The reputation and credibility of the so called West, their foreign policies, and Armed Forces, as well as trusted organisations, such as NATO, is spiralling out of control and the rate of descent is accelerating. The interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan have arguably been a failure. Iraq is a nation fractured between aggrieved, displaced Sunnis and dominant, Iran-backed Shia politicians and militia. The rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS) out of the civil war in Syria has made the Levant and wider Middle East more unstable than at any time in the last few decades. The bloody beginning to the Syrian civil-war, with anti-President Bashar Assad forces initially encouraged to act without being able to wrest control from the government following the Arab Spring in 2011, left the US and Europe reluctant to initially commit either sufficient financial aid or military forces to support the rebels. The financial backing of the Gulf states not only threw those forces a lifeline, but also provided a catalyst for the growth of IS.
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