These multi generational, half-hearted, Vietnamesesque misadventures in the Middle East could serve to train the nation's competitors how best to fight the United State's military.
The Thebans, meantime, singly, having many skirmishes with the Spartans in Boeotia, and fighting some battles, not great indeed, but important as training and instructing them, thus had their minds raised, and their bodies inured to labour, and gained both experience and courage by these frequent encounters, insomuch that we have it related that Antalcidas, the Spartan, said to Agesilaus, returning wounded from Boeotia, "Indeed, the Thebans have paid you handsomely for instructing them in the art of war, against their wills.
-Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Pelopidas
...IMHO, there seems to be far more safety in adopting a Switzerland-style neutrality rather than pre-empting danger by diving headlong into global Machiavellian intrigue and proxy conflicts. The only way to win is simply not to play.
[...]a new king of the Mendesian province was proclaimed his successor, and came against Nectanabis with an army of one hundred thousand men. Nectanabis, in his talk with Agesilaus, professed to despise them as newly raised men, who, though many in number, were of no skill in war, being most of them mechanics and tradesmen, never bred to war. To whom Agesilaus answered, that he did not fear their numbers, but did fear their ignorance, which gave no room for employing stratagem against them. Stratagem only avails with men who are alive to suspicion, and, expecting to be assailed, expose themselves by their attempts at defence; but one who has no thought or expectation of anything, gives as little opportunity to the enemy as he who stands stock-still does to a wrestler.
-Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Agesilaus
...as with investing, the best strategy in geopolitics would likely be to to avoid tinkering and simply leave things be.