a reply to:
onequestion
It depends what you mean by elite.
Everyone who can use a crisis will and that is what is happening in the ME a crisis.
Latin America, plenty of radicals came and went and the US used them very well.
In the ME you have the OPEC crowd, the western interest crowd, Saudi Arabia and a few others probably worth mentioning. In reality they all probably
want the other to make the first move for moral justification. It might appear they are all stupid but none are stupid enough to be the aggressor
against anything but radicals.
Libya was a wake up call for world politics, I personally believe it was utter incompetency that led to the refugees and military stock piles flood
across borders. I hope so anyway. Imagine if Syria collapsed and the likes of Hezbollah got their hands on tanks and artillery?
A destablized Syria might be good for Saudi Arabia but not for Israel, with Russia in Syria it's not worth the backlash of attacking Assad now. Many
angles at play but I guess Middle Eastern politics has always been tricky at best.
At the end of the day there is a few points to make.
1. Saudi oil won't be travelling to Europe by pipeline any time soon.
2. Iraq is a huge political failure for the US/coalition.
3. Russia will keep it's interests in the ME.
4. The Sunni/Shia divide is bigger than ever.
5. The ME is making less and less progress on human rights, oppression is higher than it has been for a long time.
Each one of those points benefit different parties, it's not so cut and dry as elites v radicals v russia.It's more like a cluster bomb and nobody
wants to set it off now because if it kicks off nobody quite knows who's head those bombs will land on (other than civilians).
When the stakes are high you don't bluff your way and the stakes are higher than ever.