Shrike
7hr ago
in general progressive movements do tend to win out over more conservative ones
I think it's important to remember, when assessing this, that it's easy to skip over progressive defeats, because what's "progressive" is measured by what is progressive today and not what was always considered progressive. Few people remember to count temperance or eugenics or removing the age of consent when evaluating the progressive k/d ratio because those ideas lost out and quickly became no longer progressive.
Shrike
8hr ago
I would love to optimistic here, but i simply don't see it.
I have good news for you!
Lets all face the music, Conservative America is simply going the way of the dinosaurs. We have a declining birth rate, religiosity is going down the toilet, marriage rates are going down toilet.
Nah. Religiosity seems to be leveling off and irreligiosity is holding steady or dropping. You flagged an article from 2019 on changing support for gay rights, but later studies are showing that the popularity of gay marriage may have peaked and its decline is driven by young Americans. And in Conservative America, the number of children is growing, driven by higher birth rates and the migration of families to Red States in the post-COVID timeframe. The highly religious have many more children than the irreligious, near replacement, and non-denominational/Pentecostal Christian denominations (who tend towards political conservativism) are likely to continue growing given current trends.
I don't think we should extrapolate wildly and irresponsibly from current trends now any more than we should have in 2010, or that things are all gravvy (for Americans writ large, or conservative Americans, or religious Americans, or what have you) but Conservative America is very far from dead, and is arguably the part of America that is furthest from dead.
Shrike
10hr ago
You neglected eleven days ago to specify what kind of situation would make you say that the five week special operation is going poorly.
I think you have me confused with Shakes. I'm gonna have to get a real pfp or something!
"we got the Iranians to attack our allies with missiles" is not much of an achievement
You know, when you put it like that, you would sort of think the hostile-to-Israel types around here would favor the war more, wouldn't you...
Anyway: I think the operation so far has made progress in its goals: Iranian regional influence has been blunted. However, so far, I have not seen any evidence that the US has yet maximally degraded the Iranian strike complex. Today's CENTCOM briefing assessed that over 2/3rds of Iran's military production capabilities have been destroyed, for instance, so it seems clear that even US public-facing assessments are that Iran's capabilities are degraded but not destroyed. It seems possible to me that the US could reach something much closer to a systematic destruction of their capabilities the course of additional weeks or perhaps even days, although I think the Iranians are adopting a reasonably savvy defensive posture. As I said, without nonpublic information it is difficult to evaluate.
Shrike
10hr ago
I'm not sure if you're ignorant or being actively disingenuous
Well I would like to think I'm more ignorant than disingenuous...
the passage on 2/14/2025 was covered by the initial ceasefire that didn't stick.
Oh good point, but in my defense, you specifically said
The Houthis agreed to stop attacking the US Navy, which were the only "US vessels" that even attempted to cross the Bab el Mandeb during Trump's term.
...which wasn't quite right.
So once again, you're proving my point.
Your point is that Rough Rider "does not represent any kind of influence on Houthi behavior," but the Houthis and the US reached an agreement (that cut the Israelis out) on May 6, 2025, when there was no Gaza ceasefire, correct?
and on the contrary, Lloyd's List reports that the ceasefire did basically nothing to increase traffic.
Lloyd's measurement (which only includes larger vessels) excludes ships that Admiral Gryparis might have included, but both articles did agree that traffic was still lower than pre-blockade numbers.
Lloyd's List reported in early September (so before the Gaza peace plan) that traffic was increasing, although incrementally, with August traffic increasing by 10% over July. Again, definitely lower than pre-blockade numbers, but the trend, I think, indicates that the May truce did nudge the behavior of shipping.
Regardless, what can't really be contested is that yanking Bibi's leash was more effective in opening Red Sea traffic than fighting the Houthis was.
This might be the case, although I suppose there's more than one direction to nudge Bibi - the May 6th agreement between the US and the Houthis happened the day after Israel began airstrikes on Yemen, right?
Israel is infinitely more pliable to American pressure than Iran or Yemen.
I really doubt it's infinitely more pliable. I understand the point you are making, it's just unclear to me exactly how pliable Israel is at the end of the day.
Similarly, the path to keeping the Strait of Hormuz open ran through preventing Israel from starting an unwinnable war, not in committing American forces to said unwinnable war.
In the short term, certainly. Over an indefinite period, as I said previously:
Because Iran is engaged in proxy warfare with the Saudis and Israel, we have no particular reason to believe that the US departure from the area would cause the regional crisis to cease, nor do we have a guarantee that Iran wouldn't do things such as blockade the Red Sea or Straits of Hormuz. In fact we know that Iran did this sort of thing in the past during their war with Iraq!
Of course it's reasonable to point out that that's a theoretical risk, whereas this is a real one.
Shrike
10hr ago
until they are no longer able to reliably launch large, AD penetrating countervalue volleys any claim of victory on the basis of having degraded said capabilities is clearly hollow.
I tend to agree. But it's difficult to verify the current levels of Iranian munitions: smaller salvo sizes might indicate munitions destruction or merely conservation; larger salvo sizes might indicate healthy munitions levels or a use-it-or-lose it mentality.
So the war might end with the US claiming to have exhausted Iranian munitions stockpiles, when in reality the Iranians have thousands of missiles left. On the flipside, the war might end with the Iranians claiming to have barely felt it, when in fact the their final salvo in the war was their last gasp.
It's possible that the war will end in a way that makes it easy to determine the winner, but it also seems plausible to me that the war will end with both sides claiming victory and the real measure of that victory will be measured in subsequent behavior over years or decades.
Shrike
10hr ago
Anyone that's actively launching missiles in a war is effectively "depleting their stockpiles."
Indeed, and as I said, the US depleting its own stockpiles is a big risk case in this war.
Iran still hasn't even begun launching it's most advanced ammunition, has the largest repository of missiles in the Middle East
I'd be interested in how you can be certain of that, and which specific models you believe they are holding back.
so it's not as if they used up their stockpile putting on a fruitless light show everybody else.
Yes, I agree with this. But because Israel and the United States pulled the trigger, they have the first mover advantage, which means that most likely this arsenal was less effective than it otherwise would have been.
Shrike
10hr ago
Hmm. As I've said elsewhere, I tend to model people as rational actors, and I still think there's value in rattling the saber for Iran. But obviously alienating their potential allies more than their foes is a questionable strategy. Is there a good source you can share on the disparate impact?
Shrike
10hr ago
Who is “we”, exactly?
Sorry, I could have been more specific. I meant Americans, particularly educated ones.
I don’t think there’s a ton of overlap between the circles who most criticize American hegemony and the ones which compare everything to Roman history.
Maybe you are correct. I definitely think there's a certain strain (maybe moreso on the right?) of people who at least opportunistically pattern-match contemporary issues, e.g. declining birthrates and the GWOT, with the decline of the Roman Empire.
Shrike
16hr ago
The war has definitely depleted Iranian munitions stockpiles (even if we assume that US efforts to strike those stockpiles were 0% effective, which they were not, and all of that depletion is from launching them at all and sundry.)
The US said that (besides self-defense) preventing Iran from projecting power and completing a nuclear weapon were its primary objectives on March 2.
Destroying their navy and missile inventory is a means of preventing Iran from projecting power.
Without inside knowledge of how effective US strikes are, what Iran's stockpiles look like, etc. I cannot tell exactly how effective this has been, but it definitely seems like Iran's ability to project power has been negatively impacted.
Shrike
16hr ago
This would be good for Americans in America, because we will not be top dog forever; in a century or two we may find ourselves in Iran’s place with a more powerful China attempting to oppress us and conquer us.
Just objectively, I actually think that America continues to be the single best-positioned country to dominate the future. We don't expect this outcome, because we think we are Rome 2.0 and our best past was behind us and we are an empire and that empire will crumble tragically at some point and we're just kicking the can down the road, but...that might not happen. The US and its successor states might actually be top dog ~forever.
I don't really put it past China to still be a contender in 100 years but right now the future does not look bright for them, or any of our competitors.
But while you are worried about the practical consequences if someone else is in charge, I am actually worried about the morally corrosive consequences of being top dog forever. Either way, I think we directionally share concerns about the consequences of US success.
But I don't actually think "Iran controlling the strait" would establish a powerful deterrence against future powers that plot unjustified wars without regard for humanitarian consequences. Either the Sunni Arabian powers will reroute all of their stuff through the Red Sea, rendering Iranian control of the Strait a nothingburger (thus minimizing the didactic value of Iran controlling the strait) or the Sunni Arabian powers will kick off a massive war to wrest control of the strait from Iran. If the US is not involved, this war is likely to be an extremely ghastly slog (just like the Iran-Iraq War) and short of the US intervention you oppose, it is unlikely the US could prevent this, as Iran cutting off Sunni Arabian oil exports is almost certainly a nonstarter for those powers, and they can buy arms from Russia and China if the US cuts them off. (China and particularly Russia would likely prefer to ally with an Israeli-Saudi coalition against the Iranians rather than the other way around; my understanding is that the Russians perceive the Iranians under their current leadership as erratic.)
If they succeed in forcing the opening of the strait, the US will likely receive partial credit for their victory given that the Arabians will likely start the war in easy mode (no Iranian navy left to speak of, for instance), which will justify US intervention. If they do not succeed in opening the strait, leading to a loss of the region's oil production (it's unlikely that the Saudis will be content to let Iran export its oil during a prolonged conflict) it will strengthen the United States over the long term as we will control a much larger percentage of the world's oil than we did pre-conflict.
In either case, it seems to me that the results are much more likely to be bloody and horrific than if the US compels Iran to seek terms in the near future.
You will object to my model inasmuch as it renders a US loss impossible. I disagree: it is actually possible to have a situation where most outcomes of a situation lead to a victory (e.g. if merely destabilizing the region is likely to lead to a success in either direction). However, I do think there are "loss conditions" for the US here. I think it is unlikely, but the war is not over, and Iran could still possibly inflict military losses on the US so severe that the US has to retreat unilaterally. And the US may have already lost from a broader strategic perspective (expended munitions).
Ultimately there is nothing more important than justice and securing peace
In my opinion, "securing justice and [a lasting] peace" is exactly the sort of maximalist thinking that drove, and drives, the neocons. Unless the fundamental problems of the region - intractable problems like the Sunni-Shia divide, and the competing national interests of different states - are resolved, all peace is likely to be to some degree temporary. There is a way to remove these sources of conflict, but it is fundamentally both horrific and unjust. Barring that, until Christ rules the earth, the other options are either settle for peace of a greater or lesser duration or for things like "nation-building" and "counter-terrorism operations" which are often of indefinite or extremely lengthy duration.
Mind you, I think that seeking honorable peace of a decent duration is a good and admirable goal. But I am fundamentally skeptical of the idea that "the US not being involved will bring about peace." There are specific areas where US action has arguably made things worse, or where US action has directly led to military conflict. But it does not follow that the US withdrawing from everything will create greater peace. It may increase peace for the United States - and that is not itself a bad thing! But it is not a magic button for world peace (and may be quite the opposite). Prolonged peace is not the default or expected state of humankind, and unless a single power becomes world hegemon, it is unlikely.
As a guy who would like to get out of the sandbox and who is concerned about the consequences of attempting US global hegemony, my personal hope is that Iran absolutely destroying all of our regional bases will make acceding to Iran's demands that we leave the region an easy "yes," that Iranian self-government will be restored, and that in the aftermath of that restoration the various parties in the region will be able to reach an amicable peace.
Shrike
2d ago
If you're saying we should not inflict unnecessary civilian casualties, and if there is a collateral damage, there must be a very good justification of why that was unavoidable - I totally agree. But "proportionate" doesn't sound like a very good term to use in such case.
Yes, that's what I am saying. Feel free to use a different word - I use it because, as I explained earlier, it's a term of art.
That's a tactical question.
Yes, I agree with this. But (if my priors are correct) the decision to hit power plants instead of weapons factories or communications facilities would be a curious one. I would guess that it would likely be easier to hit Iran's weapons factories and military communications nodes than to take out their power network.
I'm not sure that is inherently the case, of course. If Iran decentralized its arms production facilities and situated them in civilian neighborhoods and dwellings, for instance, bombing power plants would likely be both more efficient and more humane. So I agree with you that the facts of the case really matter, there's not some blanket rule saying you can't hit power plants.
Shrike
2d ago
Trump can be highly charismatic and adept at manipulating the media without being strategically intelligent as a President, without being a wise leader, without knowing or caring about details, without being able to gauge the competence of advisers and officials, without mastering the institutions he nominally runs.
I do agree with all of this, but this is a much more subtle and interesting observation than "Trump dumb."
Would an intelligent president launch a shambolic tariff campaign against US allies
Haven't most US presidents in recent history, going back at least to Clinton, slapped tariffs on EU countries?
Or even start this war that all the other presidents have shied away from? Even at the heights of US power in the 2000s they were unwilling to attack Iran for reasons that the administration is now discovering.
I think the reality is a bit more nuanced than that; the US attacked Iran in the 1980s (apparently...not at the height of their powers?) and during the 2000s the US avoided a direct attack, but acted against Iran via covert means and on one occasion raided an Iranian consulate.
Anyway, I've been critical of the administration's messaging on here, and pointed out failure modes of pursuing this military course of action. I'm not convinced it's the best! It could be really bad! There are a lot of questions I have and the answers to them are fundamentally non-public, so I have to wait and see.
But if you go through my recent comments, you'll see me defending things the Iranians have done as being intelligent - even though the Iranian government does stuff like "get caught with evidence of uranium enrichment and suggest that they've been framed" (which, idk, I suppose is not impossible).
That's in part because I don't think modeling people (particularly people with more resources and information than you) as dumb is a good first course of action. I tend to think it's overly reductive, unless there's very specific reasons to think that is what is at play. This isn't to say I think it's wrong to be critical but I think those are two different things.
I agree that Trump has a strategy but it's dumb, based on false premises.
See, "asking for insane things up front is a repeated Trump strategy, but one that doesn't pay off" is a very interesting theory, and I would AAQC a top-level post that made that case persuasively through data and/or comparative successes by other US presidents.
Shrike
2d ago
I think you're right about the big picture. I guess what I am suggesting is that the blockade is still annoying for the targeted countries/corporations because it means they will still have to rearrange their imports. And oil is carried by ships that take weeks to reach their destinations, so figuring that out is non-trivial. It probably imposes marginal costs on countries like the UK at the cost of, what, a strongly worded tweet? Maybe firing off a few missiles to show they meant business?
And as a demonstration of capability, that's not nothing. The message you're sending is "look how you're having to scramble now when things are merely annoying! All we did was send a tweet! Imagine what it will be if we actually completely closed the strait." It's trying to send a message that you could increase the pain a lot if you wanted.
Btw, I'm not the one downvoting you.
Oh, thanks.
Shrike
3d ago
If the straits actually open, then logically the Iranians have chickened out. If Trump says he'll bomb power plants unless the straits are opened and then doesn't, doesn't it follow that he chickened out?
Sure, but if he wanted Iran to be a bit more flexible in negotiations and he threatened to blow up their power plants and they were a bit more flexible in negotiations, doesn't it follow that Iconochasm is correct? You can label his behavior whatever you want - Iconochasm is suggesting there's a pattern to it, and you are suggesting that Trump is dumb. A lot of this stuff is pretty opaque to me because it's fundamentally nonpublic (I don't really trust either Iran or Trump to honestly characterize their negotiations), so it can be hard to tell what's correct.
But I do think that Iconochasm is correct that opening with insane bargaining demands can be a smart bargaining position. I like his model of Trump's behavior because I think it's more interesting than the TACO meme, although they both offer predictive insight/an observation of repeated patterns. If Trump actually wrote 50 years ago "open by making insane demands and letting them twist your arm into giving you what you want" (I haven't read the Art of the Deal, so I guess I will have to take his word for it?) then that seems like decent evidence that explains his pattern of behavior. Note that this does not mean that Trump Always Wins, it just suggests that Trump does have a strategy. (Having a strategy does not mean that your strategy is always or even sometimes good.)
I also think "Trump is dumb" by itself is...kinda boring (we have ample evidence he's not; he's creamed other smart people in a presidential debate, for instance) and yields little insight, unless it's coupled with an explanation that explains why we should update our priors (e.g. "Trump is suffering from TIAs that impair his judgment.")
Negotiations at this point seem to be both sides issuing maximalist demands at eachother.
Maybe the Iranians read Art of the Deal too!
Shrike
3d ago
Iran denies any such negotiations and sticks to their position.
Perhaps Iran has activated a mosaic diplomatic as well as a mosaic defense strategy.
The backchannel talks between Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, were not a secret in the sense that the Egyptian Foreign Ministry had tweeted that conversations were under way on Sunday, 24 hours before Donald Trump’s late Monday deadline to start blowing up Iran’s energy infrastructure.
[...]
Yet gradually, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei opened up. The spokesperson said: “Over the past few days, messages arrived through some friendly countries indicating America’s request for negotiations to end the war, which were responded to appropriately and in accordance with the country’s principled positions – Iran’s stance regarding the strait of Hormuz and the conditions for ending the imposed war has not changed.”
(Link)
Shrike
3d ago
that came after the Gaza ceasefire
The maritime.gov statement that I linked to went into effect 2/14/2025; the Gaza ceasefire (the one that stuck, anyway) didn't go effect until the fall.
what actually caused the Houthis to end their blockade.
Reporting from before the Gaza ceasefire but after the Houthis ceasefire also indicates that traffic levels through the strait rose.
Now it is correct that the Houthis said they were continuing to target Israeli ships, so, as previously discussed, it is fair to point out that it did not lift the blockade entirely. But it does not seem correct to say that the US actions had no influence on the Houthis.
Trump could have pulled the leash on Israel and forced them into a ceasefire
He in fact did pull the leash on Israel, resulting in a ceasefire early in 2025, with the result that Israel broke the ceasefire after accusing Hamas of giving them the runaround.
Trump is the one who said it would take 3-5 weeks
Yes, and I think that was "optimistic" if we intend to pursue the war to a full military conclusion.
Out of curiosity, if Trump negotiated an identical "deal" to Iran that he got from the Houthis and Iran continued to charge tolls or outright block everyone besides the US Navy would you still consider that to be a success?
Probably not if that was the only understood benefit from the war, successful wars don't conclude with no success besides restoring status ante bellum. (I suppose technically the scenario you benefit might be part of a hilarious galaxy-brained play by the United States to increase its leverage on the global market.)
Now, you can have a successful punitive expedition without any territorial changes or what have you.
Shrike
3d ago
It works like saying "we're going to sink any ship from X countries but Y countries are fine" and then trying to sink any ship from X countries that tries to transit the Strait and trying not to sink ships from Y countries.
As long as you can keep an eyeball on the Strait (it's 24 miles at its narrowest point) it should be doable. The best way to do this is probably from the air or underwater, but I am not certain to what degree Iran can accomplish that with their current tech in the face of US operations. However Maersk and the like probably aren't inclined to gamble.
Shrike
4d ago
we can see foreign policy decisions completely outsourced to Israel no matter how much the US suffers
Why did Israel decide that Trump should make a separate peace with the Houthis?
Shrike
4d ago
Please do not read too much into my actual political thinking based on a comment that starts with "Chad Centrist time" and is structured around a political compass meme but,
"The Great Satan decided to martyr 20k of our citizens, so rather than face further losses, we decided to pledge allegiance to them" is not something the Iranian theocracy could sell to the grunts in the IRGC.
It's very unlikely a bomb set to Tiny Yield would kill 20k people. Maybe if you intentionally dropped it on a populated part of downtown Tehran (in fact, Nukemap gives almost exactly that). But Iran has a target set uniquely suited for tactical nuclear weapons: all those big underground bunkers they've built and filled with ballistic missiles. From what I understand, the US has trouble penetrating them properly, although it can damage the entrances. Dropping a B61 in the entrance or having it bury itself before detonation would do more damage than can be achieved with conventional weaponry, from what I understand – it's one of the relatively cases where a tactical nuclear weapon might be able to pull something off that can't easily/at all be accomplished with conventional weapons.
Personally, I do not think that he was simply to stupid to consider nukes, but rather that he correctly concluded that they would not secure his objective.
It was reported that Putin did consider nuclear weapons, and it freaked the West out, although I have no idea if the reports that filter their way back to the US press are anywhere near accurate. I definitely think he would reconsider his lack-of-use if the US used one in Iran. Which is one of the reasons the US is relatively unlikely to use one, although I hope that Iran doesn't decide to start hitting desalination plants based on this line of reasoning.
At the moment, few middling military powers pursue nukes because they do not significantly improve their security situation.
This isn't really true, I don't think, nuclear weapons significantly improve your security situation, it's just that the powers that already have nukes throw a hissy fit if you try to get one. I also don't think it's true that middling military powers don't pursue nuclear weapons; most middling military powers (if you watch closely) have sort of collected a lot of the bits and pieces. Examples include Egypt (suspected of pursuing a nuclear program), South Korea (putting ballistic missiles on submarines for conventional deterrence, has nuclear reactors), Brazil (pursuing a nuclear submarine program, possibly as a convenient way to spin up a domestic nuclear program) and Saudi Arabia (stashed a nuclear program in Pakistan).
If nuclear powers use their nukes offensively to miraculously force surrenders, then that changes.
I do think this is true. But I also think that the last couple of decades have increasingly been an object lesson in "get nukes" if you think your security situation is precarious even without the US attacking Tehran.
Shrike
4d ago
Chad Centrist time: Trump uses a nuclear weapon (set for Tiny Yield) on Iran, then signs a treaty with them saying that they agree not to even think about maybe pursuing atomic weapons for 100,000 years and that the US gets a 20% cut of their net oil revenues which will be diverted entirely to finding a cure for cancer. In return, Trump agrees to Iran's demand to hand over 'hostile' media withdraw from the region entirely.
Shrike
4d ago
if they haven't then the blockade is meaningless because oil is fungible.
Right, but they can perhaps impose some inconvenience/cost on most hostile states and avoid imposing that on less hostile states.
It's also an easy way to demonstrate capability - a shot across the bow.
Awesome. The source I grabbed had the number bouncing around a bit, but it's also a few years out of date.
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