Well this is interesting. I remember when this guy took over, I saw this as a pro-Turkish/Israeli/US force taking over from a pro-Russian/Iranian force so when someone said that now the wartorn country will be ripe for Chinese investment and infrastructure building, I asked why the hell would China do that. I guess that's this new president's answer to that question. He's gone around and shaken a lot of hands but this would be a solid action if taken.
It’s almost inevitable if you think about it logically.
Running a successful guerrilla war and toppling a sitting government takes entirely different skill sets and mind sets to running a country after you have taken over.
Your hardcore jihadists might be ok living in caves with only goats and AKs, but you can’t run cities like that or you might as well go straight back to your caves since you will have endless uprisings from deeply unhappy citizens.
The core reason America was so successful in the past at getting warlords and even former enemies to flip to their side was because of the strength of its economy. And I mean the real economy, not the bitcoin bubble propped up Ponzi scheme it is today.
Back during its prime, ordinary America middle class consumers had real and substantial disposable income, even minor wealth. Their demand and buying power was America’s true super weapon for flipping everyone to their side.
Today, the American middle class is an endangered species, with the majority of American households barely getting by, living paycheque to paycheque and lucky if they don’t need to fall back on food banks and food stamps.
The overall American economy is massively bigger, on paper, but that wealth is largely imaginary in the shape of ludicrously overvalued tokens (bitcoin and all the other trash coins), or hyper concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of ultra rich individuals. But the end result is the same, modern America just don’t have the household purchasing power to shower side flippers in wealth from just everyday trade. Instead, it needs to use taxpayer funds to buy people off, and it’s easy to see why it’s loosing the war for influence so overwhelmingly.
