The Iran War Is a Whole New Level of Quagmire for the US(politico.com) |
The Iran War Is a Whole New Level of Quagmire for the US(politico.com) |
https://professorrobertpape.substack.com/
https://escalationtrap.substack.com
I would rather not paraphrasing or rewrite in my interpretation too much, as the topic is difficult enough as-is. But the short version is that the mainstream analysis of "worst case" is nowhere near his level of worst-case scenario and that the US has no control of the situations any more (the US can still control its actions, but Iran is already emboldened enough to take actions on its own strategic plan). The worst-case scenario has Iran with nuke as the baseline, and Iran also growing to be the dominant regional power in Middle East, on-par with Russian in the peak strength in 2010s.
I also appreciate his perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/@MarioNawfal/search?query=Robert+pap...
I think the reason we cling onto that is because it's one way to try to retreat while waving a victory flag. Now we can claim we think the nukes are 'really' destroyed or whatever, and claim mission accomplished.
Vs. I see an angry, frustrated C-in-C, who has maybe a 1-move look ahead, playing out his emotions. Hopefully he is too weak to flip the chess board.
They then re-ran the simulation along a script designed to guarantee the US couldn't lose a second time. Unfortunately through some sort of oversight the IRGC were never sent a copy of the script before the current mess.
"They obviously had no plan..."
How does that imply someone had realistic plansm
There are still countries willing to defend democracy out there - Ukraine/Europe/Canada/Japan/S-Korea/Australia.
Just not USA.
US does whatever the most expedient is. Democracy was the 'flavour of the month' some time ago. Even then, one can only assume it was front to some "friendly" bullying. Now the mask slipped.
I mean, obviously Ukraine won't. Does that need saying? It's insane to think about. Look at the history of WW1 and WW2: Russia will fight until the Russian state collapses and we're, at minimum, years away from that happening. And Ukraine, if they have any sense whatsoever, will do exactly very little for anyone else until that happens. Only a German dictator is stupid enough to answer "What do you do if you're stuck in a land war with Russia?" with "open 3 extra fronts" and we all know what happened to him. Ukraine is fighting from the underdog position and that means: no stupidity. And that means: no fighting China, no defending Taiwan, even despite the fact that China is fighting Ukraine. Sorry.
Europe and Canada utterly depend on China in 1000 different ways. They have chosen not to defend anyone, and will need a decade (minimum) to rearm. And even rearmed ... will they be able to challenge China? At that distance? Other than France none of these countries currently have the ability to project power outside of their borders at all, so they will do exactly nothing, because they've chosen to be utterly powerless (google "the peace dividend")
These countries are actually smug about those decisions, despite how stupid they are. I was recently in Ireland, and in a pub I found that that NOT ONLY Irish people were proud NOT to support Ukraine, but they were "proud" (their words, not mine) that they were still supporting Russia, because that matters to them personally (ie. jobs from Alumia exports and cheap Russian gas for everyone)
You know, people kept screaming the same thing with the USAID cuts. Everyone else will take over and get goodwill from everywhere instead of US. Reality then was that nobody took over, and where they did, it was to support armies, not people (e.g. UAE "helping" Sudan, Russia "helping" Mali, ... of course all of that happened with UN approval or at least silence)
Reality here is that if the US doesn't help defending Taiwan, nobody will. Not even Japan or South Korea. MAYBE Taiwan will get Ukraine-style loans, if that even matters (without US help, China will be able to fully control both sea and air routes into Taiwan in a matter of days. So even if Taiwan has money to spend, delivery of anything they buy will be utterly impossible)
In a lot of ways, helping defending Taiwan (a very well-scoped objective, "do not let China land troops") would have been a lot easier than convincing a nation of 90 million to just roll over and give up rather than chucking drones across the gulf every so often.
Sadly not true. So long as the US is unwilling to launch a large-scale invasion and occupation of Iran, Iran can make the strait riskier than commercial shipping traffic is comfortable with. Vs. occupation of Taiwan seems to be the CCP's goal.
US foreign policy is dictated by Israel at this point. You thought it was only the middle east part but US has been relocating all weapon systems from the allies all around the world only to protect Israel.
Maybe it's just the American way of passing the torch, this is kind of a gift by reminding the rest of the world about what they can do without us. The "America, defender of democracy" image was an illusion constructed as we emerged from WW2 as the strongest of the Allies, and that of course was due to the unique privilege of deciding when to tip the scales strategically, not when we were forced to.
So much has been built on that American privilege at all levels since then. The most glaringly obvious folly was interpreting this privilege as American Exceptionalism, because as a "leader of the free world" obviously that depends on how the rest of the world feels about it.
These are all things huge parts of the USA has dealt with for generations at this point.
But in the bigger picture? We're still futzing around at amateur hours. The quagmire of the Roman-Persian Wars lasted almost seven hundred years - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Persian_wars
What's stunning is that there doesn't seem to be a single way in which the United States has come out ahead on this conflict.
We have
* Established that US zero ability or will to protect it's 'allies' in region beyond Israel.
* Permanently ceded de facto control over the straits of Hormuz to Iran
* Significantly strengthened the hardliners in the Iranian regime and cleared the way for them to have absolute power by eliminating all moderates
* Spiked inflation at home and doubled down on pissing off pretty much every single country except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them
* Exploded the myth of US military superiority with US warplanes unable to approach Iran and the carrier groups unable to go anywhere near the straits.
And to think we got this in exchange for spending more on our military than the next few countries combined, and the military is asking for 1.5 Trillion more to continue to fight this war.
All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA.
I think we will look back on this as the US version of the Suez crisis, the beginning of the end of the US empire.
Is it about department of war using AI instead of people to decide things? Or Amazon's material losses in DC assets?
Win what? What is even going on? What is anybody (other than Iran, wanting to be left the hell alone) even after anymore? "We're going to make the Straits of Hormuz a US territory?! Are you out of your fucking mind? I mean, obviously yes, but Jesus Christ.
On the one hand, I'd love to see the regime in Iran fall, but on the other hand; absolutely insanity.
Thank you, finally, a name for our new state in the Mideast: "Jesus Christ"!
The state of Jesus Christ will be the 51st state of the great United States of America and will dominate the Mideast (in coordination with Israel, of course). It will consist of two geographical parts: Kharg Island and the Straits of Hormuz.
It is easy to end the war: drop bunker penetrating nukes on Iran nuclear weapon development sites but blame the explosions on the Iranians' incompetence. The headlines: "Iran made premature and poorly organized attempts to bring (untested and unsafe) nuclear weapons to the surface to hurl against the West/Great Satan. Iran self-destructed by rushing it's nuclear weapons into use without adequate testing." Blah, blah, blah!
3 or 4 "accidents" like this (including one or two in Tehran) should be enough to dissuade the Iranian people from continued support of their nuclear weapons program.
Small nukes with nuclear weapon signature modification are required b/c there are so many nuclear detonation detection locations in the world:
https://www.ctbto.org/our-work/international-monitoring-syst...)
But all this can be done. No magic involved, just good tech!
Yes, we noted that republicans and especially conservatives dont believe that in general. Applies to billionaires too.
> The U.S. should preserve the naval blockade while preparing to stand with Iranians when they again demand a future free from repression.”
If only US stood for liberarion. We and also Iranians know all too well US is trying to destroy democracies and install puppet dictators.
Is Venezuela democratic now? US literally threatened civilization destruction, it literally talked about keeping Iranian regime and just changing head for someone making oil deals. What a liberation.
Even liberal Iranians are now thankful IRCG defended them against external aggressor. That was what journalists who had contacts in Iran said. Congrats.
> “What do you mean by ‘win’?”
I doubt that the US regime leader and its military leaders know what a win looks like. Given that Trump and the regime have launched terror on countries to distract from their own accountability and to keep corruption at highs; a cynnical non-US reader/observer could say that they're "winning" at manipulating markets and lining their pockets through military corruption. Not mentioning local terrorism via ICE, the weaponising of the justice system, and corrupt lawsuits to shake down opponents and acquisition targets.
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I deliberately used "US regime" because why must Iran be labelled a regime when the US isn't?
The days of the US being a powerhouse will end, and we will remember it. Even their media are losing credibility.
The front page only has so much space anyways, and they can't flag everything forever.
And it is systematic. I yes, I read new so I dont buy the neutrality or randomnness of put of topic claims.
This is closer to the end of the Roman Republic — and strange events such as threats against Greenland and Canada can be interpreted in that context as well.
That is, we’re not seeing the downfall of the US empire but the downfall of the US republic that will eventually retreat to North America and retrench its position — hence moving Canada and Greenland (and Cuba and…) from informal relations with a hegemon to formal vassals of an empire. And emerge as an actual empire, much like Rome before.
While I understand the emotional temptation, using the word “empire” in place of “hegemony” can lead to inaccurate predictions — eg, total US collapse versus pullback for retrenchment and reformation.
This is why I exclusively use https://hckrnews.com as the "front page"
These is zero serious discussion on HN Iran threads, and anyone that posts not in line gets voted dead so just gave up on posting to them yet the people that complain about topics getting flagged dead never once complain when an entire view/side/political thought just get's voted dead instead of discussed nor raise the quality level of the discussion to make it no longer flag worthy.
This thread's content/quality level totally 100% deserves to be flagged.
For a mere worse case, a few decades ago is more than enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War
A quick peek at post-WWII military history - 150-ish countries that the US could bomb, multiply by 80 years, subtract actual bombings - suggests that "because it can" is a very weak description of Uncle Sam's bombing behavior.
And America was no saint during Carter's years - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Carter_a...
However, trump did basically say “I’m not a warmonger”. Nobody should have believed him, but he did make it very explicit, very cut and dry. But nothing is cut and dry with him.
But I expect Europe would help economically and Ukraine (the new military superpower in Europe) would help with planning and strategy and software Just like Japan, south Korea, Australia and New Zealand send support to the war against the muscovites.
US does not war for democracy anyway. It wars for own interests using democracy as a fig leaf or even intentionally destroying it.
It did defended democracy after WWII, really. It did helped Ukraine, initially. But then took autocrats sides and in between did quite a few definitely-not-pro-democracy wars or coups.
That’s my point:
The US has neither entered an empire nor the decline post-empire because it gained territorial holdings over the past century — that’s consistent with late stage republics as well.
Aside from it being uncensored, its default chronological sort makes it much easier to follow and see where I left off.
What it means is that not only is that the government position, but it's got wide support from Irish people. The position being: no support for Ukraine (only loans), Irish jobs and cheap gas are more important.
The alumina thing is pretty bad, and reflective of Irish peoples relatively confused understanding of geopolitics.
Now do the Greeks ;) one of the big problems with the EU is that it's a collection of national governments who have their own interests. Given that, they've done incredibly well on the Russian stuff.
And btw, Ireland does not have either Russian nor cheap gas.
And obviously knowledge from Ukraine would be of huge help for Taiwan.
Your USAID example is depressing though. You'd wish the cutbacks had been done in a more controlled manner. They seemed a bit rushed, to noones benefit.