Can we get a little breakdown of the possable threats to us in West Africa?

And some of those little countries are looking quite ripe....like a tasty orange...

And Syria's looking quite nice...perhaps we could "Help out" some of the other countries in military actions to get our troops some actual combat experance?

How unpopular are we talking here? And there is no way it could be done in secrecy?

We could take what's left of Syria if we enlisted about 5000 more grunts and built our air force up just a little more. The mideast might not like us much, though.

As for the African breakdown:

Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso...essentially every nation on the west coast and a little inland we could mow through without stopping, as long as no one else joins in to stop us. Though, as we start more wars, our popularity will fall sharply. I'd stay away from Morocco though.

Mauritania, Guinea, and Burkina Faso are all the most...not hated...least liked on the continent. None of them have allies. Unfortunately, they aren't linked to each other. We would have to make some collateral damage if we decided to move in.

@Mac: We would recover from the hatred eventually, but say goodbye to any further economic deals. And from that point on, every move we make will be looked upon with added suspicion, like we're plotting something. It might even incite some people into building missile shields.

[Edit] Aaaaand Mauritania, the Congo, and Gabon all have the highest concentrations of resources in that area.

Hmmm...If we make a move on Africa, Mauritania sounds like a good starting point...

I'll also throw in my vote for Mauritania. Forces are currently standing by for deployment orders. Just rushing in, we have a small chance of drawing more people into the war than we want, or losing trade agreements, or getting embargos placed on our ass...but if you're all in, then I'm in. No guts, no glory.

By the way, where's our Chief of Staff...

>_>

What's our military standing at?

Instead of an invasion, why not destabilize the ruling power and we step in saying we are there to stabilize the country.

Might be best. But it'll take a lot of covert operations. And once again, Africa's far away. Our supply lines will be murder. We'll lose a lot of money in the short term.

Let's at least get Finland and build up our Navy before undertaking such an endeavor. Let's destabilize our target covertly, build up diplomatic relations with its neighbors in the meantime and prepare for a naval invasion of Finland.

Also, what high political rank can I have?

I vote to ally/get buddied with Finland's friends, bomb yourself and blame it on them, m plant evidence of corruption with their officials, whatever else you can ruin their reputation with, and invade. Get it out of the way, and I think we can handle the backlash.

Then move in to Mauritania, and we can talk further there.

At least with West Africa we wouldn't have to pass through anyone's territorial waters to get there (maybe Britain's), but with Finland - that can only be reached by sailing close to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (the Kattegat). So we'd have a bottleneck in our connection there.

And it would most likely be costlier to invade Finland than the West Africa nations. They have more resources and manpower that can be applied against other areas of interest - other than being in Europe, what does Finland provide us?