I'm expecting a resurgence in colonialist-like approaches. Especially in the context of the Middle East. It's exactly failures like Afghanistan and Iraq that make some consider solutions involving total governance for much more than just a few years. A case can be made for the US having been morally obliged to basically colonize Iraq (and Afghanistan tho I'm less familiar with that one).
I've lived a while in a sub-par country. The incompetence at every level of society is staggering. Even corruption isn't as big a deal as incompetence.
Plenty of people I talk to agree that having the US or Germany or someone just run the government completely would be a huge step up. Honestly I can't find any realistic objection. Just hopeful stuff about educating them, making it better, etc. Approaches that have been tried a long time and simply aren't working. Apart from pride (which doesn't cure infections, get kids in schools, or feed people), there really isn't a reason for those people to object.
The problems of colonialism tended to be human rights, eh? Are we really concerned that Belgium would start cutting hands off in the 21st century? (It's also sort of funny. China's getting big in Africa. No way they're going to treat people there very well. Can't imagine a 21st century British empire in Africa ending up worse than Chinese business domination.)
I chatted to some educated Afghanis and they thought the period of greatest peace and prosperity in their life times was the Russian occupation which the US went to some effort to end. I sometimes wonder if western policies to bring democracy to Islamic areas by bombing them really do much good. We could perhaps just bribe the dictators to up their human rights a bit.
Syria is an ongoing case where there remain options. I think our tactful new foreign secretary may have the right idea that we should hold our noses and work with "the linchpin of a vast post-Soviet gangster kleptocracy" who looks "a bit like Dobby the House Elf" and the "manipulative tyrant Assad". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1...
Yea the big problem with "opening up" the colonization game is you'll have people fighting over who's the colonizer (tho it's still sort of happening anyways). No doubt Russia might have been decent for them.
Pretty sure he'll back off from that after getting briefed [possibly by Israel if internally won't be enough]. I'd assume the same for Trump if he wins.
Operation Orchard [0] is a good example that Assad's nastiness wasn't just an internal issue that could be ignored. Unless of course he somehow promises to behave this time.
Everyone realizes the "rebels" could turn out to be even nastier guys so no Western power has a clear interest in letting any of the 3 parties win.
As such a ground invasion makes little sense if you have to cede power eventually - there's no guarantee some "good guys" will magically emerge, they won't.
That's were establishing an international colony comes in. Or as some suggest just an international safe zone on some portion of Syrian territory.
We'll see. The UK doesn't have much power in the region compared to the US, Turkey, Iran, Israel et al so what Boris thinks probably won't affect things much. Still a US, Turkey, Assad Putin deal could probably bring some sort of peace and we could still bomb Assad if he tries to get nukes.
