• freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, this decision is a little bit terrifying. What would the calculus be to do this? Possibly testing out new battlefield tech?

    Preventing Russian strategic expansion in the theatre might be a reason, but given China, this feels like a bad use of resources especially given US track record. So either US absolutely needs the Syria position for it’s coming conflict with China or US has Intel that it will somehow dominate in this theatre in a way that Russia is unaware of.

    What other options am I missing?

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Could be just a panic move, US has been making terrible decisions for a while now. This would be par for the course. They’re seeing that Syria is back in the Arab league, and have backing from Russia and Iran. With Saudis now restoring relations with Syria, US occupation forces are in a really precarious position. This could be some sort of a bluff. Realistically though, 2.5k troops aren’t going to make any difference for them there. It’s just the throes of a dying empire.

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        It’s very strange that I also just saw a Twitter conspiracy post warning about a new global alien tech disinfo campaign that’s about to launch as a smoke screen for the emergence of new technologies that have been under wraps long enough that equivalents are starting to show up beyond state control. Feels like a nutty tinfoil hat thing, but I’m still very worried about the USA’s continued sabre rattling with China despite all the evidence we have showing that US couldn’t win. I feel like there’s an August BRICS reveal that’s going to send the North Atlantic into a deep economic recession, conjoined or followed closely by new fronts being opened by USA/NATO and those new fronts will make no sense without some serious strategic advantage that none of us have been able to identify yet.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          I really don’t think US has any magic tech to be honest. It’d be really hard to keep a project of such a scale completely under wraps without anybody noticing. And ultimately, no amount of wonder weapons can change the fact that US is imploding economically.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, I guess the reality is even with wonder weapons they’d have to enslave millions in order to operate the production lines after winning a war of domination, and that’s just not sustainable. The only doomsday scenario would involve the North Atlantic having new production tech to become self sufficient after domination, but there’s nothing close to that.

              • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                There’s 3 nuke scenarios - total war, tactical nukes, depopulation

                Total war doesn’t serve the bourgeois interest. If it happened it would be a strategic blunder.

                Tactical nukes are the easy game to win with, but it’s the same as super tech - without domestic production USA needs to occupy China and force workers to the line. Unsustainable. Nukes won’t work against mobs effectively because they’re too close to production.

                Depop is the scary one. There’s less need for Chinese production if the world population drops precipitously. The bourgeoisie avoid exposure through land control. The workers that revolt would mostly hurt themselves. Production can be distributed to multiple continents and the left over working class can be physically separated enough that they can’t organize. The poisoned land they work on keeps them sick for 6 generations so their population can’t recover.

                I wouldn’t put money on depop, but the analysis that DU was dropped on Yugoslavia as a way to empirically test DU effects widely due to the presence of three different watersheds that feed three major seas really spooked me. The timeline that includes eugenics (US), industrial murder (holocaust), nuking civilians, Agent Orange (still killing new generations), and culminating in DU deployment in Yugoslavia and then Iraq… That timeline doesn’t lead me towards good conclusions about the USA’s grand strategies.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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                  1 year ago

                  I think the risk of a strategic blunder is a lot higher than people realize. There were plenty of episodes during the cold war when nukes almost got launched by accident. We’re now entering a scenario where trust is at all time low and everybody is trigger happy.