... granting immunity and having already committed to his Iranian allies that he would see our troops out in 2011. We will come to ISIS (and Obama’s mild military reengagement in Iraq) and Syria as separate issues.
Israeli/Palestinian Peace
Here, one may be tempted to make more of the efforts of the Obama Administration ... ... Israel announced the construction of 1,600 settlement housing units to be built on illegally occupied, disputed land in East Jerusalem (which was occupied in 1967 along with the West Bank and Gaza and which Israel has held in defiance of multiple binding ...
... Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states comes back to haunt us: though Joe Biden recently got in trouble for saying so, support for ISIS and other Islamic extremists and terrorists from very wealthy individuals motivated by the Saudi state-sponsored and ever-present-throughout-the-Gulf ... ... situations like in Egypt, for many years one of the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid, Obama and Americans, as was/is the case in Syria and Iraq, seems to prefer a “don’t do stupid shit” (to quote the president) approach.
Obama has—correctly—realized ...
... Arab Iraqis to fight extremists, especially in Iraq’s western Anbar province on Syria’s border, saw the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia and similar extremist... ... groups calling themselves first the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/the Levant/al-Sham (ISIS or ISIL) and now just Islamic State (IS) might possibly have been the worst, most... ... Finally, and certainly not least among the reasons, ISIS was murdering and abusing thousands in ways that even al-Qaeda thought went too far. Christians, Yazidis, Shiites...
1. More cohesion in NATO?
According to the balance-of-threat assumption the lack of unambiguous threat decreases cohesion of military alliances, whereas the free-rider problem increases in inverse proportion. Even if one doesn't consider the geostrategical mischief of NATO eastward expansion there is nevertheless another problem. It seems to be clear that the Europeans reducing their military expenditures as well as Uncle Sam tired of his burden are not able and willing to pay for worries...
