ME power base which will solidify once they have nukes on their short and medium range missiles. No one can significantly challenge them after that.
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Well prognosticated.

I wouldn't be surprised to see something very much like that happen.
 
soot said:
Well prognosticated.

I wouldn't be surprised to see something very much like that happen.
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Too bad the US has difficulty with foresight.
 
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