So I've been doing a shit-ton of geopolitical reading lately. And let's set morality aside: we'll steadfastly ignore the fact that drone strikes in Pakistan are a dangerously immoral way to conduct foreign policy, we'll disregard the harm inflicted upon the Middle East by American exceptionalism and focus only on direct financial and strategic benefit to the United States. The PNAC was right. If what you want is a strong America with lots of strategic interests, the invasion of Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan, this whole pigfuck in Syria is what you want. Terrorism is a sideshow and war is profitable. The British "Great Game" gave them The Charge of the Light Brigade. The American "Great Game" gave us Pat Tillman killed by friendly fire. I protested the Iraq War. I protested the invasion of Afghanistan. I'm not a fan of war. But from a strategic standpoint, the United States has never been stronger. Especially as Russia turns inward and China scrambles to secure mineral rights in Nigeria and Kazakhstan because we have the entire rest of the world sewn up. Water wars? Even if California turns into the Sahara agriculture is 5% of its economy. Oil wars? The US has completely untapped reserves and Alaska is just sitting up there. Iraq is a puppet, Saudi Arabia is a puppet, we're letting the mullahs burn themselves out in Iran (if the US had any strategic interest in furthering our relationship with Iran, that shit would flip faster than the Berlin Wall) and we have Israel as a buffer state between us and the majority of Islamic fundamentalists that serve the dual purpose of destabilizing the region and giving us a boogeyman to rail against that can do us exactly zero strategic harm. It's fuckin' ugly. Empire-building always is. But in amongst the grime and blood, the US won handily.
I agree. Though I think there are places where we have niggling details of disagreement, I'd say we're pretty much on the same page. What I was saying, in essence, is that it's no use complaining when the US goes to war. At the moment, the US is the apex predator, the top of the food chain. Until another world power starts to challenge that, you guys are going to be stuck getting sucked into every middling political issue on the world stage, because it's seen as your JOB. And then, instead of thanking you for doing the job they expect you to do, they're going to give you the middle finger and say "fuck you my friend, have a nice day" with all the pleasantry of a late 70's Punk. You've got a great empire, sure, but you've got everything that goes with it, including complaining vassals, bullshit responsibilities, and the saddle of international scapegoat.
That argument has been made by more than a few people. Stephen Kinzer wrote an entire damn book about it. I think it comes down to this: - US Foreign Policy is largely imagined and carried out by career bureaucrats, not elected officials - Those bureaucrats work for the CIA and the State Department - Iran has been carrying out a successful proxy war against the CIA and State Department across "South Asia" since 1978 It's interesting. Everyone figures that any olive branch thrown at Iran will immediately be smacked down by AIPAC because what's good for Iran is obviously bad for Israel without recognizing that culturally, intellectually, historically and all but rhetorically, Shia Persians are the only muslims in the whole goddamn Middle East that don't give a fuck about Jews. Fuckin' Cyrus the Great was the first ruler to tax the Jews, rather than attempt to wipe 'em out... and all sorts of Jewish sects took refuge in Persia during the Arab conquests.