I’ve been following the situation in Syria lately, both the US-Russia “agreement” and the situation on the ground, and here are some of my thoughts.

First of all, America has almost zero control on the ground, among the jihadists. They will take American weapons, but they will use them to shoot the “Christian dogs” immediately afterwards.

Second, there are no moderates in the opposition there. All the moderates are aligned with the government. For quite a while the rallying call among the jihadists was that Assad and similar “dictators” need to be overthrown, because they are not democratic enough, and guess what, “democratic” there means “Islamic radical”.

Third, if you allowed the people there to elect a government, they would put an Islamic caliphate in power, which is what ISIS is. ISIS is the manifestation of the will of the local populace. What’s immensely worrying is that America if arming and financing those idiots, both directly and through their client states in the middle-east, and that’s why they are so difficult to defeat. Essentially, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS are what democracy will produce there, in the same way as it produced the current regime in Iran. It was the result of the popular uprising against American meddling in their affairs, and it’s not going anywhere. So, basically, in the middle-east democracy means radical salafism, an Islamic caliphate. That’s what the Muslims would create if you allowed them to pick their own government, and that’s why the only way to introduce some semblance of Western values, progress and technology there was to impose some kind of a secular dictatorship.

Fourth, the main difference between America and Russia at this point is that Russia wants to stabilize the middle-east and avoid the spread of chaos and war, and America wants the opposite, it wants to completely decivilize the middle-east in a state of perpetual war where all the cold-war era client states have been destroyed, and the local Islamists essentially have no financial or industrial capacity for spreading Islam to the west.

Fifth, in the long-term, what America seems to be doing might actually save the Western civilization, if they are actually doing what I think they are. In the short-term, it causes regional chaos, which seems to export itself into Europe and America through the wave of migrants. Those migrants are too stupid to take part in the Western economy and can only serve as drain on our resources and form dens of terrorists and troublemakers. Essentially, they are worth nothing and cost us dearly.

Sixth, I don’t know which troubles me more, that America seems to insult and provoke Russia so blatantly, or that Russia reacts so calmly. Russian calmness most likely means they are simply buying time and forcing America to start the nuclear war, which they accepted as inevitable. Were it not so, they would probably try to avert it with an aggressive posture. This entire thing looks like a game for the public opinion after the war, where America wants to kill all the Russians while portraying them as aggressors and itself as a defender of peace, while Russians seem to say “we know you’re the aggressors, just go ahead with whatever you have planned, but don’t expect us to take part in your games”. The Russians are very careful not to do anything that could be used as an excuse for the start of a nuclear war. However, they are prepared for it.

Interestingly, although a bear is used to symbolize Russia, I think they are acting more like a rattle snake. They are sounding their warning but they remain in a strictly defensive posture. If you ignore the warning and step on them, they will bite you, but they will not attack first, they will not leave their defended zone. Also, I noticed a very interesting thing – Americans seem to be laying traps for the Russians, things like the artificial Ukraine crisis, where they expected Russia to react by invading Ukraine, but Russia evaded the trap and instead opened a completely different theater of action in Syria. America now tries to create a situation in Syria where Russia will have to react in a way conducive to the nuclear war that they desire, but I expect Russia to evade again and open a completely different theater to project its influence. Essentially, what America seems to be doing is provoke the rattle snake to strike, so that it can cut its head off, but the rattle snake sees through it and acts very strategically. America is more powerful, but the Russians are smarter. The entire situation looks like a conflict between an IQ 90 bully and an IQ 130 geek, where America is the bully. The usual development of such conflicts is that the bully keeps beating up the geek, but the geek strategically uses his advantages in such a way that he suffers through the ordeal patiently, finishes school with high grades, creates a tech startup company and earns millions of dollars, and the bully gets to deliver him pizza. Essentially, the geek knows he can’t win the battles, but he can position things so that he survives them just long enough for the strategic situation to shift to his advantage.

The most worrying thing in the entire situation is that America behaves like a bully who thinks he’s invulnerable because all the power in the world is on his side, and nobody will stop him. He will bully whomever he feels like, and he will control the narrative in order to present the victim as the villain. America acts in a way that is consistent with a serious power trip of someone who never had to endure a crushing defeat, and that’s the worrying part, because if that’s true, it means they don’t even understand or care for the warning signs of the rattle snake, and they will simply proceed to attack.

Their problem is that the Russians and the Chinese see through them, they understand what they are dealing with, they have time on their side and they will strike, when it comes to the point of “use it or lose it”. And considering the IQ difference, they have a very good chance of completely surprising the Americans and winning. The Americans are very powerful, but they are overconfident, reckless, internally conflicted and stupid. This is not a winning combination.