But I think, if situation goes to war, GB certainly will be involved, as NATO member

@user2501323 - I think NATO will vote against going to war. I think NATO Should vote against going to war. I hope the US does not blunder in anyway.

I think, there will be no time for voting. Despite the situation when all events will stay in the Middle East. Just because there are U.S. bases and NATO infrastructure all over the Europe.

@user2501323 - Strikes are not war. It compares to a single punch vs a boxing match. One punch rarely does more than wound pride.

It is. Downed jet is, in fact, a war. Kennedy resists from war in such situation, but I'm not so sure in Trump.

For future reference, there is no such country as "Great Britain", and there has not been since 1801.

thanks, @owjburnham didn't know it!

Unless you are going to conquer the land for the spoils, war is a loss. Even then... "spoils" rarely cover the costs, to be realistic.

@HopelessN00b - its not the immediate gain that is beneficial it is more like an investment. Like when the US conquered indian controlled lands, and that allowed the US to grow more.(just an easy example)

@user2501323 - These are skirmishes, they do not have to result in a sustained conflict that most people identify as war(which is the context I intended to use)

"Unless you are going to conquer the land for the spoils, war is a loss." How does that apply to war against the Nazis which ended the Holocaust, or the American civil war which ended slavery?

@DonBranson Economically speaking. (Although... economically speaking...)

@SoylentGray I think the former Soviet-Baltic nations would disagree with you about NATO.

Upvoted for the first sentence and last paragraph. However, it is being argued from many quarters that the NATO allies are losing rather a lot with the status quo: Syrian refugees are flooding Turkey and Europe, which is destabilizing those countries. So I could see plenty of incentive for going along with any action that they honestly feel could put a stop to the refugee crisis at its source.

This in no way "demonstrates that NATO has outlived most of its usefulness". The first key point is that NATO is a mutual defense treaty, not a mutual attack block, and second is that aggression against NATO members is the highest it has been for decades. It certainly needs updating for the new kinds of aggression and threats that are seen. But its usefulness is far from gone as can be seen by one salient fact: no one has yet dared to try to invade a NATO member, but they certainly have tried to invade nations like Ukraine that never quite joined.

@DonBranson Don't forget that the Union did not enter the Civil War for the purpose of ending slavery, and that America did not enter WWII for the purpose of ending the Holocaust.

@DonBranson - Both wars were losses overall. The north did conquer the south. That did not end slavery though. It was an amendment to the constitution that did that.

@T.E.D. - That assumes that air strikes will have that effect... History has shown consistantly otherwise. But heck lets do the same thing again anyway and see if the result is different this time. (Snark toward the US Foriegn Policy team not you)

@LastStar007 You said, "Don't forget that the Union did not enter the Civil War for the purpose of ending slavery, and that America did not enter WWII for the purpose of ending the Holocaust." I didn't forget, but do understand that it's completely irrelevant what the purpose was. What matters when counting gain and loss is the outcome, not the hoped-for outcome.

@SoylentGray - It depends on whether your worldview considers human suffering and the loss of human life in the equation. If humans have no inherent value, then we can just look at the economics.

@DonBranson - I do not just look at economics. if it was just economics then let the Nazi's win.

Folks, surely you can see that discussion has gotten way past the point of needing to move to chat.