Michael wrote:I think the Syrian war shows how things line up behind USA, Russia, [Iran*], Turkey/Saudi Arabia/Israel and that if the top dawgs like USA and Russia find common ground, such as limitations on destabilization tactics that include terrorism, in order to facilitate, or even to some extent impose, a peace deal in Syria, the same diplomacy could be directed toward other problems, such as Israel/Palestine or toward problems such as the one you mentioned, "inability of US, Russia, Germany, & to some extent UK & France to reach agreements be allowed to threaten the rest of the world for another 200 years?".
Sadly that's a huge 'if'. There's a huge conflict of interest between a Russia (a big resource exporter, & huge chunk of the McKinder 'world island') and the US (recipient of the 'exhorbitant privilege' of printing the world's reserve currency, thereby paying for the military superiority necessary to
keep the reserve currency, especially post 2008 & QE). And that's just one pair of interested parties; it seems like the factions and interests in Syria might be so numerous, varied and unpredictable that the situation could continue running off the rails.
Even this thinking also presupposes that the 'top dawgs' are more or less who they should be, and aligned with the 'interests of the people'. But most (all?) of the actors involved have huge, somewhat-to-totally opaque 'national security' structures, elements of which may have gone rogue. They're don't care much about legal limitations on their activities (eg Iran-Contra) and they seem more or less unaccountable.
I just hope there is common ground somewhere short of world/nuclear war.
*http://www.ncr-iran.org/en/ncri-statements/terrorism-fundamentalism/19909-iran-regime-deploys-60-000-irgc-forces-and-foreign-mercenaries-in-syria
Insanity is repeating a nonsensical definition of insanity, and expecting it to eventually make sense.