The brinkmanship in which President's Obama and Putin are now engaged over Syria was entirely avoidable.  It is the result of supremely misguided and – in many cases – entirely illegal policies implemented by our president and members of his administration, including his old secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

Think back to the "Arab Spring."  The purpose of that movement was never to usher in democratic rule in formerly secular Arab dictatorships, despite the gushing of the major media over the "birth of freedom."

The Arab Spring was the outward expression of an operation to replace secular dictatorships in the Middle East (primarily the Levant) with Islamic dictatorships.

All this was prelude to the creation of a new Islamic "caliphate," which the progressives in the West mistakenly viewed as a means to bring the Middle East into parity, economically, with the rest of the world.

They envisioned a sort of Islamic version of the EU – one that would be able to deliver the jobs, economic growth, and stability that has been missing from the Middle East for...well, forever.  This foolish worldview/mindset is the result of Marxists' inability to assess the world through anything other than their "red-tinged" lenses.

To the Marxist, everything is economic.  Oppression is the reason economies don't prosper; lack of jobs and prospects form the genesis of terrorism, not the demand from Mohammed to place the entire world under the heel of Islam in the name of Allah.  Religion is a distraction to the Marxist, not a principle strong enough to motivate such enduring violence in this modern age.

That ridiculous former spokes-teen for the State Department, Marie Harf, famously said the best way to defeat ISIS is to find jobs for them.  Of course, she was roundly panned and mocked for the statement, with most assuming that it was made out of incompetence.  It was not.

She inadvertently revealed the basis of Obama's Middle East policy – if we help create an economic entity for Islam, then those in the Middle East will grow their economies, care for their people, and never again kill innocents.

Fast-forward to the present day.  Syria had been slated to be the next regime to fall in the Arab Spring.  Why?  Because Assad controls a major seaport and pipeline route for both oil and natural gas shipments to Europe and beyond.  It's a route the Saudis want to control, and also a route the Iranians and Russia will not permit to fall into the hands of their economic energy rivals.

The Saudis want to dominate the shipment of energy resources to Europe via a U.S.-approved extension to Turkey of the existing "Arab Gas Pipeline" running from Egypt to Homs, in west-central Syria.  Assad refused to permit this Saudi-/Qatari-backed extension in favor of the "Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline" (colloquially dubbed the "Islamic Gas Pipeline") supported by his ally and sponsor, Russia.

Combine these factors with the harsh reality that Putin needs a warm-weather port for oil transfers (which he has in Syria) and it's not difficult to see why he will not permit Syria to fall.

The U.S., the Saudis, and others not only permitted, but also funded and protected the rise of ISIS so they could be deployed as a rogue agent able to attack Assad using methods civilized nations would never countenance but that are brutally effective among Islamic cultures.  It's a reprehensible and illegal strategy that amounts to letting "our side" deal in death and war crimes from a "deniable" distance.

Operating from the misguided idea that Islam seeks only to control its adherents' own destiny in the Middle East, the wizards of smart in our government missed the reality that true Islam (which is what animates ISIS and the caliphate builders) recognizes no borders but its own, which Muslims will forever seek to expand, in obedience to the admonition of Mohammed.  

In furtherance of this "holy obligation," the "caliphate builders" want to re-establish control of the crescent known as the Levant, a crescent surrounding the Mediterranean Sea on the northern, southern and eastern sides.

Of course, that region encompasses Israel as well, so, understandably, there is a longstanding tension between Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, and Obama, who has all but declared Israel to be on its own if push comes to shove.

So now, in pursuit of a suicidal fantasy (attempting to carve out territory for, then standing up, an Islamic "trading partner" in the form of a caliphate dedicated to peaceful coexistence), we have come face to face with the proverbial rock, with the hard place at our back.

Putin has made clear that he will not stand down.  Obama and Hillary are invested entirely in seeing their fantasy to fruition, and the powers that have financed them will not permit them to back down.  Indeed, they are spurring them on under threat of exposing their perfidy and corruption to the world.

The Wikileaks releases may be prelude – warning, if you will – to Hillary and Obama that going wobbly now is unacceptable to their masters.

The Clinton Foundation is the likely conduit for much of the black money greasing the skids of the Arab Spring and the enabling of ISIS.  The corrupt reality appears that, through its web of payoffs and shady "contributions," much of the present administration is complicit through direct involvement or in turning a blind eye.  This is why Hillary wasn't prosecuted.  The discovery phase alone would bring down our government.

So here we are...amid a rekindled Cold War that, absent a dramatic shift in policy, will become a shooting war sooner rather than later.

Once again, the corruption of a government grown too powerful, acting too far beyond the bounds of the Constitution, has led us to the brink of another, perhaps nation-ending, bloody conflict, with the potential (some would say, likelihood!) of spiraling into a third world war in very short order.

But, don't let that worry you.  I hear that Trump called someone fat.

The author writes from Omaha, Nebraska and welcomes visitors to his blog at readmorejoe.com.