Professor Robert Pape (University of Chicago) has 2 substacks where he have been discussing the exactly topic heavily, as well as having webinar/ live discussions with some heavy hitters about the topic. Unfortunately both of the substacks are both subscription-only
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.
Nukes are a pretext. The former Supreme Leader, who the US chose to assassinate, had put a religious fatwa against nuclear weapons. The nut and yahoo in Israel has been saying Iran is a few years away from nukes for 30 years, literally. [1] Clearly they kicked his dog or something, and he just finally found a big enough fool to make his invasion fantasies finally come true.
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.
It's hard to overstate how poorly this whole thing was thought out and executed. They obviously had no plan for what we'd do when Iran seized the strait. This is going to go down as the definitive beginning of the decline leading to the eventual end of US global hegemony. To think anyone ever mentioned defending Taiwan from China lol
Europe explicitly does not provide security guarantees to Taiwan. A large majority of Europeans would not support an intervention. Seen from here sure it would be a loss for Democracy, but there are bigger problems today like climate change and global stability. War for and democracy at all costs narratives doesn’t work like in the US.
Let me check if I get this right: you're making the argument that if USA won't defend Taiwan, Ukraine/Europe/Canada/Japan/S-Korea/Australia will?
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)
What? You want some news links over Ireland's position at the EU about their magnesium and Russian gas imports?
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.
Support for Ukraine from USA is almost zero now and they still hold up and event advance with help from Europe.
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.
Well, Iran is a huge mess, but in terms of strategic lessons, it actually tips the balance closer to "Taiwan, with US help and proper preparation, can deny China control of the strait of Taiwan" (and vice versa, of course). It's clear that asymmetric warfare is good now at denying access to ocean and turning it into no-man's-zone.
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.
> actually tips the balance closer to "Taiwan, with US help and proper preparation, can deny China control of the strait of Taiwan"
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.
Yes, the US is, first and foremost, built of warmongers. The military is a multi-trillion dollar industry, it’s always been about economics.
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.
Is your phrase "stops bombing countries just because it can" shorthand for something like "America is a too-often-immoral-or-incompetent global superpower"?
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.
It's about the slow acceptance of what many saw as an entirely predictable and already foreseen outcome before the US dropped the first bomb on Iran :/
Could you make an HN moment out of the climate, belly fat discussions? You could have at least read the article instead of asking about things not mentioned.
Aaaaaand right on cue the flagging brigade promptly flagged this to get it off the front page.
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.
Look at the quality of discussion here. It's all just 'America is dead/dying'. Nothing of note. No talking about the crazy inflation in Iran, the government officials discussions on how they can't afford replacing their naval routes with land routes. The current distress in Iran about raising the subsidized gas prices, and how Iran is using more gas than they are creating/importing. No awareness/comparison/context of understanding of Vietnam and it's much greater impact on the Nation/it's understanding of self/understand of it's ability to project power.
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.
Well, people don't want to talk politics, but will gladly engage in climate conversations and other random things that are affected by politics, because the one thing where people are chosen to lead on popularity than merit is not interesting while it affects us and is currently causing more deaths than anything else (DOGE defunding, 'eradicated' viruses returning, unauthorised wars).
The front page only has so much space anyways, and they can't flag everything forever.
I agree with you. When I say they don't want to talk politics, it's more to say that Americans, which I presume makes the most of HN's readership; are embarassed by their political decisions, and would rather censor discussion than accept what the world sees of them and their leaders.
The ruling class (both foreign and domestic) are struggling on many fronts with the suppression of public dialog. HN isn't one of those places, here you can just press a button a few times ~ and the uni-party will come out victorious once again to bring the world another round of the same earth shaking bullshit.
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.
The transformation from Roman republic to Roman empire was mainly about how the top-level government is organized. It was not about the relations with vassals/periphery. The Roman republic was as imperialistic as empire in this regard. In fact, most of the Roman conquering was already done when the republic ended.
To add to this, in the same way that Rome and the Roman Empire in some ways lived on through the Catholic Church, I think the 'church of capitalism' will mean that the American empire lives in far far into the future, and retains some of its power.
This is going to leave a mark for centuries, history books are going to look back on this period in the US in complete dismay and horror for what this country continues to do.
As an American, and from my point of view, this is a headline moment where this country commits to its slide to just a middling country with "only" 380 million people mismanaged to inefficiency and un competitiveness and brain drain. The whole rest of the world has their own agency and is wising up to the fact that the US is limited to financial instruments and 5-13 functional aircraft carriers to project force. Soft power and goodwill is spent and we're just ignorant bullies who elected a rapist twice and can't be trusted
> The whole rest of the world has their own agency and is wising up to the fact that the US is limited to financial instruments and 5-13 functional aircraft carriers to project force. Soft power and goodwill is spent and we're just ignorant bullies who elected a rapist twice and can't be trusted
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.
Did you miss the 1970s and the impact of Vietnam (that lasted through to the 90s for that generation)? The malaise about American from the 70s through the 80s? The corporate raiders of the 80s and the destruction of so many Americans lives in that period? The rust belt? Many many Americans of older generations losing their pensions because of Wall Street firms bs destruction of companies? The brain drain from the majority of the US into a few metro areas?
These are all things huge parts of the USA has dealt with for generations at this point.
We have the best quagmires. No one does quagmires like we do. You've never seen a quagmire like an American quagmire. Putin tells me he wishes Russia could do a quagmire as good as this, but they can't. Europe hasn't had a good quagmire in years, they don't even know how to make them anymore. Quagmires like this are only made in America.
> No one seems to have a solid strategy to win the war in Iran.
> “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.
---
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.
> “I don’t believe that if you break it you necessarily own it,” one such hawk, a former U.S. official, told me when I asked if the U.S. would be responsible for fixing a failed Iran
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.
Professor Robert Pape (University of Chicago) has 2 substacks where he have been discussing the exactly topic heavily, as well as having webinar/ live discussions with some heavy hitters about the topic. Unfortunately both of the substacks are both subscription-only
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.
Does China or India care if Iran gets nuke as much the US does?
Nukes are a pretext. The former Supreme Leader, who the US chose to assassinate, had put a religious fatwa against nuclear weapons. The nut and yahoo in Israel has been saying Iran is a few years away from nukes for 30 years, literally. [1] Clearly they kicked his dog or something, and he just finally found a big enough fool to make his invasion fantasies finally come true.
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.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Vc_NanZ-Jos
Yes, because that increases the likelihood of Japan, Korea, Ukraine and even Taiwan getting nuke.
Robert Pape has been giving interviews on Mario Nawfal’s channel, among others.
I also appreciate his perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/@MarioNawfal/search?query=Robert+pap...
It's hard to overstate how poorly this whole thing was thought out and executed. They obviously had no plan for what we'd do when Iran seized the strait. This is going to go down as the definitive beginning of the decline leading to the eventual end of US global hegemony. To think anyone ever mentioned defending Taiwan from China lol
This "Strait of Hormuz War" is the "Suez Crisis of 1956" for the US Empire. You know, the one that ended the British Empire.
> To think anyone ever mentioned defending Taiwan from China lol
There are still countries willing to defend democracy out there - Ukraine/Europe/Canada/Japan/S-Korea/Australia.
Just not USA.
Europe explicitly does not provide security guarantees to Taiwan. A large majority of Europeans would not support an intervention. Seen from here sure it would be a loss for Democracy, but there are bigger problems today like climate change and global stability. War for and democracy at all costs narratives doesn’t work like in the US.
Let me check if I get this right: you're making the argument that if USA won't defend Taiwan, Ukraine/Europe/Canada/Japan/S-Korea/Australia will?
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)
The litmus test for where a country stands on international issues boils down to a conversation you had with some lads over pints?
What? You want some news links over Ireland's position at the EU about their magnesium and Russian gas imports?
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.
Support for Ukraine from USA is almost zero now and they still hold up and event advance with help from Europe.
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.
[dead]
Your phrasing implies that someone with real authority tried to think it out, and had realistic plans.
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.
Well, Iran is a huge mess, but in terms of strategic lessons, it actually tips the balance closer to "Taiwan, with US help and proper preparation, can deny China control of the strait of Taiwan" (and vice versa, of course). It's clear that asymmetric warfare is good now at denying access to ocean and turning it into no-man's-zone.
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.
> actually tips the balance closer to "Taiwan, with US help and proper preparation, can deny China control of the strait of Taiwan"
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.
Is Taiwan going to construct a hundred secret underground missile and drone cities like Iran? It would take decades to make them in the best case.
If anything, Iran has proved that is what they should be doing right now.
Yes — the US has helped Taiwan build them all over their mountains.
Crazy idea: what if the US starts minding its own business and stops bombing countries just because it can?
That’s not the AIPAC way, and they are the ones driving right now. Until Congress is cleared out of these scum bags then nothing will change.
How many hours do you think our current President could stick to that strategy, if it didn't instantly - Poof! Magic! - make everything better?
Its not a Trump issue. With the exception of Jimmy Carter, every US president since WW2 bombed something or someone.
Yes, the US is, first and foremost, built of warmongers. The military is a multi-trillion dollar industry, it’s always been about economics.
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.
Is your phrase "stops bombing countries just because it can" shorthand for something like "America is a too-often-immoral-or-incompetent global superpower"?
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...
[dead]
That's what Trump told everyone during the campaign. Then, after he got elected, well, he changed his mind, I guess.
Well if it isn't the time for a "protest" song ! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NonW9jozKYg
I'm down for a good political rant as much as the next guy but I can't make an HN moment in this.
Is it about department of war using AI instead of people to decide things? Or Amazon's material losses in DC assets?
One can post practically anything to HN it doesnt have to be just purely about technology.
It's about the slow acceptance of what many saw as an entirely predictable and already foreseen outcome before the US dropped the first bomb on Iran :/
Could you make an HN moment out of the climate, belly fat discussions? You could have at least read the article instead of asking about things not mentioned.
[dead]
Aaaaaand right on cue the flagging brigade promptly flagged this to get it off the front page.
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.
Look at the quality of discussion here. It's all just 'America is dead/dying'. Nothing of note. No talking about the crazy inflation in Iran, the government officials discussions on how they can't afford replacing their naval routes with land routes. The current distress in Iran about raising the subsidized gas prices, and how Iran is using more gas than they are creating/importing. No awareness/comparison/context of understanding of Vietnam and it's much greater impact on the Nation/it's understanding of self/understand of it's ability to project power.
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.
Well, people don't want to talk politics, but will gladly engage in climate conversations and other random things that are affected by politics, because the one thing where people are chosen to lead on popularity than merit is not interesting while it affects us and is currently causing more deaths than anything else (DOGE defunding, 'eradicated' viruses returning, unauthorised wars).
The front page only has so much space anyways, and they can't flag everything forever.
People talk politics and want to talk politics here. But, there are groups of people who flag politically uncomfortable stories.
And it is systematic. I yes, I read new so I dont buy the neutrality or randomnness of put of topic claims.
I agree with you. When I say they don't want to talk politics, it's more to say that Americans, which I presume makes the most of HN's readership; are embarassed by their political decisions, and would rather censor discussion than accept what the world sees of them and their leaders.
The ruling class (both foreign and domestic) are struggling on many fronts with the suppression of public dialog. HN isn't one of those places, here you can just press a button a few times ~ and the uni-party will come out victorious once again to bring the world another round of the same earth shaking bullshit.
> Aaaaaand right on cue the flagging brigade promptly flagged this to get it off the front page.
This is why I exclusively use https://hckrnews.com as the "front page"
After many years of using that, the few times when I manually get to news.ycombinator.com I find it unreadable haha. Crazy how ones brain adapts.
Agreed.
Aside from it being uncensored, its default chronological sort makes it much easier to follow and see where I left off.
I agree with you right until the end:
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.
The transformation from Roman republic to Roman empire was mainly about how the top-level government is organized. It was not about the relations with vassals/periphery. The Roman republic was as imperialistic as empire in this regard. In fact, most of the Roman conquering was already done when the republic ended.
To add to this, in the same way that Rome and the Roman Empire in some ways lived on through the Catholic Church, I think the 'church of capitalism' will mean that the American empire lives in far far into the future, and retains some of its power.
This is going to leave a mark for centuries, history books are going to look back on this period in the US in complete dismay and horror for what this country continues to do. As an American, and from my point of view, this is a headline moment where this country commits to its slide to just a middling country with "only" 380 million people mismanaged to inefficiency and un competitiveness and brain drain. The whole rest of the world has their own agency and is wising up to the fact that the US is limited to financial instruments and 5-13 functional aircraft carriers to project force. Soft power and goodwill is spent and we're just ignorant bullies who elected a rapist twice and can't be trusted
> The whole rest of the world has their own agency and is wising up to the fact that the US is limited to financial instruments and 5-13 functional aircraft carriers to project force. Soft power and goodwill is spent and we're just ignorant bullies who elected a rapist twice and can't be trusted
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.
Did you miss the 1970s and the impact of Vietnam (that lasted through to the 90s for that generation)? The malaise about American from the 70s through the 80s? The corporate raiders of the 80s and the destruction of so many Americans lives in that period? The rust belt? Many many Americans of older generations losing their pensions because of Wall Street firms bs destruction of companies? The brain drain from the majority of the US into a few metro areas?
These are all things huge parts of the USA has dealt with for generations at this point.
We have the best quagmires. No one does quagmires like we do. You've never seen a quagmire like an American quagmire. Putin tells me he wishes Russia could do a quagmire as good as this, but they can't. Europe hasn't had a good quagmire in years, they don't even know how to make them anymore. Quagmires like this are only made in America.
From the PoV of our enemies and rivals, perhaps.
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
> No one seems to have a solid strategy to win the war in Iran.
> “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.
---
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.
> “I don’t believe that if you break it you necessarily own it,” one such hawk, a former U.S. official, told me when I asked if the U.S. would be responsible for fixing a failed Iran
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.
[dead]