Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
I think the metaphor is deceptive, not clarifying - it recasts the various actors in this conflict into roles they do not actually occupy.
This contradiction seems to be Trump's typical MO: https://scholars-stage.org/on-bombing-iran/
This should be taken as evidence that the Trump administration has no coherent plan, especially given that the stated rationale seems to change hourly, but we can look more broadly at their past record and see that current US leadership is not motivated at all by humanitarian concerns (corroborated by the rising civilian casualty estimates from these strikes, which will only continue to rise, alongside Hegseth's remarks earlier today).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
The US sees it more like intervening in a messy domestic dispute
I don't really see any evidence of this. The current US administration rejects humanitarian concerns as a basis for foreign policy and has explicitly disavowed the idea that this is a regime change war.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
It probably helps that Iran has been shooting at French and British targets as well, plus Middle Eastern countries that aren't Turkey or Israel are in the bottom rung of the West's "Are you a real country with real sovereignty?" tier-list.
The US can completely devastate most countries, even large ones like Iran, without putting a single boot on the ground
This isn't new. Very little of this is new - the US has been in a massively dominant conventional position since the end of the Cold War. The reason we haven't done stuff like this in the past (except for when we have) is that it isn't particularly useful most of the time. Even in dictatorships, individual leaders are usually fairly replaceable, as we have seen in Venezuela (and will likely see in Iran), and actually achieving lasting results tends to require putting troops on the ground to enforce your will (as we've seen with the failures in Yemen) and a real plan for victory (such as was lacking in Afghanistan).
Precisely because the US has overwhelming conventional dominance, the number of foreign policy problems we have than can be solved by the quick, sharp exercise of conventional force is pretty limited. Nobody tries anymore because they know how it's going to go.
But right now, as an American watching the news, I'm feeling a bit drunk on national power.
This is, in fact, the problem. A lot of "isolationist" sentiment in the US is a mixture of short-attention span and anti-internationalism. The reason US public turned against the Iraq War wasn't because of some general opposition to getting involved overseas, but because it was a miserable slog that they felt had been entered into under false pretenses. A lot of them recover their adventurous spirit the moment they get to see the US military absolutely pasting the latest guy dumb enough to stick his head up. And lose it again when it turns out (as mentioned) that brute force actually has pretty limited utility against modern problems.
The actual military problems the US has tend to be intractable (terrorism, piracy, and insurgency) or really boring (ship building, munitions production, diplomacy). The reason people are correctly calling Trump a retard for threatening to invade Greenland is not that the US couldn't take Greenland but that the whole affair reflects a kind of short-sighted thuggishness that reflects poorly on Trump and his supporters.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
even the hardline hawks expected that a war with Iran would be tough
They were talking about invading Iran. I don't think there was ever any question that we could bomb Iran with impunity. Maybe they were expecting need a bit more SEAD, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone suggest that Iran would be able to directly contest the air.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
I think it's good, actually, when people push back on their government killing civilians for bad reasons, and the bigger problem by far is that we're much too quick to accept nebulous assertions of national security as a justification for collateral damage. If the US were intervening to stop the IRI from massacring protestors, the comparison would have some bearing, but that isn't what is happening.
Notably, there was fairly little consternation over coalition-inflicted civilian casualties in Mosul or Raqqa because it was generally accepted that ISIS was Really Bad and coalition forces were trying to stop them (even if not for purely selfless reasons) and taking reasonable precautions while dealing with an adversary using human shields. US airstrikes more broadly were criticized because there was no clear aim/end beyond killing terrorists and the target selection was often incredibly careless/callous. By contrast, this current campaign looks like gunboat diplomacy at best.
I think it's a sign that most westerners are fundamentally unprepared to defend their societies from aggression and stagnation.
I think it speaks more to the damage the Iraq War (and to a much lesser extent Libya) did to the credibility of military interventionism. Many, if not most people have no faith that these actions aren't going to squander a bunch of money and lives for no worthwhile outcome.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
In related news, not everything is lost. Here is how Iran can still win. When all human wit and wisdom failed, listen to the cat girls.
This is a bit. Even KR isn't that retarded.
The failure case is that the US spend a bunch of money and depletes materiel stockpiles (not to mention reputation) to bump off a decrepit and ultimately replaceable theocrat while losing any chance of a negotiated solution to Iran developing nukes. If the US isn't going to mount a ground invasion, we're left hoping that either a revolution finally succeeds or that they can keep the IRI nuclear program in check forever with nothing but air raids.
The time to bomb Iran was a month and a half ago, but we were too busy with Operation Caribbean Shakedown.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
I'm not going to pretend to have a high confidence prediction of what will happen; merely what probably won't happen. Which is to say, it is unlikely that the outcome will be that the IRI regime will be toppled and replaced with a US-friendly one or that Iranian nuclear ambitions will be put decisively to rest. I think it is likely that whatever does occur, Trump will claim massive success, even if it is a massive shitshow.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
While we're inching closer every day, I don't think there's a major constituency for bombing Alabama yet.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
Did the crackdown with 30k dead kill all the individuals or groups able and willing to engage in risky, intensive protesting? Did they break the will of most of those wanting the regime's downfall? Perhaps not.
Well, they stopped protesting, so they are likely quite demoralized. And an airstrike campaign is unlikely to resolve the fundamental issue, which is that the regime's enforcers have weapons and anti-government protestors do not. As long as the Iranian government can find people willing to shoot protestors, the government will be able to manage internal dissent. And, as you say, Iran is a big country. A lot of that population is pro-government. It doesn't even need to be a majority, just enough to staff the instruments of repression, a hurdle they clear easily.
The track record of airstrike campaigns alone achieving decisive results is basically nil, and any plan which entails "and then the people will rise up" is begging for embarrassing failure at best and bloody disaster at worst. It's possible this will all succeed, but the historical record is against it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
Donald the Dove strikes again.
This seems... incredibly late to capitalize on anti-government sentiment. If you were going to try and provide military support to protests/deter their violent suppression, it probably would have been more effective to do it before they all got killed.
In the meantime, I don't see how a bombing campaign is going to succeed. I don't have anything sympathy for the Iranian regime, but if you're going to go to war you can't just lean on "my adversaries are evil" to justify it. If you don't have a credible plan to succeed you're just squandering money and killing people without purpose.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
13d ago
I expect that in the US context it began with not wanting to use "soldier" to describe someone who fights land battles for pay in the organised service of the state of which they are a citizen because it annoyed the Marine Corps.
I personally blame Dave Grossman, who created the wolf-sheep-sheepdog paradigm. Okay, that might be giving him, specifically, too much credit, but it seems like in the GWoT era, the Army and Marines both started to absorb the idea that military personnel, and especially combat arms, and especially especially Special Ops Dudes were an inherently separate and special class of people. This probably felt justified to a degree, given the way you had an all-volunteer military fighting a permanent war while the civilian population was completely tuned out. Easy enough to buy into the idea of a special martial elite when you come home and there's no visible expression of the nation being at war.
This was hardly universal - I know plenty of current and former military who make fun of this mindset - but it definitely caught on with a lot of people.
(as an aside, while I agree with the sentiment and the overall point, the ASO article is pretty sloppy on some historical details, e.g. longbows did not materially contribute to the decline of armored knights on the battlefield)
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1mo ago
- JD Vance is associated with the tech right, which is explicitly pro-oligarchy and pro-authoritarianism and more abstractly seems to be pro-dystopia
- JD Vance isn't insane. One of the saving graces of Trump's kakistocracy is that he's a decrepit idiot with a short attention span, and his inner circle is more concerned with grifting or pushing their own personal agendas. This is still very bad, but it has undermined the GOP's push towards American Orbanism.
- JD Vance is much more willing to overtly entertain the fascistic elements of the far-right. Trump is a huge bigot, but I do not get the impression that he has much of an ideological framework, racial or otherwise.
The bear case for JD Vance is that he becomes the front man for a movement that much more smartly pursues authoritarianism and consolidates power while creating the cyberpunk hellscape William Gibson warned us about (but lamer). Combine this with Vance's apparent desire to destabilize global security for... unclear reasons and I think the implications for both the United States and the world are potentially significantly worse than many possible Trump adminstrations.
The bull case for JD Vance is that he's too weak to actually marshal any political support on his own and gets immediately sidelined. The tech right embarrassed itself right out the gate, and brings very little actual popular support to the table.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1mo ago
One day the Trumpist Mottizens will make a serious attempt to explain why I should worry more about random people on social media than actual, elected government officials holding the highest offices in the country and making policy. But it's obviously not today.
One day, as usual, the left will look at the ‘utopia’ they memed into existence and realise that it has no place for them.
Possible, but probably not. The historical pattern has been that the inclusive, liberal parts of the US are prosperous and decent places to live while the white supremacist parts are shitholes.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1mo ago
Would you, uh, care to expand upon that?
The Republican Party aggressively pushes policies which are inimical to the well-being and longevity of their voters. This includes pushing crank health theories (most prominently anti-vaccine sentiments), defunding rural healthcare, and weakening environmental protections.
I do hear a lot of rhetoric about abolishing white people -- even 'kill all white men' -- but it's not coming from Republicans.
Can you please point to the Democratic policies implementing plans to abolish white people and/or kill all white men?
if he was at all vulnerable to narcissistic injury he would have gone away or broken down long ago
Trump has broken down. He has a public meltdown like three times a week. I don't know how you can look at his behavior and conclude that this is a guy who has his shit together. The man just wrote a public* angry letter to the PM of Norway because he's mad about the Nobel prize committee (which doesn't work for the Norwegian government) and Greenland (which is part of a different country).
he legitimately is interested in doing what is best for the American people
I really don't see any evidence for this. If people close to him are saying that, it's probably because it's in their interest to present Trump as well-intentioned rather than vindictive and corrupt. Trump has consistently prioritized his own interests, power, and obsessions over the interests of America. The Greenland Crisis is just the latest example of this.
The best argument one could make to sustain the idea that Trump is acting in good faith is that he's just a moron. And in fairness, there's good reason to think that (though being a moron doesn't preclude corrupt intent). He doesn't just lack an expert-level intellectual background in the things he is working - something he has in common with the vast majority of presidents - he lacks basic intellectual curiosity and common sense (see, e.g. his preposterous understanding of trade deficits) and has a zero-sum understanding of the world.
*correction: He sent a completely unhinged private letter which only an idiot would not expect to be shared immediately
Not really. While it was undoubtedly an act of grotesque malfeasance and selfishness to hide Biden's state, even if we grant the most pessimistic assessments of Biden, he wasn't nearly as far gone nor as overtly harmful to the nation. One could quite reasonably conclude that Joe Biden's cabinet plus four hours a day of Joe Biden was a reasonable choice compared to the alternatives.
By contrast, with Mad King Donald and his cabinet of villains and Marco Rubio, almost any plausible alternative would be better (though JD Vance might be one of the only steps down).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1mo ago
There are two core problems:
- MAGA is a distinctively fanatical cult of personality. I suspect senior Republicans believe (probably correctly) that if they yeet Trump, his rabid base will turn on them in punishment for betraying their god-king. Even if they don't, there's a noted swathe of Trump supporters who don't show up for anyone but Trump himself. So getting rid of Trump leaves them in the awkward spot of being deserted by Trump's low-prop voters while being known to the rest of the electorate as the cowards who could have stopped the madness at any time but didn't.
- Trump's cabinet has no reason to want to get rid of him. It's no skin off their back if Trump destroys the country (some of them appear to be actively for it), and in the mean time, far better to be whispering in the ear of the Mad King than JD Vance, who appears to have his own ideas.
Basically, getting rid of Trump would be an act of selfless, patriotic self-sacrifice that the modern GOP is incapable of.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1mo ago
I'm not sure what Trumpism will look like once Vance takes over.
The odds that Vance gets shoved in a locker the moment Trump exits are quite high.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1mo ago
I don't understand how any White man could support the left in this country.
Because I can Notice who is President of the United States and who is pseduonymously posting in tumblr so they don't get fired from their job at the coffee shop and make a rational assessment of who poses a greater threat to my freedom, well-being, and prosperity.
The left has such open, naked hatred directed specifically at White men it just feels like self-preservation should kick in at some point and supersede the rest of your political preferences.
YMMV, especially given that Republicans seem dead-set on killing their voters.
We know the answer? What is it?
Donald Trump is an impulsive bully. He thinks grabbing territory is a big-dick move and is thug-brained enough to not grasp the diplomatic consequences. All this talk about polar competition is clumsy rationalization.
(Or, if we want to go fully tinfoil, "I'm going to invade Greenland jk unless..." is a preferable headline to "I'm a pedophile.")
Canada sounds like they’re currently trying to stoke an alliance with China
I wonder if the United States government did anything in the past year that might be construed as hostile towards Canada or otherwise make them doubt the integrity of the relationship?
And it's not as if the US isn't engaged in its own schizophrenic courtship with China.
We need strong partners. Denmark and Canada, at this point, aren’t.
What problem is being solved by antagonizing them? Canada, in particular, could be totally, absolutely useless and the US would still need their cooperation in the arctic. I know people here love the idea that it's all 4d chess to troll US allies into rearmament, but it's not. It's never 4d chess.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1mo ago
That doesn't answer the objection. The US is allied with Canada and Denmark. The US has a history of working through bases in allies' territory, and already has basing rights on Greenland in particular.
Why pointlessly antagonize regional allies with territorial demands instead of just working with them? (We know the answer)
What's really fascinating about this whole affair is that it really illustrates the whole "Trump lies like a used car salesman" idea that was popular around here a while back. Over the past two days, it's been regime change, definitely not regime change, degrading Iranian capabilities, getting compliments for Trump, preempting retaliation triggered by Israeli strikes, and protecting the US/Israel from an imminent threat. And I've probably missed some other statements coming out the administration's senior leadership. It's all nonsense, but I don't know that it's meant to be believed so much as to disorient critics.
My gut instinct is that they thought they were about to pull a repeat of the Maduro operation or Midnight Hammer. Everything was going to be over and done too fast for the haters to do anything but wring their hands. The Iranian government was going to be cowed into submission and make a much more favorable deal than the one Trump tore up. Only it hasn't been quite as clean or decisive as anticipated. We'll see how it ultimately shakes out, but I wouldn't be shocked to see them double down for fear of looking weak.
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