there's this kind of idea - and it's probably accurate - that you can't really end the war, you can just convert it into different forms. so, you can move the war around from place to place - from afghanistan to iraq to serbia and back to iraq again - but you can't extinguish it entirely. and, if you hold to this, you want to take a kind of harm reduction approach, in keeping the war as far away as possible.

this goes back to roman imperial strategy, and a recognition that the barbarians cannot be gotten rid of, but only controlled, distracted, redirected, confused. i've seen the argument made more than once that the fighting in syria and iraq was just necessary as a distraction for these jihadists; if the jihadists want to fight, and we can't convince them otherwise, let's have them fight in iraq, instead.

i've argued in this space that the russian strategy in syria follows from this, and in fact suggested or predicted it. there is essentially no way that fighting in ukraine can end well for the russians, so what they wanted to do was shift the conflict somewhere else, like syria. i argued that a successful russian counterattack in syria would force the americans out of ukraine - and it worked as i claimed it would. but, syria is still in russia's backyard.

for the americans to withdraw would be useful, if the goal is to focus on recreating a peaceful world order. but, for the americans to redeploy in another theatre with russian defenses would simply be to shift the war to a location more favourable to russian interests.

shifting the fighting in ukraine to syria was heraclean in scope, as it was - you almost expected putin to march the true cross back through moscow, or something. you'll note that the empire did not survive heracleus very long, but the turnaround was remarkable - that was a major russian victory, due to clearly superior tactical strategy.

but, for the russians to ultimately shift the fighting in ukraine to far-off venezuela would be a victory of unthought of proportions.

you should consequently expect the russians to staunchly double down in venezuela, as the more that it can distract america in it's own hemisphere, the more it's own security is assured. if the americans think they can just overthrow maduro, they have another thing coming - and any attempt is just an excuse for further russian deployment.

putin really made obama look like an idiot, over and over again, out thinking him in theatre after theatre. it's starting to look like he's doing the same thing to trump.

let's get the troops home and keep them here, and then focus on social planning as a means to improve the economy in the southern part of the hemisphere.