Shakes
16d ago
Mostly bargaining chip, deterrence, and option to try to create a nuclear weapon in the future. That is not the same as "they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon now"
This is some kind of conjugated tense more subtle than even the most complicated of romance languages. What's the meaningful difference between "they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon [{now}]" and "they are trying to develop [{now}] the ability to develop a nuclear weapon [{in the future}]" -- ? I'm not asking this question now by the way I'm trying to ask this question in the future.
Shakes
16d ago
If Iran has the ability to "destroy the global economy" whenever they want then this conflict was coming sooner or later because the rest of the world actually can't afford to cede that power to a rogue state. It's actually the most rational war in the world.
a strategy which won't harm them terribly much due to their continued ability to sell oil to China
No no no you're not understanding how war works. War is not America plays pretend. If there's an oil pipeline somewhere that allows Iran to hold out forever -- America will bomb it! Iran can't stop us. America will simply destroy Iran. The only reason America hasn't done that already is our charity. We want Iran to be able to pick up the pieces after they surrender and the war is over. But if the Iranians are delusional or fanatical enough to hold out we will simply end their capacity to function like a modern state. If the only two alternatives are "Iran wrecks the Global Economy" or "The Global Economy wrecks Iran," which do we think Donald Trump is picking?
Shakes
16d ago
Well I appreciate you being a good sport about my rant and screed but I don't think any analysis of America that concludes it has no civilization is compelling. I could accept an argument that American civilization is an extension of European civilization, but that's just about the same thing. America has all the hallmarks of high culture and deep habits, except perhaps for a time measured in millennia (but if that's all civilization is then I'm not sure it matters much as a concept, it certainly doesn't explain much about what's in front of us with Iran).
Which brings me to the part of my post that was actually the point, and which neither of you addressed: the strategic argument. Forget whether Clemenceau was rude. Forget whether I'm being snobbish, I won't try and justify that further as I know it won't work (and no, Spengler didn't put me up to this). The question on the table is simple: should Europe give America unconditional support in its Iran campaign, or should it use its leverage: basing rights, logistics, diplomatic cover, to extract concessions on Ukraine and tariffs?
Mostly I didn't address this because I don't think the civilization question has much to do with it.
Insofar as we can discuss this, I think this is a question for Europeans to decide. I'm actually fairly appreciative of Europe in general and I respect their ability to choose. I'm just fairly convinced from everything I know about Europe that they're fairly deluded about the nature of their relationship with America. Europe is not seeing things rationally. Europe fails to understand America at all.
America pays the vast majority of Europe's defense costs. America supplies weapons and planes and intel that are beyond what Europe can produce on its own. America guarantees the supply of oil and natural gas. America provides the security framework that keeps Europe together instead of devolving into the old squabbles and wars. It's not all charity but it does come at some cost to us. Instead of ever appreciating it or trying to honestly assess the trade-offs, America is met with derision, scorn, tariffs, trade barriers, condescension, etc. It is frankly a little deluded of Europe, as see this:
If European bases are so essential to American force projection that Spain's wobble caused a crisis within days
We don't need Spain's bases to project force in the Middle East. We don't need Spain at all. We have bases there, it would be nice and convenient to use them, but American defense does not depend on Spain in this sense. It's laughable. Ok, so Spain wants out? Who keeps the sea lanes safe? Who keeps the oil flowing? Spain doesn't want American bases to be used for icky ugly things like war, ok, does that mean Spain will raise its own navy to protect its ships from pirates? No, because of course America will continue to do that, and Spain will gladly take advantage of it, as long as they don't have to confront the reality of what that means. It's delusional. Spain has no leverage over America. Believe me that this thinking inspires a lot of resentment in America and will probably ultimately kill NATO, unless Donald Trump successfully renegotiates it so that Europe actually starts to pay some of what they were supposed to pay all along.
The claim that America could walk away tomorrow and it would be Europe's problem, not the Americans well right there you're making my argument for me. If that's how America sees the relationship, then Europe has no obligation of loyalty either, and should negotiate accordingly. You can't simultaneously say "we do this for you" and "we don't need you." Pick one. The cakeism is very "American".
Yeah that's right Americans like having their cake and eating it there's no denying it. Except in this case it's Europe that gets to have its cake and eat it: we pay for your defense and then you put conditions on how we're allowed to do it. Ok then, walk away. You guys can deal with Russia, you guys can fix the Gulf. Which won't actually happen anyways -- America will find other allies in Europe because we don't really need the present order to survive. You do.
Shakes
17d ago
Once you realize that America as a country has never had civilisation in the sense a European, a Chinese, or even dare I say, a Persian, would understand it,
Not only does this not make sense but it doesn’t explain anything. America has: the telephone, the light bulb, the computer, the airplane, eggs Benedict, jazz, cell phones, hamburgers, the Washington Monument, the skyscraper, speakeasies, brunch, baseball, Constitutional Democracy, mass education, social security, the automobile, Hollywood, the Golden Gate Bridge, Supreme Courts, southern food, basketball, Detroit, New York, California, Texas, television, the nuclear bomb, the nuclear bomb!
What are we talking about, am I being baited, did Spengler put you up to this? America has no civilization? America invented the modern world! Every country in the world that attempts to look down on us is using criteria America INVENTED. Europeans get more degrees? America invented mass education with the GI bill. Travel and leisure? We invented airlines, the five day work week, paid vacation. Democracy?
We have a beautiful civilization, Times Square, the Chicago World Fair 1893, the National Mall, Route 66, the Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, apple pie. Many things are in decline to the point that we’ve forgotten how the White House was decorated in the Gilded Age and misremembered it as a ranch home aesthetic but America is a beautiful place.
We went to the moon! The moon!
Clemenceau is a priggish French asshole (whose pride at Versailles gave us World War II) of the worst type of French snobbery for which we forgive them anyways because we admire the French and respect their contributions to America. But what do they know! They are sitting in the corner watching while America remakes the world in our own image and the best they have now is to reinvent the definition of civilization with fake word games.
What is the idea that America is destroying Tehran out of some sort of civilizational jealousy? Or that we don’t understand the world so that we lash out at it? No it’s Europe that doesn’t understand it’s Iran that doesn’t understand. There are no concessions for you to extract. America is the world power because we have a spirit that nobody else in the world has even if I prefer French bakeries and Spanish wine. Wha are we talking about? Europe has no concessions to extract because America pays for their defense and in exchange they put tariffs and trade barriers up against us while proclaiming that their civilization is superior. Ok, try it, it will go as well as it went when Spain tried denying us our bases a week ago, what are you have no power to extract anything. This whole military operation is a favor to you because we’re not the ones who get screwed if the straits of Hormuz close, we could close down all our bases tomorrow and it would be your world in chaos, not ours.
What’s the thanks we get? To be lectured on how we don’t understand anything because we don’t have a real civilization and are just barbarians who need red meat? The civilization-wreckers are the barbarians in Tehran who want to bomb everyone and the loafers in Europe who believe in their own superiority but refuse to do anything to maintain it. Decadence? Europeans want to shut down their nuclear reactors, buy all their oil from Putin, then complain that America wrecks everything it touches. That’s decadence!
Shakes
17d ago
There is not evidence of rape, though there is evidence that Israelis rape Palestinian prisoners;
I just can’t take this credibly, I think you’ve been propagandized honestly, I know that every claim involving Israel is hotly contested but if you think all evidence of rape committed by terrorists who kidnapped civilians is a priori implausible I would at least expect you to admit such an implausible frame.
Iran was never hostile to us
The Iranian regime was founded on hostility to America. They fund Hamas and Hezbollah, they chant Death to America, they support Russia and China, they are one of our number one enemies. I don’t even know what you could mean
Shakes
17d ago
I just think this is sophism. You can break down each event into constituent parts and assert an equivalence but everybody casually understands the difference.
The Palestinians sent war fighters to attack kidnap and rape a civilian festival. They did this proudly.
The US attacked the leaders of a hostile country after negotiations broke down. In the process of striking that country’s military targets a school was bombed, in the fog of war, because it was next to a military target, which both sides are now denying responsibility for.
Not sorry, not the same, not remotely the same. There is no moral equivalence between terrorism and accidents. There is no moral equivalence between evil regimes that want to kill us and the leader of the free world wanting to kill evil regimes.
Shakes
17d ago
I think this is sophism. And to play nice with the rules here, I’ll elaborate as far as to say that obviously terrorists launching a sneak attack on a civilian festival during a time of peace is different from a missile accidentally hitting a civilian target in the fog of war. Obviously.
Shakes
17d ago
Bombing an apartment in Bahrain is not proportional to bombing an American military base in Bahrain. Of course that doesn’t even address my point which is that Iran has little ability to harm Americans.
Shakes
17d ago
Chris Murphy is not a neutral observer, he’s a senator on the anti-Trump team who stands to benefit politically if the story is “Trump has no plan”.
Shakes
17d ago
Of course, it's hard to say here because the Trump administration can not articulate what it wants.
Yeah there’s your problem you just need to listen to Donald Trump more:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/read-trumps-full-statement-on-iran-attack
- Destroy Iran’s nuclear capacities
- Destroy Iran’s capacity to build missiles
- Destroy Iran’s capacity to threaten the lives of Americans
Adding other materials (November’s National Security Statement, Abraham Accords, Trump’s speech to the UN etc.) it’s like this: Trump has negotiated a new security framework for the Middle East on which all powers agree. Relationships with Israel have been normalized. Hamas and Hezbollah have been destroyed. The only threat to a lasting peace in the Middle East is Iran. So their capacity to threaten the Middle East is being destroyed.
I don’t know what else to tell you, this is all stuff said out loud in treaties and speeches and I think everyone chooses to pretend Trump just isn’t worth listening to. Maybe when he said we were going to destroy Iran’s missile industry he was just being extra figurative.
These are the people who decided we needed to threaten a close ally to gain access to territory we already have access to.
I’m choosing to interpret this as a reference to Diego Garcia, which is a pretty apt lesson in why European powers are not reliable partners. Or maybe you meant Trump threatening Spain after they refused to let us use our bases there to stage attacks in Iran? It’s hard to tell, there are so many examples that make my argument for me.
I wouldn't dismiss the possibility, though I think it's more likely that the lack of quality institutions highlights the prevalence of incompetence more.
By the way how did we end up with incompetent institutions when apparently we used to be lead by people smarter than Trump?
Shakes
17d ago
Notably, this is a war between the countries that signed the deal to enforce its terms on a country that didn’t.
Shakes
17d ago
That doesn't meaningfully address what I said, which is that killing your enemies works great when you don't have lib NGOs whispering in your ear. This is not actually the Afghanistan and Vietnam playbook. Americans are not going to die for bacha bazi rings and opium dens, we're simply going to kill the people who want to kill us.
The new Ayatollah is
-- made of cardboard.
Shakes
18d ago
Well if Iran was going to destroy Israel anyways and it was only a matter of time then we don't need the phantom of "the Israel Lobby" to explain why America would rather just go to war
Shakes
18d ago
Please explain why it benefits Putin to supply Iran with infinite Shaheds to keep oil from flowing through the Strait. Is destroying China's access to oil all part of his master plan? A minute ago the theory was that Iran targeting the Strait was disastrous for the global economy -- maybe that's good for Russia?
Shakes
18d ago
Can you explain why the Israel Lobby manipulated us into a situation where they get nuked? That doesn't sound very smart of them
Shakes
18d ago
If killing leaders was a sign of success the US defeated the taliban 10x over.
We did. Then we stationed American soldiers in Afghanistan, gave them rules of engagement that prevented them from killing anybody, and spent billions of dollars on liberal NGO projects that did things like feminist opera in Kabul. We're not doing that anymore.
The US replaced the Ayatollah with his son.
So far all that's been produced is a cardboard cutout.
The US largely abandoned the gulf states and let them fend for themselves.
The Gulf states asked us to do this.
The Epstein fury
Oh.
Shakes
18d ago
If America destroys all Iran's missile bases and ports it doesn't matter if they hole up in the mountains. They can do that forever, it doesn't matter. It would be nice if the Mullahs were removed from power and Iran was a fair and friendly country again. But we don't need that to happen to win.
Shakes
18d ago
In previous conflicts they were not able to reign missiles down on Tel Aviv.
They didn't have to because Hezbollah and Hamas did it for them. But they can't now, because we destroyed them.
Shakes
18d ago
Thankfully the CIA is advising Trump and not two random real estate developers and a guy with a Kafir tattoo written under his Deus Vult tattoo.
One of those real estate developers negotiated the most comprehensive peace in the Middle East in generations. "Jared Kushner is advising Donald Trump" is not actually a slam-dunk proof that America doesn't have a sense of what it's doing in the Middle East.
Shakes
18d ago
Blowing a bunch of stuff up and leaving is not victory. Neither is a situation in which the US destroys quality of life for ordinary Iranians but the same IRI regime holds power.
Why is that not a victory? Who says it's not? You? A situation in which the United States can destroy Iran's government and military at will, and Iran can't respond, is a total victory.
This is so obviously true you can only reframe that as "some ape-brained dominance display". Ok, so Trump and Hegseth are baboons who can't formulate or even imagine goals so you don't have to try to understand it, got it. What about Israel? What about Saudi Arabia? Those are two countries that wanted to start this war, are they irrational too? Did Benjamin Netanyahu and MBS have no sense of "things like 'consequences' and 'strategic objectives'"? Maybe everyone in the Middle East is incompetent? Incapable of first-order thinking? Maybe they should read The Motte?
I got downvoted the last time I said this in a different discussion so I want to elaborate: I consider this form of thinking to be a form of TDS. It reduces a complex geopolitical situation into a farce that only makes sense if Trump is the only actor in the world. It's Shakespearean! Trump speaks, anything that doesn't happen on stage while Trump gives his soliloquy to the camera doesn't happen at all. I don't need to consider anything else. Based on media rumors in the fog of war, I've determined that the war is a failure. I don't actually have to understand what American goals are because Trump is irrational, so he must not have had any. I don't even have to consider anybody else's motivations, because they don't meaningfully exist.
In reality we're on week two of an extremely complex operation in which Iran's leadership was decapitated -- they have a cardboard cutout for a Supreme Leader. The best Iran can do in response is mine the Straits of Hormuz and bomb random Gulf targets. Maybe that's a higher cost than America is willing to bear, maybe nobody thought that far ahead, but it doesn't seem likely!
Shakes
18d ago
When the first real hit lands (when he gets unpopular enough and someone - probably not one of the central players - is willing to gamble on going all in) everyone will reposition themselves.
I have been hearing this for ten years now. I want some deep introspection about why it's definitely real this time before I take it too seriously.
Shakes
18d ago
Most importantly, and this is true in pretty much every scenario, the US will have experienced a major geopolitical and military humiliation
We killed the core of Iranian leadership in an afternoon and their only viable response is to attack unrelated countries and merchant fleets. What do you mean humiliation! Maybe on twitter where geopolitics is about what makes people feel good but in the real world there is not a single major leader who is not terrified of America's military. Humiliation? America downgraded Iran from a regional power to a backwater without a meaningful military in an afternoon, all they have left are guys with guns pointed at their own citizens.
We have won so overwhelmingly that we are reduced to calling this a failure because Iran was able to get a hit in at all. Yeah, that's what war is!
In Khamenei’s son it has its preferred candidate in power, at least nominally (it may be the institution rather than the man who is in power, but it doesn’t really matter).
Please note that if the Iranian regime cannot even prove their leader is alive, either because we killed him or because we will kill him, then the Iranian government has collapsed. Collapsed! Claiming otherwise is like declaring war in the Pacific with Japan a failure because rogue holdouts continued fighting for years. We also had to drop two nukes so maybe the first one was a failure?
Who is really in charge of Iran? Nobody knows! That's not a government! Who collects taxes, who negotiates with foreign powers, who runs the judiciary? Maybe the Iranians can dig giant tunnels and live in underground cities like the mole people, although the US could actually bomb them there too.
Basically nothing has happened but the commentariat has decided that Vance is a failure and doomed to lose. I don't know why. I think everyone must be bored.
Realistically, Vance is the heir-apparent to MAGA. Vance is popular, well-spoken, and ties together the different factions that make up MAGA. The only alternative at this time is Rubio and there's no indication that Vance and Rubio are even a little at odds.
Vance just has to defeat whoever the Democrats put up. Is the second rise of Kamala that threatening?
The fantasy you lay out is neither a credible path for Vance to take the Presidency, nor even to rank as a great figure of American history, but more likely to lead in him getting jailed or worse. "Sue for peace with Iran"? I think you should stop scrolling the timeline and pick up a book or something.
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