I knw u guys might know more than me.. im from australia and watchn ur govt on the news getn involved in wars they dont need too.. the govt blows billions on military instead of its own ppl. thats why ur econemy crashed and america is almost broke. too war happy.
Im jus sayn.. On the outsiders perspective most ppl in my country think similiar also whenever chat comes up.
All of the conflicts that we have gotten into within the past 60 years have been Cold War related. These are the results from moves that were made years before wars broke out.
We installed Hussein with the CIA. 1963
When the Vietnamese asked America to get France out of the Vietnamese country we said no. We see how that turned out.
Iran tensions from the past with creating a coupe to protect oil fields from being nationalized by the then Iranian leader under the Eisenhower admin.
Afghanistan comes into picture starting with Nixon.
Indo China with Ike too.
Angola in Africa as well fighting communist influence from Cuban support to one of the political parties.
Egypt and Israel 6 day war political maneuvering.
American Secretary of state Acheson in 1950 mistakenly left South Korea out of a speech regarding the places America would defend in the Pacific. Stalin saw it as America saying they would not defend the southern tip of the nation. He told Kim Il Sung to go ahead with the invasion. The only goal of the U.N. mission in Korea was to restore the 38th Parallel but General Macarthur got greedy and wanted to take the whole country. Scaring the Chinese of the though of a invasion in their country. They sent their forces and pushed us all back and left a bad taste in everyone's mouth by the time we got back to the 38th once again. Then a cease fire and never ending tension since.
So Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, South Korea, Angola, Egypt and Im sure I could keep going. Simply put the idea of Russian dominance pushed all of this forward. As well as the Mutual fear on the Soviet side of American dominance. Proxy wars.
To really understand the actual motivation would be to understand the Cold War itself more then just on a face value of Capitalism v. Communism. The inner workings of the conflict still have many affects on us today. Basically to sum it up in one word.
Containment.