Metal Reviews

The last 20 years has seen the reemergence of Western interventionist warfare across the world (Iraq, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Philippines, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere).

Result of these wars have generally been unsatisfactory with greater uncertainty created.

In that period China has not participated in any wars, while Russia's has been involved in wars to maintain territorial sovereignty (Chechnya) or maintain it's security buffer (e.g. Georgia).

The West on the other hand is regularly bombing every man and his dog for a variety of reasons (War on Terror/Drugs, Right To Protect etc etc).

The West will probably to maintain an interventionist stance for some time, especially buoyed by their "victory" in Libya.


Does the West need to be militarily smashed to stop it's constant aggression.

I'm not talking about long term counter insurgency operations that grind the West down over the course of many year.

I'm referring to rapid conventional military defeat e.g. by shooting down lots of Allied warplanes or if ground forces are involved, destroying entire brigades of troops with massive body counts and hundreds if not thousands of Western prisoners of war being paraded through the streets of Damascus or Teheran or wherever.

The result of this would be to smash Western confidence in it's military capability thus reducing West's willingness to fight.

Of course the West avoids military confrontation with anyone that can fight back.

But is this what is needed to ensure greater peace globally.


The Russians and Chinese don't go for military adventurism. Firstly they don't hold to any significant human rights ideologies. The Russians maintain their buffer zone (an obsession for hundreds of years) but that's it.

The Chinese prefer quiet diplomacy and cash (they haven't been to war since a botched invasion of Vietnam in 1979 and that in itself was because Vietnam invaded China's ally Cambodia).

All in due time my friend, our neoconservative foreign policy is coming home to roost in the forms of bankrupting us and the fact we cannot possibly keep interfering with another nation's sovereignty.

Reemergence? When did it stop?

A lot more difficult when the USSR was there to say no.

In USSR controlled territories, sure, but not in the West.

USSR acted as a counterweight in disputed terrirtories which was a big chunk of the world (most of Asia, most of Africa, some Latin America).


The term "proxy war" came into existence during this time i.e. a war fought by smaller participants who represent the major combatants.

This still happens - e.g. Pakistan and Philippines armies are being used as proxies to fight Islamic groups (and Pakistan created many of these in the first place).

But now we're getting large scale Western intervention. This didn't happen so much in the past due to political issues. US did get dragged into Vietnam just as USSR got dragged into Afghanistan.

Both of these were wars to support weaker allies.

On the other hand Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan were actions designed to depose existing regimes.