Goodguy
40m ago
I'm sure that Putin and Xi also say the Russian and Chinese equivalents of "death to America", but I don't worry about the possibility of a Russian or Chinese nuclear first strike on the US.
India and Pakistan have attacked each other through proxies before, yet neither has launched a nuclear first strike on the other despite extreme levels of mutual hatred and the fact that both have nuclear weapons.
Goodguy
47m ago
They do want nukes. No matter what one's opinion about the war is, and mine is against it, the fact is that they clearly want nukes. They would be insane not to want nukes. Having nukes is just better in almost every way than not having nukes, if you can afford the high price tag of building and maintaining them. For Iran's government nukes are the only possible way of guaranteeing their system's survival, other than a Russian or Chinese commitment to defend them in case of war, which does not seem to be forthcoming.
Goodguy
53m ago
I disagree. They cannot actually resist invasion without them. They are perpetually one hawkish US administration that has enough political capital away from being invaded and replaced.
If the US committed to a ground invasion of Iran, the US would easily and quickly topple Iran's government. It would be like a world heavyweight boxing champion fighting a scrawny 15 year old. US soldiers would be in Tehran within a few weeks of the start of the conflict. What would follow would, from the point of view of the current Iranian government, be horrible. They have seen what happened to Saddam and to Gaddafi. They would be turned over to their political opponents, put on trial, their lives as they knew it over, some possibly executed. They're in danger of assassination every day now, but at least they still have power and the emotional satisfaction of not having been defeated. A US invasion would be the end of everything for them.
Would they like to use nuclear weapons in support of their global Islamic revolution? Sure. Would they actually use nuclear weapons in a first strike? I doubt it. When I look at their actual foreign policy in the recent decades, they haven't been acting like ISIS-type fanatics. The most reckless thing they did was to support Hamas too much, and then Hamas massacred a bunch of Israeli civilians, which made Israel unite even more than before around the goal of destroying them by any means necessary. But that does not necessarily mean that they follow a fanatical foreign policy any more than the fact that the US supported an Indonesian government that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the 1960s means that the 1960s US was following a fanatical foreign policy.
Goodguy
1hr ago
That doesn't worry me any more than I worry about the slight chance of getting hit by lightning when I walk outside while it's raining.
I don't think Iran having nukes, in and of itself, would be costly for me. I estimate the chance of a nuclear-armed Iran using nuclear weapons against the US to be extremely low unless the US for some reason launches an existential war against the nuclear-armed Iran, which I also think would be very unlikely to happen.
As for a nuclear-armed Iran's ability to disrupt global shipping, I also do not care about that. A nuclear-armed Iran would likely prefer to be integrated with the global economy, just as it prefers that now over being sanctioned, and would not benefit from being heavily sanctioned if it tried to strong-arm itself into control of the Strait of Hormuz.
If Iran had nuclear weapons, it would be able to more successfully deter US and Israeli geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East, but I don't care about those ambitions.
The only thing that actually bothers me about the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran is that having nuclear weapons could help to stabilize the Iranian government and its authoritarian chuddism, with negative consequences for its population. But then, the current war has so far also been bad for the Iranian population. So far they are getting a really bad deal: getting bombed, their economy damaged, but without the government being replaced by a better one. And that seems unlikely to change barring a US ground invasion or a sudden collapse in the government's structural integrity. So it's not like the US is actually pursuing a policy that is focused on helping the Iranians to get a better government.
Goodguy
1hr ago
I am skeptical of that theory, for two reasons:
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The civilizations most historically associated with circumcision did not, for the most part, live in deserts. The parts of ancient Egypt and the Levant where the vast majority of the population lived were not desert. Arabia was more desert-like but even there, most of the population in ancient times were not desert-dwellers.
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I don't know from direct experience, but I think that one could clean sand out of one's foreskin with a very small amount of water.
Goodguy
2hr ago
Probably, but most people of every political persuasion are extremely un-knowledgeable about military affairs. I think that smart people who follow military affairs knew how this war would go militarily because they paid attention the last few recent wars between the US/Israel and Iran. It's gone largely as I expected it to go, from a military point of view. Actually, Iran has done better than I expected. I did not expect them to still be capable of regularly launching effective strikes against their enemies after a month of US and Israeli air strikes.
Goodguy
2hr ago
My understanding based on my very vague knowledge of the relevant history is that in the US, conservatism became entwined with free-market capitalism ideology only around the 1940s, in large part as a reaction to the New Deal and communism. So it is not too surprising that eventually conservatism is becoming partly un-entwined from it.
But I am sure that the real history is much more complex than that.
Goodguy
3d ago
Whatever their conventional military abilities are, the US cannot do whatever it wants in the territories of Russia and China without a high chance of getting nuked. Thus the US does not have the military power to do whatever it wants in the world.
Goodguy
3d ago
That's interesting. I'm not an expert in the topic, but my reading it seems to me that there is a rich history of political leaders ignoring the Catholic hierarchy's orders. Maybe political leaders, historically, even ignored its orders more often than they followed them, though I really don't know.
“America,” Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
If this story is true, did Colby think that the cardinal is not aware of the military abilities of Russia and China?
Goodguy
3d ago
Good point. There weren't any US casualties in the aftermath from what I recall at least, but there was definitely use of military force.
I despise Pete Hegseth, but I don't see much reason to blame him for the conduct of the war. The military performed very well from what I can tell, it's just probably not possible for the current US military to open the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping without either a ground invasion or a several months' long air campaign, no matter how brilliant the leadership is. Based on how Hegseth acts, I suspect that he would have been all for a ground invasion.
I should probably also say that I don't give Hegseth any credit for the conduct of the war, either. You could have put a 10 year old in his position at the start of the war, and the war would probably have proceeded pretty much the same as it did.
In certain cases, you can just bomb and assassinate the enemy into submission pretty quickly and win that way. Iran happens to not be one of those cases because its political structure turns out to be more resilient and stable than many people thought and it has the Strait of Hormuz card. Of course, the latter should have been obvious to every US leader at the start of the war.
I feel like not enough people are talking about how Trump screwed over anti-regime Iranians who live in Iran. They got bombed, there has been no regime change, and now the regime is probably going to be even more wary of dissent than it was before the war.
Goodguy
4d ago
Most recent American wars didn't turn into forever wars, though. The first Bush's Gulf War, Clinton's Kosovo War, Obama's Libya war. I'm not a fan of any of those wars, but to be fair to those Presidents, they managed to get in and get out pretty quickly.
I think this civilian control of the military is normally a good thing, but there are edge cases: for example, I suppose it's possible that the President might order the military to commit some atrocity that is not clearly illegal under relevant law, but is clearly immoral. The military refusing an order is, I think, in most cases not as bad as what civilian control of the military is mainly intended to prevent, which is the military taking control of the country and supplanting the civilian authorities.
Goodguy
4d ago
The thing is, there's no way to shift blame away from Trump onto Israel without making Trump look weak in the process, and MAGA does not want to make Trump look weak. I think that most of MAGA, the rank and file rather than the strategists, also genuinely don't think Trump did anything bad or wrong in this war.
Goodguy
4d ago
In my observation, theories about Israel being a subversive and negative force in US politics are about equally common on the left and the right.
The US military has caused vastly more destruction to the Iranian leadership and military than the Iranian military has caused to the US leadership and military. This is just an objective fact. I'm not rooting for the US in this war, in case you're curious, though I'm not rooting for the Iranian government either. Actually I'd be pretty happy if Trump, Hegseth, and their entire crew somehow got blown up by an Iranian bomb tomorrow, although my happiness would be tempered by the knowledge that this would almost certainly lead to a devastating retaliation against Iran, and also by the knowledge that the Iranian leaders are complete scumbags to their own population. The thing is, the US military is so large and powerful that the lost soldiers and aircraft and so on that Iran has caused is just a tiny scratch. The carriers might be hiding, but that's because there is no compelling need for them to come closer that is worth, to the Trump administration, the bad optics of seeing a carrier on fire. In an existential war, they would come out. Same with the bases, the only reason they've been evacuated is because this is a war of choice for the US, not an existential war.
I'm not saying that Iran is losing strategically, although I think that is a complex and very fast-evolving matter. Note that I said "in terms of pure military-on-military action the US is dominating". Which is true, it's like a grown man kicking the shit out of an infant.
Goodguy
4d ago
Unless the Chinese leaders are total idiots, I think they probably realized many years ago that effective closure of all of their sea-going trade routes is a likely outcome of an attempt to invade Taiwan. So I doubt that the Iran war has changed their calculus in that regard. I'm sure that they have been very busy analyzing the war to get other kinds of information, though.
I don't know if China has any serious intention of attempting to grab Taiwan, but certainly they have plans drawn up for how to go about it if they do decide to try. My guess is that, unless they are total idiots, they have baked in the assumption that they will lose most or all sea-going trade for the duration of the war, and they might be banking on the assumption that their industrial might will compel countries to trade with them again after the war concludes. Not all countries, but at least enough countries that the invasion may end up having been worthwhile.
If I were the Chinese leaders, though, I probably wouldn't try an invasion regardless of how the Iran war is going. There is just not enough possible gain given the risk.
Goodguy
5d ago
One possible negative consequence of the Iran war that I haven't seen talked about much is that it might encourage both the American establishment and the American public to think too lightly of war with China. More the latter than the former, really - I am sure that the former at least understand the danger of nuclear war and have no interest in getting personally hit by nuclear weapons. But even they might become a bit too reckless as a result of these easy military victories. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the public has very little understanding of military affairs and probably don't really understand the difference in power between China and every other US rival. The way I would put it, the Iran war is like an NBA team playing a college team, maybe even a high school team. Yes, Iran is keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed and are pulling off the occasional successful strike against Israel and the Gulf countries. But that is happening because they are lucky in terms of geography to be sitting next to one of the world's most economically important waterways and are also right next to the Gulf countries. In terms of pure military-on-military action, the US military is dominating while suffering barely a scratch.
War against China would be like an NBA team playing another NBA team, maybe a weaker NBA team but an NBA team nonetheless. There is a danger of insufficient caution causing a series of minor escalations to blossom into full-scale war against China.
Goodguy
5d ago
Chronologically speaking, it's more like allowing the openly bloodthirsty (previous Presidents probably weren't saints in that regard, but generally kept their mouths shut) to occupy the government is the punishment for allowing endless immigration.
I kind of have the sense that Trump is actually going insane, or at least his emotional control over himself is slipping. It's not that he is bombing Iran - that isn't very different from normal US foreign policy. And it's not that he is being bombastic - he has always been bombastic. But his pronouncements lately have had a very deranged and openly sadistic frothing-at-the-mouth quality that is noticeably different from his usual previous posting style.
I don't think that he is just talking like this for strategic purposes. His base likes the bombast but would probably prefer a kind of bombast that seemed more composed and less emotional. They like the idea of "Trump the strong man", not "Trump the ranting lunatic". As for Iran, after having experienced assassinations and bombings for weeks, there is no reason why they would not believe a threat that was worded more calmly. If anything, I think a calm-worded threat would probably seem more plausible to them. I can't think of any way in which frothing at the mouth would help manipulate the stock market any more than a calmer tone would, either.
Goodguy
6d ago
I know very little about cars. What is it about highly computerized cars that makes automobile manufacturers want to manufacture them? I doubt there was ever much demand for computerized cars before the manufacturers began to make them, but I could be wrong of course. Do customers actually get some extra value out of their cars being computerized? Is it more that the manufacturers like being able to easily get data from their cars and change the cars' behavior without having to modify hardware?
If one saw the kinds of things that Indians and Pakistanis regularly say about each other, one could expect there to have been a nuclear war between the two countries by now. Yet there has not been one, even though both have been nuclear-armed since 1998 and they actually fought a conventional war recently.
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