The Middle East is fertile ground for PMC's and the military industrial complex. Not much to understand really. We were warned about it and it happened anyway. It's more of a reason to spend billions on jets that are obsolete by the time they are finished and then sold to countries that then use them against us. The Middle East is where we get to test our new toys, because they would be at war anyway with or without our intervention. The standard playbook is to overthrow your enemies and supplant them with someone more easily controlled. Doesn't exactly get you friends though. It almost looks like that is what we tried with Turkey seeing as they are the biggest power in the region and they are getting buddy-buddy with the Russians.
Russia is the counter balance to American expansion. They are more directly involved since they are closer to the actual conflicts like Afghanistan. They are intent on allying with countries that oppose American expansion. They are a lot more paranoid as a result...rightfully so I might add. The Georgian invasion was predicted, as well as the Ukrainian conflict. The US makes a lot of enemies by meddling in others affairs. The Russian view of Ukraine is that the US caused an uprising in Kiev that drove out the elected government. The US claims it did not engineer a coup, but it did oppose a corrupt government in Ukraine.
A level beneath this also exists. Russia has survived for hundreds of years because of a buffer protecting them - due to control over the Baltics, Belarus, and particularly Ukraine. Without this buffer they are exposed. To bring Ukraine into NATO is like Russia becoming pals with Mexico. Look at Cuba as an example of how that works out. Relations with them are shit, even when Obama tried to mend the rift. The USA does not fuck around when it comes to our neighbors. We have been mostly safe from invasion since we kicked Mexico's asses a couple hundred years ago, aside from World War 2 of course but even then the majority of the population has been sheltered. That won't be the case forever. I wonder if the war fever will stop when the bombs start dropping over here?
Take current events for instance. Look at some of the spots Obama is visiting in his World Tour. Germany has been a key ally for a reason - they are one of the strongest countries close to Russia. They are right in the middle of the refugee crisis. They are a much easier target for terrorists as well. You know that though. Whereas once immigrants were granted work visas to work, now they are a nuisance. Nationalistic ideologies are opposed to this hence the rise of Trump. If half of the conspiracy theories are true the US is in trouble. Cyber-warfare (interfering with elections) is the kind of thing we would do and now the Russians (and even weaker countries like Iran) are beating us at our own game. It is no secret that the Republicans were immune to this in the latest election.
The Democrats were targeted for obvious reasons. Once you would need a spy on site to do all of this. Now it can be beamed out like magic. The Russians use attacks such as these to make the U.S. seem paranoid, which helps them justify their attacks as self defense. With the Patriot Act in recent years and Edward Snowden even more recently, we have a situation where the government needs to expand it's powers to be more proactive in events such as these, but that opens up a whole new can of worms - should we be more afraid of Big Brother or terrorists?
It's hard to know what to expect from President Elect Trump as far as national security is concerned. Europe isn't too pleased that is for sure. With tensions increased in recent years any wrong move can be catastrophic although neither side wants that. Smaller scale conflicts are preferable. NATO has become just as much a liability as it is an asset now. All of the harping about WW3 may actually come about, but it won't signal the end of the world - just a change in power. New weapons like hypersonic missiles and UAV's will change the face of war forever. Once space has been militarized countries all over the world will be scrambling to kick off their space programs. Cold War 2 coming near you.
The Russians have expanded their influence to Belarus, Bulgaria, and Moldova along with Turkey. It is becoming easier to see why the US is involved with the Middle East so much when Russia is pushing to the south. With Turkey becoming a larger regional power and them allying with Russia we might see a situation where the US is essentially kicked out of the Middle East. Time will tell if we execute another false flag attack or we have a repeat of Pearl Harbor and WW3 kicks off. It's scary and just a little bit exciting I think.
