He's too dependent on Hezbollah and Iran.
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and other Related Conflicts in the Middle East (read the rules in the first post)
- Thread starter phrozenflame
- Start date
Right now there's Europe (and it's descendants) and East Asia. And then there everyone else.
Back then the jihadis were the ones in charge. Once the sane people took over, they weren't feared that much anymore
To be fair, the sanctions harm a small country like Syria much more than even Iran or Russia
Afaik there's no international sanctions on Syria?
What does hurt them really badly is the refugee crisis. Lots has been written about it's impact on Europe, but it's much worse for Syria which is losing those people that are in many cases specialists and young people who don't want to be drafted. Honestly it can be understood why few people want to be drafted for a post colonial society.
Hence why jihadis always find it easier with morale and drafts, they're fighting for their own cultures, not an imposed colonial construct. The problem with jihadis is that they're often volatile. They don't have to be, if you look at Hezbollah, Ansarallah and Hamas. But many are.
What's going to be the long term solution? Maybe in truth, it's best to give power back to the hands of "moderate" jihadis (like Ansarallah). They have efficiency in fighting for their own and can ensure a functioning state.
In the short term, Syrian government will make a recovery, they still have a lot of air power. But as the IDF shows, a weak army with good air power can't win a sustained war.
And it will stay that way.
That's why the so-called "axis of resistance" is doomed. And it's why BRICS without China is an empty discussion club. The message for China is also crystal clear: nobody in the so-called "global south" is really up to the task outside perhaps North Korea and Russia. Western hegemony is only being challenged by China. Nobody else really matters.
Before the rise of the West, most armies were very similar in technological sophistication.
Once British soldiers could mow down tens of thousands with the Maxim gun, numbers suddenly stopped mattering and quality became more important. Arab armies have been irrelevant ever since.
I don't think so. Most of them will survive and will become even more radicalised. They can also influence Uighurs in Xinjiang. Remember that Europe had a lot of terrorist attacks in the mid-2010s as many of the returning jihadists came back from Syria.
Turkey is a hostile country towards China and I think China needs to start internalising it. Erdogan will yap about Palestine while helping Israel-backed jihadist trash. It's amazing how many jihadists are willing to fight Israel's enemies. Didn't some of them even apologise for once accidentally targeting Israeli soliders some years ago? Moslems really are in a pathetic place.
North Korea is basically half a peninsula and yet they have managed to develop nukes and cause more seething to the west despite being poor and sanctioned over entire continents.
In today's world no amount of praying to god or even just being brave alone can make up for proper analytical thinking and being able to make the right decisions especially when things are tough. And one of the things is knowing a lot of times only you are responsible for your actions and no one will bail you out so you better make sensible choices.
People still matter. Regardless of IQ, wealth, infrastructure, industries, all these people if organised determine whether or not western hegemony can maintain their strangle hold over the world's resources. Resources they stole in the past (ffs including human beings). Now they "buy" these resources with money printers they force the entire world to pay back or strong-arm opposition into ceding if not just murder whoever stands in their way.
China needs the Global South to at least make it fair or harder for the west to bully its subjects into total submission the same way it used to in the past. Just that much resistance, even a fair playing field means China would dominate the west within half a century, possibly less with the slow implosion of the US as we speak. The Global South is generally quite wealthy in terms of raw material and human resources. India and China already hold about 30% of global population as just two nations within this Global South.
The west is relatively poor in raw material wealth and even human resources. It still manages to attract a great share of talented people from all over the world. Its educational institutions and tier 1 organisations are the envy of the world but China has a fair share already today. Time is the only barrier to everyone cultivating these over a few generations. What the west depends on is its ability to buy out anything and everything it requires to maintain the instruments of its hegemonic dominion. Its greatest tools today are the $, puppet leaders and governments bankrolled by the west, IMF, World Bank. Most of these are already eroding and are nowhere near as strong as they were between the 1960s and early 2000s.
If the Global South can get their act together, form anything resembling an organised, coherent strategy in helping each other more than they serve the west, the world will become increasingly equitably prosperous. If not, we'll all continue being house slaves and field slaves with the house slaves like Japan and Lithuania doing as much as they can to maintain house slave positions over the field slaves (all the "adversaries" of the west read any potential challenges to hegemony).
For one, get rid of those western backed leaders and governments. Have governments that dont agree to selling out their nations people and resources to western companies. China is beginning to play the same game but offers far, FAR better terms and deals compared to the west. There's no free lunch and China isn't some angel but if Global South act in their own interest with rational behaviour, they will be able to slowly rebalance their advantages and finally gain some control over their own.
Turkey really is a weird one. I put this more on Erdogan as an actor alone. Turkish cooperation with Israel and acting show is also a tiring enigma. Everyone is observing though so don't worry too much. Backstabbers don't ever get to go far. Turkey is such a capable nation though and perhaps why China has never wanted any animosity with Turkey. Can only believe that Erdogan has been playing off every power and crossing each one at least once to extract maximum advantage depending on the changing scene.
Uighur issue for China is one where the flame is put out over time. Developing and making the region more prosperous and raising living standards will be wonders to the threat coming from outside influence. It already exercises overt measures to contain any potential extremism/ radicalisation possibly with too much heavy handedness ie creating enemies where there weren't any but on balance it might have managed to curtail the efforts of those outside influencers.
Turkey has absolutely nothing to gain by being hostile to China. China has little regard for Turkey, whether it's winning its favour or whatever. It does have every desire to not piss Turkey off and make an enemy of it for no good reason either. I'd say its relationship is one of distant indifference. The whole drama was avoided by China despite Russian propaganda in the 2010s constantly suggesting China is stepping in. China has other things to worry about and work on.
Erdogan over the past few years seems to have been trying to really play a regional mastermind, play all the sides. Talk to the Americans, Russians, Chinese, to Israel... Cozy up to one side, then offend them and cozy up to another, assuming that in the end he'll end up in the middle, neutral to everyone. But he seems to have forgotten that if you befriend someone and then backstab them, you don't end up "at 0". He spent the past 2 years trying to play peacemaker in the Ukraine. Now that he supports an attack on Syria, where Putin invested quite a bit of political power supporting Assad, he pretty much took himself off the table. His bizzare version of "neutrality" has closed more doors than it opened. Who will want to deal with someone as unreliable and fickle as that?