‘Time to come home’ – acting Pentagon chief wants to end wars in Middle East
The assumption that &#x27;intervention is war&#x27; and &#x27;withdrawal&#x27; is peace is really short-sighted.<p>The world is a balance of power, every move changes that dynamic.<p>Complete American withdrawal in Europe may have seen Putin do what he did in Crimea also in the Baltic states or possibly further, which creates the conditions for the possibility of &#x27;real war&#x27; which would draw the US back in anyhow.<p>The US is the &#x27;lynch pin&#x27; of peace between Israel and Egypt, and keeps most the Arab peninsula more or less under wraps. The #1 recipient of foreign aid from the US is Egypt, of course a Muslim country, this surprises a lot of people - it&#x27;s to keep Isreal&#x2F;Egypt tensions under wraps. Because they have not had &#x27;hot fighting&#x27; in a generation, most of us don&#x27;t think about that as the &#x27;problem spot&#x27; but really it is - if that broke down it would suck the entire region into a bad black hole of fighting.<p>Without the US to protect House of Saud (and it doesn&#x27;t need to even fire a bullet for that, just the credible threat of retaliation is enough) and their Sunni neighbours, Iran and Saudi Arabia would be going at each other, and though they don&#x27;t have plans to &#x27;invade&#x27; each other, it would break out into something ugly probably very quickly.<p>The populists in Egypt (i.e. Muslim Brotherhood) could easily gain power, and their more radical factions would turn 88M people against Israel and that&#x27;s a real problem, imagine the pro-Trump vs. anti-Trump rallies we see this weekend, but 100x as big, right on the Egypt&#x2F;Isreal border - maybe neither government wants it, but as soon as &#x27;someone dies&#x27; then they are forced to react and it gets swiftly out of hand. If 88M people &#x27;want blood&#x27; then war is innevitable.<p>And Iran&#x27;s intransigence, though obviously fuelled by the US somewhat - is real.<p>(Aside from &#x27;total breakdown&#x27; of power i.e. E. Syria in which case some radical group like ISIS will take power)<p>The &#x27;piece on the board&#x27; that would &#x27;make the system peaceful&#x27; if it were to be removed is point blank Iran, that&#x27;s obvious.<p>Yemen, the Gulf, Syria, Shia Iraq, Kurdish lands, and Lebanese instability via Syria ... it&#x27;s Iran.<p>The US forces in the M&#x2F;E right now are not fighting for the most part, this is no longer Gulf War, so the 5th fleet + support is well placed.<p>There is so much &#x27;inherent instability&#x27; there it would fall apart very quickly. The availability of Oil money, concentrated into a few hands of people with personal and ideological vendettas is just too much. (Of course the real &#x27;piece on the board were it to be removed would mean peace&#x27; is Oil).