Understanding politics on an international scale, requires knowledge of the history of mankind.
These things are complicated.
The current western elite is probably scratching their heads right now, trying to understand what went wrong.
Here is an explanation.
When the ancient Phoenicians, the people that inspired us Jews with acceptance and tolerance as basic principles, had their empire. They were adamantly peaceful.
They did not have an army, and they always tried to turn the other cheek and rather run away than take a confrontation.
The story of the bird Phoenix, is probably a principle that the Phoenicians applied to the sacking of their cities. When an army approached, set in the destruction of one of their cities, they abandoned the city with their many boats, let the invading army sack the city and returned to rebuild the city again. So from the ashes a new city sprang up.
They were also the main businessmen of the ancient Mesopotamia. So, they could afford it.
This tradition is carried on by the Jewish culture. We are also businessmen, wandering the planet rather than fighting where we are.
So if you want to have peace, as a peaceful culture, you can avoid it by turning the other cheek, run away and rebuild your existence somewhere else. It has served the Jews since the building of the first temple, where we were induced by the Phoenician ideas.
At the other hand, one can stand up to a challenge, if there IS NO OTHER WAY OUT.
In other words, when the Romans threatened the Phoenicians in their ascent to dominion of the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians chose to fight. It is what we today know as the Punic wars, and most famous with Hannibal Barca, the leader of the Phoenicians from Carthage.
It is coined in the phrase; si vis pacem, para bellum. In other words, sometimes you need to fight to keep the peace.
If you are backed into a corner, you need to fight.
In fact, there is another example on this principle in the ancient times. The Phoenicians had reached a point in around 2000 B.C., where they were at the risk of extinction. What they did was mass slaughter and annihilatoin of the Mycenaean and hittitite cultures. Cultures that later became the Greek and the Persian culture.
They armed the barbarians, and simply sent them, with their boats to crush the competing cultures of the Mycenaean and hittitite.
Point is, when you are with your back against the wall, even the most peace and loving cultures fight.
The problem is, that the fight you then deploy is the annihilating kind. Rome almost was annihilated by the Carthagenians, and as a result tried to annihilate the Phoenicians.
So, the wise politician or bureaucrat has this balance in mind. Sometimes it is better to fight at a point in time, where the result will not be all anihilating, if there is a risk of massive war.
I mean, if you can go about your business without a fight, that is the best, but if you are in for one of those massive, existential fights, you need to do it swift and at the right time, that is when you are still more resourceful than you adversary.
That is why I have advised for a swift and short war on China. We do not have the stomach for it, so it will develop into a much more destructive war, as China gains more and more weapons.
The same goes with Europe, where I have advices a swift and strong response to IS. That is the small war, the big war is the West against all of the Muslim countries.
My feeling is, that the UK will follow this example, and focus on IS, but somehow the continent seems to favor the peaceful principles, trying to delay the inevitable.
Perhaps if France has its revolution, things can actually work in Central Europe, but there is a long way to go.
G-d bless the will to do wise decisions, at least you now know how things are designed from the beginning.
