Western bombing campaigns after the collapse of the Soviet Union: actual and threatened.
Have you noticed something strange? The last major bombing campaign carried out by the West (NATO or US alone) was in 2011, the one against Libya that eventually led to the assassination of president Qaddafi for the joy of the queen of darkness, Hillary Clinton. But things have been strangely quiet from then on.
Not that bombing has stopped, and the US drones are still active in various areas of the world. But, for the past ten years, we haven't seen anymore the kind of spectacular "shock and awe" campaigns that were waged against Libya, Serbia, and Iraq. You could see the abrupt stop of the campaigns as a sort of "Seneca Collapse." What's happening?
I plotted the duration of these campaigns as a function of time for the past 30 years or so, that is, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Before that date, you might argue that the balance of power between the two world empires had prevented this kind of heavy operations on the part of the Western Empire. Indeed, earlier on, the last major military operation that had directly involved the Western forces on a somewhat "even" footing -- that is not a military cakewalk -- had been Vietnam, ending in 1975.
I know that the plot is somewhat arbitrary in how "major" campaigns are defined. For instance, I didn't include the long-lasting, relatively low level, Afghanistan campaign. But even that war is expected to end this year, at least in terms of direct US involvement, after 17 years from its start.
Clearly, there is a line that separates the past 10 years from the previous 20. Before the line, the West seemed to have no compunction in unleashing all its might against a foreign country of the kind unable to retaliate. But, after the line, something happened. No more spectacular bombing campaigns.
Think about how, in 2012, President Obama said that President Assad of Syria had passed the "red line" and that he would face appropriate retribution. Everyone was expecting a repetition of the Libyan campaign of the year before, with the probable result of the assassination of Assad. Pope Francis took the threat seriously enough that he called for a special day of prayer and fasting for peace for Syria. I fasted, too.
But nothing happened . Obama said he had changed his mind because he had realized that the public opinion was against the bombing. As if they had taken that into account when they had decided to invade Iraq in 2003!
Then, there came Donald Trump. Lots of warlike speeches, but very little in terms of substance. In 2017, Trump unleashed a missile strike against Syria. It was a joke: a single strike and almost none of the missiles arrived on target. Then, it was silence.
In 2020, things seemed to be getting serious with the assassination of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani by US forces. It could be interpreted only in terms of an attempt to create a "casus belli" to start a major war in the Gulf Region. What happened, instead, was that the US and Iran governments collaborated to avoid that the situation could escalate out of control. The Iranians launched a wave of missiles on the US bases in Iraq, but they gave plenty of warning for the Americans who were able to evacuate the target areas before the strike. There was no further military action. Silence ensued.
And we are in 2021. President Biden started his presidency by encouraging the Ukrainian government to try to retake by force the separatist region of the Donbass. Ukraine massed troops at the border. Russia responded by lining up troops on the opposite side. The US announced they would send two warships to the Black Sea: sitting ducks for the Russian missiles, but an excellent casus belli if the idea was to start a major war. Everything seemed to be set for a confrontation that could have rapidly escalated out of control.
And then, strangely, things quieted down. The US declared they won't send warships to the Caspian sea, the Russians pulled back their troops, and the Ukrainian government continued making warlike noises, but no more than that. We can't say that the crisis is over, but things seem to be quiet, right now.
So, what's happened? How was it that three major wars that seemed to be unavoidable (Syria, Iran, and Ukraine -- and Afghanistan, too) petered out into a nearly deafening silence?
I can think of a few answers:
1. Nothing special is happening: the ten-year lull is just a statistical fluctuation.
2. God exists, and the Pope can speak to Him.
3. Putin has rebuilt the Russian military forces to such a degree that he can credibly scare the Western leaders to the point that they are wary of starting major campaigns.
4. Drones have superseded the traditional massive bombing campaigns, ineffective and expensive.
5. Something else is stirring in the darkness of the things not covered by the media. It may be what Shoshana Zuboff called the "epistemic coup" on the part of the internet controlling companies: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the others. If she is right, power is now in the hands of an obscure coalition of Internet barons who have no interest in showering the military-industrial lobby with money, nor in gaining electoral points by bombing foreigners. Therefore, they actively discourage politicians from starting new wars. And it works.
Time will tell us more.