So a couple things: This is a common idea that's super-neet but has led to a world of hurt. So Iran-Contra in a nutshell was the CIA selling Iran TOW missiles in order to get slush money to fight the Contras. All told the Iranians got about 2500 TOW missiles at a unit cost of around $50k ea. That's $125m worth of weapons to guys that had the South Asia station chief murdered who painted "death to America" in their airport because Reagan couldn't get his dirty war otherwise 'cuz Congress said no. Not a good look. But while the CIA was getting hung out to dry, Operation Cyclone was fully funded to the tune of three BILLION dollars to put frontline military hardware in the hands of guys who were about ten years from giving Osama bin Laden a place to hang and painting 'Death to America' in their airport. There's an islamic myth that Afghanistan is where Islam stood up to imperialism that directly led to September 11 and other shit and there's a capitalist myth that Afghanistan is where the USSR couldn't cut it but the fact of the matter is, we boxed up Stinger missiles off the line in Palmdale and had them on donkey convoys to the Khyber Pass within a week. It was funny - growing up there were all these surplus Enfields floating around for pennies and it wasn't until I read Charlie Wilson's War that I realized it's because the CIA had gathered up as much untraceable ordinance as they could before Mike Vickers said he needed a better Stratego set so all this shit was sold for pennies military surplus. The USSR rolled into Afghanistan in 1979 and rolled out in 1988. We rolled into Afghanistan in 2001 and... wait for it... See, this is important because the USSR couldn't afford to deal with American hardware in Afghanistan. They're poor. They're the guys who built five space shuttles they couldn't afford to fly. Reagan's whole move was to outSPEND the Soviets and it totes worked. And Russia is still poor. They raised their retirement age last year because their pension crisis is bigger than ours, they got into a pissing match with Saudi Arabia over the price of oil that absolutely gutted them and what resources they had when Yeltsin took over have been summarily shoved into the hands of oligarchs. Russia is some cities and some impoverished wasteland but I mean, so's China. something like 95% of the wealth in China is within 100 miles of the coast. Geopolitically it's worth thinking of it as an American middle class with a Canadian wasteland full of poverty. America spends a fuckton on foreign policy which is certainly something to object to. But the important thing to keep in mind is there aren't really any other countries out there who can afford to keep up financially. Thus, it makes sense to want your old model back. You knew what was up. Obviously you want to bend it as much as possible to your will but I mean... a Trump II administration is gonna be a lot of work for everybody. Biden won't suddenly decide "ya know, fuck Kurdistan."a couple Afghan goatherds with single-shot rifles were able to hold off the USSR for the better part of 20 years.