The place we spent the most time in the 21st century, Afghanistan, somehow went from an objective of destroying Al Qaeda to ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights. That sort of societal transformation is not possible even with 100,000 troops when they don't even speak the local language. Can you imagine the hubris of trying to tell people in some remote village that the way men and women relate to each other has to change through a translator, because some tall buildings in a place they've never heard of got destroyed? The obvious result was total failure and the Taliban picking up right where they left off in 2001.
As with Charlie Wilson’s war, it is precisely because we wouldn’t fund health economic and development projects that we lost a war we had already won.
It is precisely because of those obstacles that opium poppies are one of the few practical cash crops. One motorcycle can carry the refined output of an entire farm.
> ...
> The place we spent the most time in the 21st century, Afghanistan, somehow went from an objective of destroying Al Qaeda to ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights.
I think in Afghanistan's case, the goal was clear but it was not achievable. A bombing campaign, some boots on the ground, and killing some leaders could not actually achieve the "objective of destroying Al Qaeda," because it would just re-form afterwards. You'd have to change the society so it wouldn't reform, hence "ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights."
Though I suppose installing and supporting some brutal warlord as a secular dictator (e.g. a Saddam Hussein) would have achieved the objective too, but the US would have gotten so much condemnation for that I'm sure the option was not on the table.
I suspect some people thought it was achievable because they looked at post-WW2 Germany and Japan and concluded that:
1. Cities reduced to rubble in a war with America and its allies.
2. Lengthy occupation, plenty of money & loans for rebuilding.
3. Occupation transitions to an democratic government. Some American forces stick around just in case, but they don't have to fight anyone.
4. ????
5. Successful, stable, western-style democracy with an aversion to armed conflict, a strong economy and a renowned car manufacturing industry.
Obviously it didn't actually work in Afghanistan or Iraq, but I can see how politicians surrounded by yes men and pro-war types might have thought they had an achievable plan.
How exactly does providing the latter do anything but piss off surviving conservatives and hardliners and reactionaries even more?
If you want lasting change, the new regime either needs widespread support from its subjects (Why wasn't it in charge to begin with, then, why did it need to be installed by an occupier..?), or you need to scorched-earth, mass-graves liquidate every single participant in the old regime, and all of their supporters (And not just fire them from their jobs, as we did in Iraq. All the ex-Baathists went on to gainful employment in the various insurgent groups, instead.)
Not doing it is exactly why Reconstruction failed. The slavers lost the war, but won the peace, and their politics reasserted as soon as they were allowed to govern themselves.
Also there is no such thing as "European culture" or "Western culture"[0] per se, that's a modern retrofiction meant to lend credence to white nationalist ideology, much less any credibility in the claim that such is the sole originator and inheritor of the concept of democratic government. India had its own democratic ideals[0], as did Africa[2], and America's own democracy is derived in part from that of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy[3].
Also... since you're implying (as everyone who makes this argument does) that Islam is "simply not compatible with democracy," the cultures of the Islamic world have been influenced by ancient Greek and Christian philosophy since Islam began[4,5]. That's why European culture(s) had to recover much of the knowledge they lost after the Dark Ages from Muslim sources. So your statement disproves itself even by its own ethnocentric standard.
[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/western-civili...
[1]https://thediplomat.com/2023/03/is-india-the-mother-of-democ...
[2]https://trueafrica.co/article/why-democracy-is-just-as-afric...
[3]https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2023/09/the-haudenosaunee-confeder...
[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_influences_on_the_Is...
[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_contributions_to_the_Isl...
Were Mussolini alive today, he'd have another form of government to sell you!
I feel like this would be an excellent way to speed-run the creation of a large group of people (and their descendants) who hate us _specifically_, and are even more motivated to cause us harm. I can't imagine many people would say "yep, I guess you won!" when you've killed their fathers, uncles, grandparents, and older brothers.
Historical track record shows that it takes at least a generation of war and incredibly brutal repression to actually accomplish the kind of regime change that the war's architects were aiming for.
If the issue is a few leaders, sure, invading and removing them can work. If your issue is with the entrenched system that produced those leaders, I've outlined what it takes to replace it.
See: the Roman Empire. They had a timeline of several hundred years before the new territories were ‘roman’
Everyone failed in Afghanistan.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but even Alexander himself failed in Afghanistan. The Persians tried for centuries, and always failed. The Caliphate was the most successful, but only because they never wanted any kind of real change. The place is just unique.
The thought that we were gonna go in there and change things was probably ill considered at the outset. When you objectively consider the historical record of the people of Afghanistan. Force was extremely likely to not work. I believe there doesn't really exist anyone out there with a good idea on anything that could have worked. In the end, we left. Just as everyone before us did. And I'd be willing to go on record now and say that everyone who goes into Afghanistan after us will leave Afghanistan in the end as well.
It's never as simple as, "more bombs", "more money", "more education", etc etc. Afghanistan is a unique problem, that is uniquely resistant to all of the common solutions.
Relevant wiki quotes:
“In the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire (1219–1221), Genghis Khan invaded the region from the northeast in one of his many conquests to create the huge Mongol Empire. His armies slaughtered thousands in the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad etc. After Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia, there was a rebellion in the region of Helmand which was brutally put down by his son and successor, Ogedei Khan, who killed all male residents of Ghazni and Helmand in 1222; the women were enslaved and sold. Thereafter most parts of Afghanistan other than the extreme south-eastern remained under Mongol rule as part of the Ilkhanate and the Turko-Mongol Chagatai Khanate.”
And:
“From 1383 to 1385, the Afghanistan area was conquered from the north by Timur, leader of neighboring Transoxiana (roughly modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and adjacent areas), and became a part of the Timurid Empire. Timur was from a Turko-Mongol tribe and although a Muslim, saw himself more as an heir of Genghis Khan. Timur's armies caused great devastation and are estimated to have caused the deaths of 17 million people. He brought great destruction on Afghanistan's south, slaughtering thousands and enslaving an equal number of women. Allied with the Uzbeks, Hazaras and other Turkic communities in the north his dominance over Afghanistan was long-lasting, allowing him for his future successful conquests in Central Anatolia against the Ottomans.”
The Mughal empire rose out of this and ruled until the 1800’s.
Well there are more peaceful ways of achieving this: Look at post Nazi Germany and how they tried to eradicate even thinking about Nazism just to try and limit these thoughts from festering and growing.
In the US Reconstruction failed because of circumstance. Lincolns assassination led to what is considered the worst president in the US taking the reign. For goodness sake he was drunk out of his mind during his inaugural address! He systematically started to reverse the progress his predecessor made and gave cover to the losers to regroup and make gains again. We are still suffering to this day because of that one event.
It is fairly well understood that decreasing gender inequality by empowering women is one of the most effective ways to reduce instability in struggling societies.
It's one thing to slowly shift the goal posts in a civil society over decades through these kinds of soft changes...
Yes
> It's one thing to slowly shift the goal posts in a civil society over decades through these kinds of soft changes...
Are we talking about the same thing? "Shifting goal posts" usually means confusing positions in an argument by changing the point of the discussion. I'm not sure what relevance that has here.
Also, the US occupation of Afghanistan did last for decades so, again, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.
Examples?
> Also, the US occupation of Afghanistan did last for decades so, again, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.
There's a world of difference between 'Occupation security forces sometimes kind of control some of the major towns', which accomplished nothing[1], compared to the decades of incredible political repression in the USSR/China, that actually moved the cultural needle and destroyed organized internal opposition within those societies.
[1] The country reverted back to its previous state before the occupation even ended.
Look into it yourself if you care so much. I don't care to get so far off topic.
> [1] The country reverted back to its previous state before the occupation even ended.
Ok, so, you would agree then that ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights is an important part of the plan when the objective is to destroy Al Qaeda?
You also seem to be confused as to the difference between the Taliban and AQ, and seem to mistakenly believe that there weren't efforts to drive women's education in Afghanistan. It turns out that it didn't accomplish what you were hoping it would.
The initial comment was this: > The place we spent the most time in the 21st century, Afghanistan, somehow went from an objective of destroying Al Qaeda to ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights.
Which implies that the commenter does not understand how decreasing gender inequality would help "destroy Al Qaeda" in Afghanistan.
The next commenter then very clearly points out the missing information stating:
> I think in Afghanistan's case, the goal was clear but it was not achievable. A bombing campaign, some boots on the ground, and killing some leaders could not actually achieve the "objective of destroying Al Qaeda," because it would just re-form afterwards. You'd have to change the society so it wouldn't reform, hence "ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights."
You then re-assert the initial flawed reasoning by stating > How exactly does providing the latter do anything but piss off surviving conservatives and hardliners and reactionaries even more?
To rephrase my previous answer with a quote you won't bother to look up: "Women's full participation in politics and the economy makes a society more likely to succeed"
And you want to splinter the discussion further into the difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda?
You don’t need to get “far off topic”. You said yes there were such examples. So kindly name one. Clearly you were thinking something when you wrote “yes”.
Right now it sounds like you bluffed, you were called on it and your argument collapsed. Not a good look.
The vision is that through liberal democracy we can achieve world peace.
Believe it or not, it doesnt matter. That is the core of US foreign policy and there are ~300M americans that believe that. Only leadership can really change that.
Also
> Can you imagine the hubris of trying to tell people in some remote village that the way men and women relate to each other has to change through a translator, because some tall buildings in a place they've never heard of got destroyed?
Religion and Military occupation do this, lets not pretend this doesnt work.
I find it interesting, you have some mix of realpolitik but you have a cynicism that takes away your ability to see reality.
Not dudes driving through on patrol once a day and never stopping unless they are attacked.
Most successful occupiers seem to intermarry into the society they are occupying. Without this, there is always a clear distinction between occupier and occupied, that even shared culture, language, and religion will not smooth over.
In Afghanistan, our goals were in fact achievable, but we screwed up the execution.
In 1979, when we used the Mujahideen to kick the Soviets out, we succeeded because we had Pakistan to give us logistical support from the sea, and to do some of our our dirty work. General Zia was a true Islamist, so there was no daylight between him and William Casey in going after the godless communists.
After 9/11, George W. Bush had a blank check from the American public. But he went back to the Pakistan military, and this time their goals were very different from ours.
The generals took our billions and cooperated with us as little as they could to escape sanctions, while continuing to harbor the Taliban. They themselves were thoroughly penetrated by Al Qaeda. [1]
We could never defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan as long as they could just retreat to their sanctuary in Pakistan, get arms and healthcare.
But publicly we kept saying that Pakistan was our ally. No wonder the public are confused about why we lost.
[1] Steve Coll, "Ghost Wars: the CIA's secret wars in Afghanistan",
I dunno, the NATO-Yugoslavia war is both more recent and produced a much clearer and more stable, positive local outcome than the 1991 Iraq War. (And if you argue “but didn't that restart US-Russian geopolitical rivalry, making it worse than Desert Storm,” I would counter that it didn't, Yeltsin designating Putin with his yearning for a return of the USSR’s Eastern European empire as his successor did that, the aftermath of the NATO-Yugoslavia war is just when the West realized it, plus, Desert Storm—well, actually, Desert Shield, but the two are inseparable—by the same token, was, in fact, the proximate trigger for the formation of al-Qaeda, so...)
We've seen abject failure in Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, and mixed results in Iraq with the strategy of keeping the country together and assuming democracy will solve everything.
As a lay person not from the Balkans, I was impressed that the filmmakers got all the major players to speak candidly, on camera, about their involvement. Mladic, Tudjman, Milosevic, all there for example. Reminded me of another great series, the World At War.[1]
[0] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-ur6mGQeTOmuwxnBW-ssXWDD...
[1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYxy4la9w2tfotW1Xs-7oICGf...
This was discussed a lot in Iraq as well, but I believe the worry was that the Shia state would basically be absorbed by Iran. It’s not clear that what’s happening there now is much better, but Iraq had been seen as a useful counterweight to Iran and the neocons wanted to preserve that. The only problem is that they also wanted democracy, and most of the voters are Shia, so democratic Iraq is always likely to be friendly to Iran.
Reducing the US/NATO involvement in the former Yugoslavia (both the intervention in the Bosnia War and subsequent deployment of IFOR/SFOR and later the NATO-Yugoslavia War and the subsequent deployment in KFOR) to “some sorties” seems to be missing a bit.
I mean, sure, the combat involvement prior to achieving agreements in both cases was application of air power, but...
Tito kept Yugoslavia in check for decades, and he was Not A Nice Man. The Romans probably had the longest-lasting empire in history, and they were very "not nice."
I'm not sure that there's any "magical" system of government that works better than others.
Also, you have governments that work well for the governed, and ones that don't bother others. Whether or not it is a "good" government probably hinges upon which side of the border you're on.
I remember reading that the best system of government is an absolute monarchy, and the worst system of government is an absolute monarchy.
People are really complex, and "one size fits all," tends not to work for us.
Afghanistan was never going to be easy to succeed at something more than a punitive mission against al-Qaeda, but I think that the fundamental root of much later failure including the ultimate failure in Afghanistan is the 2003 Iraq War.
Post 9/11, the USA had the moral authority to "do something" in Afghanistan. Iran, Russia, and nearly everyone else offered to help. Alas, whereas GHWB was an internationalist, the Cheney Admin's neocons were belligerently stubborn unilateralists. So instead of seizing the opportunity to reset troubled relations (and boost their internal reformers), we further spited them (and empowered their hardliners).
Further, Afghanistan was a failed state. Iran and Pakistan were struggling to manage the refugees. And could do nothing to address the flood of drugs plaguing their people. Afghanistan's neighbors wanted us, needed us, to help them restore stability.
Lastly, the Cheney Admin won in Iraq without firing a single shot. Hussein conceded to ALL of our demands. If Bush had simply declared victory and gone home, he'd've become an int'l hero and considered one of our greatest presidents. (Until Katrina.)
Such a stupid waste. So many dead, so much wrecked and wasted, the middle east further destabilized... Et cetera.
In Iraq though, it was always going to be messy simply because of the fact that there are three major ethno-religious groups, two of which had been long repressed. I don't know enough of the details about the 2003-2005 time period to really specifically address radical de-Baathification, but if you institute democracy in Iraq and keep the country together, you're naturally going to get de-Baathification because the Shia will vote the Sunni out. The Sunni will resent this, and as we've seen, this is how you wind up with ISIS.
Easily a 50+ year project, because progress effectively happens one death at a time. A large percentage of the old guard harboring outdated ideas will simply never change. The only hope is changing the minds of the new generations.
Re-building Afghanistan was more like building Afghanistan. We weren’t fixing a collapsed patio like in Japan — we had to build a whole housing tract, and at no point did we or anyone in the world have that amount of money.
Your point about rebuilding Afghanistan really being building Afghanistan is very true. I remember hearing a soldier in Afghanistan talking about how surprised he was at the number of people he met in Afghanistan that had never even heard of Afghanistan.
Were it not for external support for the Mujahideen, it is almost certain that an Afghan state would have succeeded in achieving some form of monopoly on violence.
The idea that nation-states were something alien to Afghanistan that we had to force on them just isn't true.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
According to Politico, they did indeed ignore the intelligence.
It has also been reported[1] that they ignored intelligence handed to them on a plate by the Egyptians three days before the raid occurred.
I suspect this galvanization is a fear response to a contracted race for immunity.
Considering that violence is his response to every effort towards his accountability, lawful exchange of power, and deposition, it follows that he would justify disproportionate violence under even more tenuous pretense.
Altogether, it's very worrying, because both sides of the establishment seem willing to threats of violence should they lose as motivation to vote for them. We're aching for a third party.
Either way, this seems stupid for Israel. They're a group of Jews in the middle of a sea of muslims, their military edge is weakening and they will be relying on goodwill in the future. Their long term interests are not served by solving problems with large scale military operations, or by doing anything that fuels the perception that they might be genocidal.
Is very clearly not saying "the victim deserved it".
It is saying "the 'victim' was looking for an excuse".
Either way, both statements are harmfully reductive.
Any sufficiently sign of incompetence and negligence is usually just that - incompetence and negligence, you know, occam's razor and all.
They have competing strategic visions.
The current ruling coalition under Bibi Netanyahu, which is far more conservative, wants Israeli control of the entirety of what used to be Mandatory Palestine between the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Palestinian Arabs would have some presence in such a society but it would be as a minority, and only if said minority plays nice with the majority. There would be a single state with a Jewish ethnic majority and government acting under Jewish jurisprudence as opposed to secular, Christian, or Islamic.
The goal for the invasion of Gaza for this coalition is simple: break the will of the Gazans. The coalition points to the fact that the Gazans elected Hamas over the more secular Fatah in 2006, and that Hamas has, for a very long time, refused to recognize that Israel has any right to exist anywhere in former Mandatory Palestine. The coalition under Netanyahu sees them as a thorn in their side and will commit total war on Gaza, seeing that as a way to convince the Gazans that there will be no success in raising a military challenge to Israel. They've shown themselves to be right while committing a whole host of actions that probably deserve ICJ review. While Hamas still holds Jewish hostages, they have virtually no control over the current war. The Israelis conduct military operations at will in the territory and Hamas has no real way to prevent that.
The other vision is that of a significant portion of the Israeli population and most of the rest of the international community, which at this point just want the hostages back. Some believe in a two-state solution. There's probably no way to achieve that with Hamas in charge of Gaza, but that will come later: the hostages are the main priority. This part of the population sees Netanyahu's government as incompetent for failing to stop the massacres on October 7th and for not having gotten the hostages back.
Why is this piece of misinformation so pervasive?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/01/hamas-new-char...
The end game, as Likud's party manifesto makes very clear, and their PM helpfully pointed out two weeks ago is a single state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, with no Palestinian sovereignty. They'll likely accomplish this goal in a generation or two (And no, it won't happen by enfranchising the natives. Israel's government is looking for lebensraum, not building a partnership with its subjects.)
It doesn't really need any strategic vision past that. It's a nuclear power, none of its neighbors can credibly threaten it, its main enemies are the people trying to live within its occupation zones.
Imagine for example the very realistic scenario where Iran obtains nuclear weapons. Then, should Iran decide to fund a missile blockade of Israel in the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Israel has zero capability to protect shipping. Since Iran would be a nuclear power, it's very obviously not in Israel's interest to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons, so a threat to do so wouldn't be credible.
The only way Israel could achieve its goals in such a scenario is through external intervention, which the Yemenis have shown even now would be difficult.
Israel does need strategic vision, desperately. It's a tiny country that's existentially depend on the US and Western Europe, and doesn't have the industrial capacity to independently defend itself while it's neighbors increasingly can. This is the first time this ever happened - in the past, Israel and it's neighbors were on an equal footing because while Israel couldn't produce its key weapons on it's own, neither could it's neighbors.
This isn't true anymore. It's a momentous strategic shift in the region. What's worse is that this happens at the same time as the balance of power is tipping away from its main allies. What's even worse is that public opinion, especially in the US, is undergoing an unprecedented shift.
Something else that has not been reported on is that China, which historically was agnostic on the issue, now has an official policy that Palestine has the right to armed resistance. It's a sizeable diplomatic shift because historically neither of the dominant powers openly supported armed Palestinian resistance.
If this grand strategem is to take more than 15 years, and it is, it's extremely risky strategically. It's not true that strategic vision past that is unneeded, it's more important now than it ever was. I imagine that many in the leadership of the IDF realize this but that it's just not something that's politically viable to run with.
Israel is a surprisingly large exporter of diamonds. Does it have diamond deposits in its own territory? No. They are friends with neighbours that have a long history of exploitation on the african continent. UAE is infamously ruthless when it comes to slavery and supporting genocidal coercion, and they are buddies with Israel since years back.
Iran would have to arm and train opposition in the arabian sunni-states to make them existentially dangerous to Israel, since the US is quite clear that it will try to be an existential threat to Iran if they go hard against Israel on their own. How would Turkey react if Iran engaged in active politics in Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Do the ruling elites in Iran consider establishing normalised relations with the saudis and emirates less important than the palestinian cause?
None of those are truths you can rely on right now, let alone for 1-2 generations.
It's doubtful that the US, should Israel really fly off the handle, would be willing to intervene against a nuclear state - it hasn't in Ukraine despite much more favourable circumstances. As time goes on and the balance of power shifts away from the US this will become more and more true. Additionally, the US cannot militarily stop antiship missiles even at a relatively small scale, so the only intervention that would be guaranteed to work would be an invasion of Iran, which if it had nuclear weapons would probably not be undertaken.
Secondly, there is no need for cooperation from any Sunni Arab state. In theory, all it would take would be missile launches from Iraq, Syria or Lebanon to shut down traffic to Israel from the Mediterranean - that would be enough to basically collapse the Israeli economy, as it would not be economical to ship overland from Egypt or Jordan, even if those countries would be willing to collaborate (and they might not).
Thirdly, no Arab country has diplomatic or economic ties to Israel out of the goodness of their heart. They only do due to massive pressure from the US, who either gives diplomatic concessions in exchange (ex: recognition of Western Sahara) or hangs the military umbrella (Saudi Arabia, UAE). This is not something you can bank on when shit hits the fan, let alone for the next 1-2 generations.
At the end of the day Israel's strategic situation is extremely precarious and is completely dependent on foreign powers who not only have greatly waning influence and relative capability, but also declining sympathy. This used to also be true, to some extent, for it's neighbors, but it isn't anymore because Iran managed to make its own sanction-proof and relatively competitive MIC. In the future, Iran might not even be the only state in the region to manage such a thing, and structurally any state which aims to do this aims for strategic independence, and a state which is strategically independent doesn't have much of a reason to be sympathetic to Israel right now, let alone in the situation you presented. Additionally, it's not unlikely there will be nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, which will greatly weaken Western influence as Western nations will oppose proliferation and because states which attain nuclear weapons are no longer reliant on the US for defense.
The US might not be able to stop anti-ship missiles, but that's not the strategy either. The strategy is to keep starving Yemen and showing off military equipment, reminding every nearby state, including Pakistan, how the US conducts diplomacy in hostile situations.
An existential threat to Israel needs to invade, which means military bases in a neighbouring area where the US doesn't already have thousands of soldiers and a lot of equipment. Nasrallah doesn't have the people or equipment needed, Iran wouldn't be allowed to use saudi or jordanian territory.
Sure, it's not about goodness, it's more about not having to arm their own populations and trade in blood commodities from Africa. It's also about the US and Israel being a relatively reliable enemy, that isn't going to perform surprise missile strikes on your territory for obscure reasons like Iran did a while ago. They'll do air strikes, but they'll also tell you why in advance. It might be a lie, but they'll look a bit mad rather than devious and mainly attack civilian or paramilitary targets.
Israel's strategic problem is the same now as it has been for almost a century. How to get away with ethnic cleansing, and if that doesn't work because no other country wants to participate, how to get away with genocide? US protection has been the answer for most of that time, and is likely to continue, with Europe using Ukraine as a domestically communicated reason to produce more weapons which will then be transfered mostly to Israel. I might be wrong and Iran more reckless than I expect, we'll see over the coming decade or so.
Additionally, American airstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Yemen are ineffective, so I'm not sure why you mention them. In Syria it's only Turkey that's preventing Assad from a complete victory; Iraq's primary military force is an Iranian proxy, while Yemen is still hitting ships in the Red Sea.
There is no need to invade Israel to pose an existential threat. Israel is a tiny country with very little resources - should it be blockaded it would fall apart, even just for lack of energy.
Israel's strategic problem just isn't the same. For the first time ever, it has to deal with an adversary that is almost completely strategically independent and that it simply cannot defeat militarily.
There's nothing here that needs recklessness either - as it is right now we are at the stage of threats. That's part of what the Houthi missile strikes, it's Iran sending a message that it can threaten shipping in the region and that no one can actually stop them. If Iran wanted to actually hurt Israeli shipping, the missiles would be fired into the Mediterranean, not into the Red Sea. Just the fact that the Houthis are still hitting ships today is a momentous geopolitical shift - it's a Suez crisis lite edition.
If all you're looking forward is a decade, then it's probably true that there isn't going to be something huge. But if you're talking about 1-2 generations, there are clear strategic trends that threaten Israel's current strategy of relying on the US for protection and pressure. The idea that the US can no longer ensure maritime safety in any major trade route, let alone in the ME, or that there is a nuclear threshold state with a missile industry advanced enough to export to Russia in the ME is something that would get you laughed out of the room just 15 years ago.
What do you mean by Assad "complete victory"? Syria is devastated, something like ten million people are food insecure, the country is occupied by both other countries and militias.
What do you mean by "proxy"? Does your definition imply that the ukrainian army is a "proxy"?
What do you mean by "Houthi missile strikes"? It's the de facto government of Yemen engaged in a blockade against Israel, which is composed by more groups than the Ansar Allah. It is also quite popular due to its position against the genocidal colonial governments of the US, UK, Israel and so on.
Edit: I now realise that "and so on" could be interpreted to include the UAE which is occupying part of Yemen together with Israel, which is not the case. At the moment Yemen is not directly engaged against the UAE, presumably because its leadership considers a future arab peace more important and the US-israeli influence a driving factor in the UAE transgressing against Yemen.
There are a lot of reasons - from quite intuitive to conspiratorial - to not take the idea that AI caused or meaningfully contributed to this failure at face value. Or that it was a failure of intelligence in the first place.
(I obviously don’t like the idea… but from my view there have been multiple attempts to have Gaza develop, and they generally fail out of apparent spite. If the adjacent country is a failed state run by a terrorist group… I’m not sure what better ‘meaningful change’ can be reached.)