14 Comments

Noah, thanks for an excellent analysis of Western actions and how they influence immigration into Europe and, I might add, the United States.

"Europe has a major interest in stability in the Middle East, “stability” being a euphemism for “countries not descending into chaos”."

Correction: Europe should have a major interest in stability in the Middle East,..., but it doesn't promote that stability.

"Shifting to another Middle Eastern country where the West saw fit to intervene, the last week witnessed the stunning collapse of the Assad regime in Syria after 53 years of rule. The civil war that precipitated this collapse has of course already produced millions of refugees – including about one million who reside in Europe.3 If the country now enjoys a period of relative stability, it’s possible that some or even many of these refugees will return home. Though at this early stage, the alternative is perhaps more likely: that the country descends further into chaos, leading to a second mass exodus. Only time will tell which eventuality comes to pass."

I believe your second scenario is most likely

The fact is Syria no longer exists; some of it will become Greater Israel, some will become Türkiye, and some perhaps Jordan. The fighting has just begun.

"Despite these fairly obvious points, Western foreign policy often seems to be designed to achieve the exact opposite, namely instability."

Exactly. The theory is that chaos allows for intervention by the West, thereby expanding its influence and control. However, situations of chaos often do not lead to the desired conclusion.

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So far the new Syrian admin has shown a 'realistic' appreciation of its weakness.

For the sake of the people who still live in Syria, I wish them well.

Russia is sidelined thanks to Ukraine, and Iran/Hezbollah thanks to Israel.

Let us see what the other meddling powers do? Particularly Turkiye and the rebel forces it backs, the Kurds (with USA backing), the USA (army base) and now Israel, which is completing widespread bombing of Syria's military infrastructure and has reoccupied the strip of Golan heights it demilitarised in 1974.

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Most likely, nothing good will come of this.

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Many good things have already come from it.

The collapse of Russian and Iranian Imperialism, the fall of the depraved Assad regime.

All of those things are good.

Ukraine is mobilizing to supply grain to Syria to make up for the shortfall from Russia.

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You sound like a CIA propaganda asset.

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You sound like someone who isn't capable of judging such things.

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The sheer lunacy of HIlary's destruction of LIbya after the example of the Iraq debacle was the main reason I voted for Trump in 2016. I had no idea of what he would be like in office but I thought it was worth taking a chance that he would not be as bat sh-t crazy as Hilary.

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On some level the fact that Europe had to outsource it's border security to Qaddafi speaks to a more fundamental problem.

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What about Syria? They have been the source of mass immigration. Obama failed to intervene in Syria and allowed Russia to mass bomb the country.

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That's true, but Russia's bombings in Syria arguably kept the country stable. The Assad Dynasty didn't fall until after Russia became too occupied with Ukraine to help the Assad Dynasty retain its power. Syria now has a power vacuum and a resurgence of conflict, which could cause more emigration.

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How Arabs who follow a religion that makes them excited to kill one another…

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The question is, what causes these barbaric and counter-productive interventions in the Islamic world? The left says "US imperialism." Imagine how the Guardian would react if Aporia discussed the argument that it's caused primarily by Jewish power in the Western countries.

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"[I]n several cases it’s plausible there would still have been large-scale immigration from the relevant country in the absence of Western military intervention. For example, the civil war in Somalia during the 1990s might have produced just as many displaced people if the US had not intervened at all."

Couldn't that be argued with almost all of these? The one really good example seems to be Libya. Even Senator Tom Cotton, who is fine with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, decries the intervention in Libya as a sacrifice of American national interests to blind Wilsonian idealism. (At least, that's how I remember the relevant passages in his book "Only the Strong.")

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If I'm correct, and I might not be, "Shoot first, ask questions later" was FBI founder J. Edgard Hoover's maxim, right?

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