"There are historic examples where a soft domination of certain states worked well. For instance the US, who dominated the Western alliance after World War II - with a giant army, an enormous population, and its globally superior economic power. This role is quite different for Germany today."

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The Western alliance should have supported the Sunni opposition against the Assad regime from the beginning. As far as Iraq is concerned, if it had stayed stable the way it was in 2008, IS would not have been able to expand in Iraq the way they did. The mistake was that Barack Obama withdrew the armed forces from Iraq too fast.

— Paul Wolfowitz