-snip-
In Syria it's a power struggle, the Syrian armies of each faction are all quite strong relatively. It is not a vacuum the same way that Iraq's military disappearing caused. Restoration of Syria is possible with regime change and a powerful government, for example a lot of the land lost by the Syrian government has been lost to Sunni proxy groups of Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
The best way to prevent Iran, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia/Qatar from meddling in Syria, is to actually separate their meddling capabilities. Where there are no Shias/Alawites control in a region, there is no Iranian influence.
I'm trying to be as polite as possible but you're making this very difficult for me
This will very simply not work. All it will do is bolster Iranian, Turkish, Israeli and Arab influence. They will no longer be funding proxy groups, but proxy countries. Countries which will begin slaughtering each other entirely on the behalf of foreign instigators.
If the Kurds take control of the Turkish borders, ISIS is basically dead in the water as it is locked from the flow of foreign jihadists and supplies that Turkey allows.
On the bright side the Kurds have steadily been doing so. It won't end ISIS immediately however, the Syrian borders are quite porous and other routes exist through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon. Foreign Jihadists are better off stopped at the source.
A lot of things are better than ISIS, nonetheless you do not want them in control. Do not trade one fundamentalist militancy with another.
As for Turkey and the Kurds, well they've already bombed them and they don't really give a shit about what the world thinks about their policing since they can just call it peacekeeping or conduct hybrid warfare. One of the main opponents to a Kurdish state is Turkey itself. Do not forget that to the United Nations, Turkey is much more important in peacekeeping than Kurdistan.
Now, even though the Kurds are pictured as the Seculars, i am not sure that Kurdish state will be a progressive secular state. it has the potential to be a good state, but it also has the potential to fall into already existing rivalries and turn out a backward religious state.
Did I say progressive? No. I said secular. Same way Turkey is a secular state, in that religion and governance are separated despite Sunni Islam's great influence and indeed Turkey being a Muslim nation.
If the Druze form a state in the South, Israel will not need to do anything on this border because contrary to your claims, Israel has no interests in Syria except fighting off Iranian and Hezbollah from the Golan heights border.
No interests except balkanizing it, ensuring their dominance - even if such balkanizing will result in internecine and deadly sectarian warfare. I also do not see Israeli expansionism stopping any time soon, once they secure a buffer zone and immensely settle it they seek new buffer zones. Fighting off Iranian and Hezbollah from the Golan heights border
translates into colonizing the Golan heights. Well, they also have it in their interest to take care of the Druze in Syria because of the large Druze population in Israel which is considered very loyal.
Cute, but Israel does not work like this.
The Sunnis will not be able to attack recognized states as easily and they will not get a Western support if they do.
Absolutely nothing stopping them from destabilizing those states from within. Look at Yemen, Oman, Bahrein or indeed - Syria and Iraq. Proxy groups from all corners of the middle east all tugging at their own corners.
The Gulf states can funnel arms and money to the Jihadists so long as the excuse is ousting Assad who is seen an oppressor but they will have no excuse attacking States where they are not oppressed.
The world aint California, people don't think like this - progressive myopia at work
On the topic of balkanizing the middle east, when South Sudan gained independence and joined the U.N. it immediately descended into civil war between its largest ethnic groups. Contrast with Nigeria, split between Christian, Muslim, Hausa, Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba, that even after a civil war for independence remained together. Nigeria is the giant of Africa who relative to African states is doing incredibly well and it has its state divided on geographic and ethnic and religious lines, it could have balkanized. Yet it remained together, and remaining together calmed things down whereas in places like Sudan, partitioning merely ended with jumping from one civil war to another.
it's true that it would have been better if there were more natural border possibilities, but even without those (And there are partial ones), a border drawn and accepted by all parties is far better than no border at all which only results in civilians getting in the line of fire.
No it's not better than nothing, it's worse than nothing. You'd think that people will have learned by now that drawing borders with no consideration for geography and people will incur failure. Ideally you'd want homogeneous states, but that is impossible without strong geographical boundaries between the states otherwise they'll just end up in conflict with each other once more. Where geographical boundaries do not exist, you must keep a single national identity to keep everyone from killing each other and a single national authority to resist foreign influence whilst the most ethnically homogeneous regions are given autonomy and see no reason to conflict with their neighbours.
If Russia, the U.N and the United States/West push for it, it could be accepted by all sides.
And the obvious question is why would you want to push for this?
I wasn't being entirely serious... I guess what I'm saying is: I'd love to see the EU countries become more active on the global stage, and this seems like a perfect opportunity to shit in Russia's soup. Since Western Europe is either too self-absorbed or too weary after a couple centuries of global dominance, the driving force for such an act would have to come from Eastern Europe - and that means Poland.
Excuse you
The British have been sending more aid and more air strikes than Germany despite having much less money. Whilst Germany has been too "self absorbed" to do more than demand Syrians work in her factories whilst Greeks, Balkanites and Italians paid the price for German incompetency, the British have been active on the global stage trying to fix this mess. Likewise Poland is already busy in Afghanistan and you know... Poland. They are safeguarding Eastern Europe from Russia, and no doubt they're worried that they border Belarus. That's why British soldiers are also garrisoning Poland. German troops are nowhere to be seen, unless you count 1939
Likewise whilst you slag off France they're currently mobilizing even more to fight the ISIS-Boko Haram love triangle, and have begun air strikes in Syria. I mean it's cheeki enough for Germany to bring the Syrian crisis to southern and central europe but to then accuse Western Yurop of being self-absorbed sloths that is too breeki m8, cos whilst Western Europe sends aid to the middle east and actually fights militants Germany wants Syrians to pay her old people's pensions and lags behind Western Europe in actually helping
This would have some beneficial intra-EU consequences as well: We'd finally have a truly strong Eastern member. Right now the big capitals are Berlin, Paris, and London (not necessarily in that order). It would do us much good to see Warsaw in that list.
Whether the Poles want to invite globalization on themselves and lose their capital to it should be up to the Poles, not Germans
The big three in Europe are called the big three for a reason, they have force projection capabilities. Though I'm quite sour and salty over Germans saying Poles should fight for them when the Germans refused themselves to do any fighting, seems suspicious to me hahahaha
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Topic: The Let's go back to Iraq, now without WMDs Thread. About the IS(IS) threat. (Read 208707 times)