The US invaded for oil.
What will it do for chip production?
What will it do for chip production?
You cannot win a war if you fail to reach your strategic objectives -- then it's not a war, but a bar brawl you "won".
1. Secured strategic access to Iraq's oil resources. 2. Establish a permanent military presence in the region. 3. Removed the the de facto government.
In 2008, the US imported 600.000 barrels of oil per day from Irak -- that's when oil peaked at ~150 -- but if the whole year the oil stayed at 150$/barrel, and the US just stole it without paying Irak anything, that's just 32 billion USD.
It would take the US 60 years to recuperate all the money it would have spent on Irak war if it was to steal all the oil from Irak at the levels of 2008, or 380 years at todays import levels and valuations (assuming the oil was war booty -- it is not).
There is no way the war was started over oil, that would be beyond dumb.
My personal theory is it was just the industrial-military oligarchs who started the war as to forever saddle the US taxpayer.
That, and US construction and oil companies.
1. The US was in no danger of remaining without oil, the price of oil skyrocketed after the US invasion, and the "access" was certainly not worth trillions of dollars that the war cost, not to US as a whole.
2. The US already had a military presence in Saudi Arabia, and without the vicious circle of violence it itself caused, the US had no reason to maintain a permanent military presence in Irak.
Just see the recent Soleimani debacle -- the US is one such debacle away from being kicked out of Irak after blowing those trillions, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, helping spawn Daesh, causing economic devastation in Irak and the region.
Maybe you'd lose against other modern, well integrated forces. But there is a lot of the world whereby forts, trenches, gun emplacements are still their best. And they are simply butter to the modern military knife.
Barring major catastrophe,(ww3, another american civil war, a pandemic that kills large % of younger population etc) it will take far more than 10 years to decline past that point.
The Iraq Military Exercise (I can't call that a war.) is a clear example of that.
The US lost the Afghanistan war, is slowly losing Irak to Iran, lost all face and is getting humiliated in Syria, failed at preventing Russia impose its presidential candidate, is alienating its european allies (see the Iran sanctions debacle), is supporting the savage Saudi Arabia -- who is losing the war in Yemen.
No you didn't win anything, you temporarily held territory, you wasted enormous resources, and were in fact beaten by goat herders in the end.
Without putting the whole country in a concentration camp and re-educating for 20 years and without providing an alternative economic model, a central administration in Afghanistan is irrelevant wether you do it for "a few year" or decades.
This meant that America became heavily reliant on local war lords (some of whom had dealings with the Taliban) to ensure security and maintain order. This undermined the government they were trying to build in Kabul and contributed to a culture of corruption. None of which endeared the common afghan to their newly formed institutions. The Taliban exploited these weaknesses with classic insurgency tactics and gradually took territory from the weak central authorities.
This was all entirely avoidable, America just didn’t stay focused on the mission.
Sure, there are sanctions, because Russia actually annexed Crimea.
Russia knows very well that teritory grabbing in itself is pointless in the 21th century, Russia grabbed enough territory to nullify any chance Ukraine or Georgia will join NATO.
Don't get me wrong, as an eastern european, I hate what Russia stands for, but militarily and geostrategiclly, they know very well what they are doing, because they cannot aford not to, unlike the USA.
A quick, unexpected, massive deployment of significant US military assets to Taiwan would put Beijing in a very difficult position. Either Beijing attacks, and starts a shooting war with the US – which would do massive damage to the Chinese economy; or else, Beijing doesn't and loses a lot of face in the process.
It would be a rather risky, high stakes gamble, but one in which the US might come out in front.
I think COVID has shown Chinese society/government/people are much better equipped for big shocks than the US is so if it's a protracted thing they would have a huge advantage.
Also I'm not sure how people of Taiwan would react to such deployment. Neither Taiwan nor China recognize each other as a separate country. They both claim to be the righteous government to one unified China.