Assad Falls

[Crossroads]

I predict interesting times in the Middle East!

So many tinderboxes, all over the world. Several smoking ones, some of them having caught fire, too.

Full blaze in the works?

WSJ: Has World War III Already Begun?

The West, Lavrov said, clings to America's decaying hegemony but is inexorably losing ground to the "free world"—his Orwellian term for the axis of autocracies led by Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. "The fight of these two worlds, one phasing out and another emerging, is not going without clashes," he remarked at a conference in Qatar.

Though leaders in the West may scoff at Lavrov's attempt to downplay Moscow's geopolitical setback in Syria, they broadly agree with his view that the world is increasingly split into two rival camps. With Russia's war on Ukraine nearly three years old, the Middle East ablaze on multiple fronts and tensions building up in East Asia, conflicts once thought to be disconnected have merged into what could be the opening shots of a third world war.

..."At least not yet":

Despite this escalation, the major powers are not fighting one another directly—at least not yet. "It's not a world war by any stretch of imagination. It's still a proxy war," said Sen. James Risch, a Republican from Idaho, who is slated to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next month.

Interesting times ahead it is.

The fact that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have different political systems and ideologies, and aren't joined by a formal alliance like NATO, had lulled Western governments into complacency, said Andrew Shearer, Australia's chief of national intelligence.

"We have collectively perhaps underestimated the magnitude of this emerging axis and the strategic impact it's having on us all," he warned in remarks at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada last month. "We fell into the trap of looking at each component in isolation, and not seeing the linkages between them and the deep connectivity between one theater and another...We haven't adjusted our mindset and taken on board the scale of their strategic ambitions."

 

[JasonPratt]

Cold War II is much better than WW3.

[JasonPratt]

I'm pretty sure this was done last week (because he advertises seeing the videos a week earlier by Patreon or website), but five hours ago Zeihan released a nicely colorful explanation about how many ways and how totally the Russians have been screwed by the fall of Assad.

[Jarhead0331]

Some interesting information in this update...

[JasonPratt]

That guy's recent interview with one of the spec-ops defending the Euphrates against an Assad/Wagner incursion, was very good, too! (He plugs it briefly around 5:30.) Not where I can link to it at the moment.

Anyway, unsure if this counts as "the new Cold War" moreso than "the new Balkanization except on the other side of Turkey from the Balkans".