Wizz🟢

As a gentleman and a scholar of the cold war, here are my 2 kopeyeks > 4) Change our relationship to Israel This is unfortunately cooked. Since ww2 Russian/soviet strategy has been to control energy exports to Western Europe. Almost immediate post ww2 they backed Assads, Ba’ath party, Sadat, you name it. USA/west and arguably even China just want reliable markets for energy. That’s all. When the media says it’s all about the “oil”, this is the part they leave out. USA doesn’t want to control the oil fields and they don’t care who is their shareholder. They don’t even care if prices are high because if it’s an open fair market high prices will drive investment and more energy will flow. Putin doesn’t want this because open fair market runs around any geopolitical leverage. He wants to control the oil fields so he can influence Europe. There is zero ideological overlap between Putin and irgc, yet they are allies, and for this reason. There isn’t going to be some deep China/russia alliance for this reason, because last thing China wants is 5k nuke armed russia with any leverage over its high employment manufacturing industry. So wtf is Israel involved in any of this? It’s really hard to build an army that’s effective at blowing up Russian tanks and SAMs. USSR sent a ton of arms into Syria and Egypt in the 50s and Kennedy had basically terrible options to counter Soviet arms build up. The alternatives were so bad that a Boston Irish catholic in the 50s armed Israel. Why aren’t there any good alternatives? A competent general and officer core is a challenge to any regime. ME armies are built around supporting internal security and providing stability for the regime, and not executing multi pronged complex missions. Good general + good officers + shitty civil government = coup Israel is not likely to undergo a military coup, so the civil administration has no fear of a competent defense force. So their army is good at blowing up Russian tanks and SAMs. Turkey is probably the closest alternative. Nothing has changed since the Cold War. Putin wants leverage over Europe and China if he can get it, irgc want leverage over SA and gcc and Israel is the main USA armed neighborhood police. What are the options? 1) usa disconnects from ME and EU. We have a ton of oil in americas so high prices or not the spice will flow and we don’t care about Putins leverage, let them all deal with it on their own. 2) SA/gcc/turkey/jordan all heavily invest into high functioning armies. Turkey is the closest and imho, a war between turkey and irgc would be at least as bad as the Ukraine war today. As much as everyone in ME dislikes Israel my guess is that there isn’t a ton of love for the former ottomans. 3) China takes over somehow. This is totally far fetched and would scare the crap out of even the most nativist dem or gop. 4) France/europe? It’s so cooked I think 3 is more likely. You can’t afford 50%+ gdp welfare state and a navy