Don’t worry we have plenty of natural disasters yet this year

Well I disagree with you about the ports but you didn’t introduce anything new re their importance so I’ll leave that to one side for a moment.

A strategy of area denial also argues in favor of Russia seeking to balance of power against US and Israeli factions which leaves a deal with Jihadis and Turkey against the Kurds and Israel.

There’s no chance of a Ba’athist come back so either Russia cedes the zone or picks a side.

So along with the immensely strategic port, that makes two strong reasons why Russia will make a deal with the jihadis and align with Turkey.

Russia spent 14 years providing Assad with a backbone which cost a pretty penny. Russia obviously cares about this naval base.

Fucking 200 years of conflict have been fought over warm water ports for Russia in the Black Sea and Mediterranean what the fuck do you mean “no big deal”?

Empires have been lost over the Suez Canal, this is a very strategic position for Russia. British went to war over the damn Falkland’s your damn right Russia will make a deal with these jihadis if that’s what it takes.

When has the US ever seen a proxy conflict it didn’t want to engage in?

Yes the US is overstretched but the calculus isn’t affected since this conflict will stretch Russia too and kept Erdogan tied down, and also force a true break in Russia-Israeli relations which are still fairly good considering Israel is allied with the US.

Plus it’s the oil. That’s why the Middle East matters. The Kurdish zone and the bit near Jordan are where the oil is. They won’t let Turkey just take that.

Further, destabilization is an objective unto itself. If the region is destabilized they can divide and conquer, assert themselves as an “intermediary” to protect their interests, and prevent a regional power bloc from forming that is contrary to their interests.

The endgame wasn’t Assad. They didn’t care about Assad except insofar as he was in the way. The USA being anti- or pro- Assad was only ever a question of context.

It would be incredibly foolish to trade away the immense advantage of the dollar for a speculative and finite asset like bitcoin

The Roman Empire didn’t benefit from debasing its currency either but it did and the warring generals era was disastrous but it happened because each general was looking out for themselves rather than for the empire overall.

The empire isn’t actually a monolith. There are many oligarchs and while their interests largely align, it’s a Venn diagram. If one set of players benefit from undermining the dollar in favor of bitcoin then they’ll do it for their personal benefit even if that weakens the structure as a whole.

Maybe the bankers will fight this and maybe they’ll beat the tech bros but maybe they don’t and the tech bros use crypto to steal power from the bankers. Even if that weakens the power of the empire overall, that still equates to more power for the tech bros themselves so worthwhile for them.

I think it’s partly a result of pre-communist ideologies and the period of Japanese occupation leaving a cultural mark that profoundly normalized the practice, the idea of the nation as a family which “naturally” has a kindly patriarch, and then this idea got synthesized with Leninism.

Looks like you just got a preexisting condition

their denial of the existence of anything other than the material

They sell oil for USD and now they get another place to park those USD which diversifies their risk

What happens when you do ket and meth? You stare at a wall for 72 hours straight?

Jamming isn’t an on or off thing. Like when you watch the videos you see garbled frames or dropped frames and periods of clarity. This makes it harder to steer but you can still generally point it towards the target.

If the EW is pretty good that might result in a fly-by, eg essentially equivalent to reduced accuracy rather than an kill-switch.