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[–]TheJamesRocket 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

The greatest implications for modern war is that fancy terms like 4th gen warfare and gray zone warfare have been proven to be a bunch of rubbish. The fundamentals of large-scale war have not changed much since WW2.

4th gen warfare is just a buzz word for unconventional warfare. It is no replacement for conventional warfare. The Americans found this out to their detriment in the Middle East, when they unsuccessfully used ISIS as a proxy force to try conquering Syria with. If Obama had sent the U.S. military instead, they would have won.

If the Neocons had played their cards right, they could very easily have ushered in their project for a new American century. They were the only superpower in the world, with no serious geopolitical opposition to them. Instead, they made repeated blunders and screwed it all up in just 20 years. Not only have their Middle Eastern plans failed, but now the U.S. itself is in danger of collapse. Historians in the future will regard this as a world historical error even worse than what Nazi Germany did. They literally had an unassailable position, and they still managed to fail somehow.

The war has demonstrated the acute need for mass and numbers in order to hold rear areas and man long front lines. The belief that you don't need hundreds of thousands of troops and high-tech micro armies are enough have been proven to be BS.

The entire RMA theory (revolution in military affairs) is complete bullshit. It wasn't even a real theory of warfare in its own right, it was more like a marketing strategy for bloated defense contracters to sell overpriced, overhyped weapons for use in the fake war on terror.

[–]casparvoneverecBig tiddy respecter[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Neocons would've secured permanent hegemony for Israel and America in the ME if they had done one thing: Invade Iran right after it conquered Iraq. The war fever was high, the US military was very strong back then, Iran was not as prepared, Russia and China were nobodies, and America was internally united.

They blew it all on pointless nation-building exercises and tyring to make Iraq and Afghanistan into gay democracies. Meanwhile, they assumed Russia and China would over time simply become gay liberal states like themselves. I think they really believed in the end of history BS and assumed that liberalism was the final solution to the human question and everyone would naturally embrace it.