TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Europe spending more on defense isn't really a good thing if Europe and the US are at odds. It also wouldn't be good if Europe couldn't use those defense dollars productively if they're politically paralyzed due to e.g. Hungarian intransigence.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
I think I'm just going to be unapologetically ruled by my aesthetic sense from now on
It sounds like "aesthetics" is mostly just "vibes" here. Vibes are how most of the electorate choose who to vote for. If your vibes are well-calibrated, then it's probably not a bad way to choose overall, though I still think having specific rules or looking for specific things is better.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Everything you wrote here is very plausible, and it's probably the modal outcome.
Of course, Trump's TACO tendencies are somewhat unpredictable, and it's also plausible that his advisors are telling him something like "sir, we're on the cusp of victory. If we pull out now it will be a defeat, but if we just give it 2 more weeks..."
I doubt Trump has the foresight to understand that logic is how leaders get sucked into quagmires without meaning to.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Occupying a bunch of islands will help a little bit, but again the issue is that it's basically impossible to get Iranian asymmetrical strikes down to 0, which will mean the dual mission (suppression + escort) is required to reopen the strait to any significant degree, and the US doesn't have the hulls in the region to do both.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
It's already been reported that Russia is giving intelligence to Iran to help kill American soldiers. I'm a bit worried that Trump will try to do some quid pro quo with Putin cutting off intelligence from Ukraine in exchange for Russia stopping with Iran.
maybe even Alaska and Hawaii
I think the US's relationship with Israel is entirely too close, and we've somehow made their strategic problems into ours. It's absurd that we're basically fighting their war for them. America would be well served by breaking off the special relationship and treating them as any other democracy -- friendly sure, but not whatever the heck is going on now.
That said, the notion that the US would give up Alaska or Hawaii is not a serious one.
The US has a bunch of different options in Iran, but none of them are particularly good. Ordered from least aggressive to most aggressive:
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The US washes its hands of the conflict, and withdraws from the Middle East entirely, including its bases in the region. Arguably this is the best long-term solution since the US presence is nowhere near commensurate with its strategic interests in the area, but doing this now looks like Iran would be singlehandedly running the US out of town, handing it a massive propaganda win and the US a massive propaganda loss. This is not seriously being considered.
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The US washes its hands of the conflict, but remains in the region hoping for a status quo ante bellum but prepared to accept some sort of Iranian victory in terms of tolling the straits, regional proxies, etc. In the meantime, US bases in the region are still targets although the US can evacuate soldiers temporarily. Still a major prestige hit for the US and a big propaganda win for Iran, and eventually the US would have to deal with an emboldened + strengthened Iran, so it's just can-kicking while the problem festers.
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The current operation: The US continues its high-intensity but noncommital air attacks hoping Iran blinks. If it doesn't, the US tries to wedge open the strait regardless. The best insight into how this would go is this video by Perun (who is easily one of the best defense analysts publicly posting). To summarize, the US has done an excellent job at pulverizing Iran's conventional forces like its frigates, submarines, and airframes, but it can only do an OK job at suppressing asymmetric tools like the "mosquito fleet" that could dump a few mines into the water, its shoot-and-scoot anti-ship missile launchers, and drones. The US could reduce the rate of these quite a bit, but getting them down to zero is implausible. To reopen the strait then, the US would have to heavily subsidize ship insurance, but this alone would be insufficient -- you'd likely see a few brave captains willing to YOLO it but most shipping companies probably wouldn't be willing to go full Lord Farquaad with their crew. Naval escorts would be required. The problem is that the US just doesn't have enough hulls in the region to do the dual mission. If it pulls ships away from the suppression campaign to put them on escort duty, then the rate of Iranian asymmetric fire would likely increase again. European and Asian allies would actually come in clutch here since they don't have a lot of ships with the magazine depth of an Arleigh Burke nor the power projection of a supercarrier, but they do have a lot of frigates that would be great at escort duty. The problem is that allies have been noncommital so far, and, uh, Trump isn't exactly the best diplomat. Maybe he'll be able to blackmail them into some sort of arrangement, but he'll have a steep hill to climb. There's not exactly a lot of goodwill from other democracies to come pull America's chestnuts out of the fire.
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Economic warfare: The US tries to strangle Iran's economy by shutting down oil exports. The US has naval supremacy, so doing this to its maritime exports would not be hard. Iran wasn't exactly in a great economic position before the conflict, and shutting down a major chunk of its oil exports would be another severe blow. The best-case scenario is this being the straw that breaks the camel's back and triggers a general uprising that overthrows the regime. But the Iranian state is very adept at suppressing dissent, and there was already a major crackdown before the war started. If there's not a general uprising, then there might be some slim hope for this to make the regime buckle in some other way -- maybe some senior leaders rely on oil exports for their corrupt slush fund, and if this gets taken out then perhaps they try to seize control of the state and negotiate an end. But at this point we're mostly wishcasting. Also, shutting down Iran's oil exports would worsen the global supply situation which would boomerang on the US, and it would probably take more than a few weeks before the effects really started biting Iran.
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The US invades Kharg island by air or by sea. The US could almost certainly take the island relatively easily, but stationing marines there for an extended period would expose them to strikes from the Iranian coast. It's a decent ways from the mainland, but not far enough that it would be considered "safe" by any means. People have speculated that this would be used to shut down Iranian seabound oil exports, but that's already very doable with the US navy in the region, so the main point of this would be to use it as a bargaining chip of some sort. "See how serious we are, we're willing to invade sovereign Iranian territory!" That sort of thing.
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The US invades Qeshm island, which is situated in the narrowest part of the strait. This removes one of the easiest launch points and lets the US set up a defensive perimeter as well as being another bargaining chip to hand back to Iran to get them to make peace. But it alone doesn't remove Iran's ability to target ships, it just removes one avenue. It's also fairly large, well-populated, and situated closer to the Iranian mainland than Kharg with Bandar Abbas right there. All this puts US troops at much greater risk while still not forcing a decisive outcome.
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The US invades a bunch of Iranian islands like Kharg, Qeshm, Kish, Lavan, Siri, Abumusa, etc. This gives more bargaining chips I guess, but I don't know what the other islands would give beyond that. I've heard some people float the idea of giving Musa and Tunbs back to the UAE after Iran seized it from them a few decades ago, but otherwise Iran still has the mainland and can still credibly threaten ships.
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The US invades the Iranian mainland to establish a buffer zone between the regime and the Gulf. The larger it is the more effective it would be at stopping shorter range missiles and patrolling for random fishing boats with mines, but this is a massive escalation and would take many tens of thousands of troops at the minimum to be effective, and at this point Iran could switch from targeting ships to targeting US soldiers until it hopes the US loses political will.
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The US invades, and seeks to balkanize the country through its various ethnic minorities to render it impotent. This would reduce US exposure over the longer term, but it's unlikely to get much backing if those regions think the US will just abandon them in short order without giving them their own means of establishing deterrence. It would also inflame regional tensions -- I doubt the Turks would like a Kurdish pseudo-state on their border, and ditto for Pakistan in terms of a Baloch state.
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The US does a full regime-change invasion and seeks to occupy the entire country to force an end once and for all. The smallest operation could be something with special forces to take out Iranian nuke stockpiles assuming US intelligence knew where they were, but even that would mostly just be can-kicking since they could just restart their nuclear program after the US left. The long-term solution would be to occupy everything, dismantle the nuclear program and missiles, put a Delcy Rodriguez in charge that's more amenable to US interests, then leave ASAP and cross their fingers that it doesn't all revert afterwards. Going this route would require months of preparation, hundreds of thousands of troops, and a large amount of political will that I doubt the US has.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
If it's actual clear trolling then that's something a moderator should deal with. I've rarely seen accusations of "bad faith" or being "disingenuous" from a user debating another user to ever end up going well. It's almost always little more than "I disagree with them strongly". A lot of times it happens from 2 users occupying different information bubbles, this causing them to not really understand each others' arguments, and thus putting words in each others mouths as was often the case when people debated Darwin2500.
prevents things from slipping down the slope of easy farmable engaging content
This seems like a different issue.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
A functional European state could also deal with them by saying 'No go away'
Any reasonable state would say this, but doing so violates a deepseated liberal urge to "help others", and provides talking points and photo ops for immigration advocates. Did people forget the picture of that random dead Syrian kid that got blasted everywhere for months? Silly stuff like that can sway elections at the margins.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Again, I don't disagree with this in vague terms but it's a glass half-full vs glass half-empty sort of thing. It's like if you saw your friend about to shoot themselves in the foot, so you stole their gun. You took something from them, sure, but you also prevented something that was obviously going to end up going badly.
Also, the US was not as monolithically opposed to EU and Russian detente as is being implied here. The US publicly supported the Minsk agreements instead of trying to sabotage them.
I was provided one example, and it was not a good one. He was just stating a normal progressive talking point, and was getting flamed by amadan.
EDIT: Actually I retract that statement, as I came across a post I never got around to replying to from FCfromSSC that contained more examples.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Actual lefties (of the woke variety) would get absolutely eviscerated here. Darwin was the only person I can think of that was consistently left and who posted for a long time, and his posts were always lightningrods despite him being extremely polite relative to his interlocutors. And people were constantly accusing him of doing something "wrong", of violating the rules somehow, but I kept asking for examples and people could never give me any.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Diversification is good, but really it's just "don't become dependent on Russia" specifically. I bet the US would probably be upset if Europe became dependent on Chinese hydrocarbons too, but they don't export much of that so it's not an issue. Buying from Azerbaijan or Kuwait or KSA is all mostly fine. They're authoritarian, but have much less leverage to blackmail large concessions compared to Russia, and also far less likely to have diverging core interests. Buying from nations other than Russia will be a little bit more expensive but it's worth it in the long run.
EU countries could also put a bigger emphasis on renewables and nuclear too. They're better than the US there, but still haven't pursued it nearly as far as they could have.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
For instance, I came from /r/moderatepolitics . It has a similar nature to The Motte, but with a different moderation style. You can argue almost anything if you do it in a very specific way, but the mods are both hypersensitive to and arbitrarily define what is and isn't a personal attack. It leads to things like not being able to accuse someone of being disingenuous
Limiting personal attacks and heat between posters is a good policy, one which I wish the Motte would follow more closely. It's almost never productive to accuse someone of being disingenuous if your goal is test ideas, rather than to "win debates" in some nebulously defined way.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
European dependence on Russian energy was an obvious vulnerability. The Soviets never cut off supplies during the Cold War since there was never a conflict as divisive as Ukraine is today, while when Russia invaded Ukraine it did weaponize energy flows. The US was right to oppose gas dependence and stuff like the Nordstream pipeline, in terms of both liberal idealism and simple power politics.
Most of what you've written here isn't wrong, but it's mixed with a lot of rhetoric implying the US is a uniquely evil, conniving nation that wanted to sabotage Good Guy Russia from living in peace and harmony with the rest of Europe.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Their preference for welfare over weapons can be seen as rational, since the only country they have any realistic chance of fighting a major war with in the foreseeable future is Russia, and Russia is not strong enough to seriously endanger anything more than the Baltic states.
I mean, you're not wrong. There's not much of a European identity, so nations are happy to treat every nation to their east as a buffer state against Russia. And if the buffers haven't fallen yet then there's no need to really worry.
As a (classical) liberal I had hoped that Europe would rise to the call of a changing world order, but it seems they're happy enough to rest on their laurels as 2, or really 3, illiberal powers run roughshod over the planet.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Most of the earlier parts of his post has telltale signs of not being AI generated, it's only in the latter parts where it looks more like a mix between AI and human.
IMO the incisiveness is what really matters. AI is good at structuring sentences but bad at naturally coming up with incisive ideas on-par with the average higher quality substack or poster here. A little bit of AI use shouldn't trigger a modhat, though I'm fine with a post that looks entirely AI-made and which has no real ideas other than vague AIisms being modded.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
Counterplan: Stop the war, and abandon US involvement in the Middle East more broadly.
- Doesn't matter much politically since Trump can just emphasize how much destruction was wrought on Iran and MAGA will buy it while the Dems would never buy any explanation he would ever give anyways. MAGA has been very accommodating to Trump in this war, and the isolationist excuse of "we're not the world police any more" is right there.
- Doesn't matter much if the US abandons the Middle East.
- Doesn't matter much if the US abandons the Middle East.
- Higher oil prices hurt a little bit in the short term, but in the medium term more oil producers will come online if oil prices remain high, and the US can more efficiently deal with high oil prices through electrification subsidies, which would be a far more efficient use of money than everything we've spent on Middle East adventures in the past few decades.
All this assumes a relatively worst-case scenario of Iran remaining ascendant afterwards and other countries not reacting. In practical terms it's likely that a coalition of Gulf nations come in and try to deal with Iran tolling the straits if it's clear the US won't. They're just free-riding now because they think the US will spend the blood and treasure so they don't need to.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
4mo ago
First off your link is broken and is pointing to this article when I think this article was your intention.
is this a good example of Trump playing 4D chess.
It's never "4D chess" when it comes to Trump. The 4D chess argument is cope MAGAs use when Trump does something blatantly foolish or contrary to MAGA principles. That's not to say the actions Trump takes never have beneficial second-order effects. But Trump is clearly flying by the seat of his pants, as basically all leaders have done, even the greatest ones you can think of. At most they have 1 or 2 major priorities that they angle towards.
a strong Europe is in Americas interests
Agreed, but this would be a lot less true if Trump shreds the US alliance system. Also, it must contend with Trump promoting pro-Russian political parties like AfD and Fidesz that tend to naturally be anti-American (though that may be becoming less true these days), and which try to sabotage the EU. Without the EU individual European countries just won't matter that much in the modern world. It'd be like if every US state was independent. The EU has problems, but the only solution that would keep Europe relevant is reform, not obliteration.
Europeans claimed the Ukraine war woke them up, and to some extent it did, but 4+ years after Russian tanks rolled across the border it's pretty clear that the awakening was only moderate at best. It's not clear if much of anything could shake them out of their preference for welfare over weapons, but each reminder driving home the current state of the world is not a bad thing.
As to whether the US needs to open the straits, the answer is probably "no" as long as the US is willing to lose some face and perhaps abandon the Middle East entirely, the latter of which is something I've been advocating for for like a decade.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Nothing I have around me I have built myself; It's all just bought.
Satisfaction is when you (either alone or in a group; sometimes even not you yourself but someone very closely related to you) have created something lasting, look back on it and, to quote a well known book: And He saw that it was good. It's having build a house, or planted a tree.
Disagree here on 2 points.
First, a lot of people (myself as an example) really DGAF that they buy most of the things they own. I might get a sense of accomplishment from building something, but it's more from the skill expression of having done it (and the convenience it will bring me, but that's a different discussion) than the fact that "I" made "the thing".
Second, you're overestimating how much our ancestors made themselves. Barter amongst the tribe was a constant occurrence, and there was even a decent amount of trade between tribes although that was less important on a day-to-day basis. "As long as there have been humans, there has been trade" is as close to a universal as you can get. It would be weird for a species that got a lot of satisfaction from making things themselves to have a big emphasis on specialization even in the archeological record.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Fully agreed. If I was an animal in the wild then it very well may be true that life would be consistently painful enough that suicide was the better choice in the long term. Maybe this could even be extended to medieval peasants and early factory workers. But today? Modern life has so many conveniences and entertainment options that we're all functionally living in a cornucopia. I do 5-10 hours of real work per week to maintain a solidly middle class lifestyle, then spend the remainder of my time doing whatever I want.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
It will correct itself in a generation or two
I highly doubt this will happen automatically, as birthrates were a nonissue basically everywhere 100 years ago, but now they're affecting basically every society. The Amish + Orthodox Jews seem exempt for now, but they're very strange societies that both see a decent chunk of people leaving the farm every generation, and which aren't sustainable plans for entire societies -- a lot of the Orthodox Jewish birthrate is propped up by insane welfare leeching, for instance.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Spicy AF take, and one that I fully agree with! A lot of parents will say that kids are worth it overall in some metaphysical sense, even while they complain constantly about all the object-level problems kids cause. I've heard a lot of parents claim that you only like kids after they've been born, that your body flips a switch or something and forces you to be happy about them. Maybe this is true for some people, but it kind of sounds like a combination of cope + reciting the only socially acceptable line. What, are people going to say "no, I wish I didn't have kids"? I've pressed a few parents in private and it has sort of seemed like they angle that way, although they'll never explicitly say anything like it since that makes it sounds like they don't love their kids.
Anyways I find it likely that the cratering of birthrates across the entire world is a mass viral sensation where the lie is breaking down.
It's almost certain that the increasing quality of childless life in terms of entertainment is a big contributor. I don't think a lot of people remember how boring everything was even just 20-30 years ago, but now we have an endless stream of high-quality entertainment constantly at our fingertips. With that competition, kids frequently get bumped off the to-do list. A lot of people would like to have them as a "feather in the cap" sort of achievement, but they require an absurd amount of commitment relative to literally anything else that the opportunity costs are just too great.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Gamers and neckbeards complained endlessly about these things on online fora, but curiously the gaming journalists always seemed to take the side of the industry, calling gamers entitled manchildren for caring about this stuff.
This is not my recollection. Some sites probably did this, but there was always a significant chunk that decried this sort of stuff either implicitly (e.g. consistently highlighting bad industry practices) or explicitly. I remember Oblivion Horse Armor being pointed out by journalists as a bad omen. I don't recall them doing any sort of concerted, major push for "you need to just accept this, losers!" The Xbox One reveal was similarly panned. Heck, some former journalists became full time commentators calling all that stuff out, like Jim Sterling.
Probably the biggest difference between the mainstream gaming press and regular gamers was the reaction to Mass Effect 3's ending. I recall most sites at the time going "meh", like it was bad but not terrible. Eventually they basically got bullied into adopting the popular view that it was the video game Crime of the Decade, but there was indeed that initial week or 2 where they underplayed it.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
I don't know what exactly is your point with this post. A lot of people presumably went through similar phases that you did, although I doubt anyone had a nearly identical path. I remember GamerGate vividly as well as New Atheism, but I never seriously watched people like Sargon of Akkad or Peter Molyneux. Is your post just to talk about that entire vague blob? Sure, OK, I'll add my 2c.
GamerGate didn't start in 2008-2013. The inciting incident was in 2014, although it's functionally irrelevant other than as a red herring for people to describe what the "movement" was "really about". I'm sure some people were genuinely concerned about ethics in video game reviews, with the reviewers being a little too cozy with the developers and not making that clear. In practice, the movement always really was primarily concerned with feminist/leftist encroachment in video games. Anita Sarkeesian's breakthrough kickstarter in 2012 ought to mentioned alongside that. There were likely smaller events as well, but Anita Sarkeesian was when I first really started noticing the culture war battle lines being drawn. In any case, there was a lot of embarrassment in polite spaces about being seen as "against feminism" in the days of proto-woke, so people liked to pretend GamerGate was about something else, but no, that was never really true in practice. I'm glad we can all just drop the guise and talk about that stuff openly now. It's perfectly valid to push back on the types of cultural changes that Feminists would want, which is mostly redesigning characters so they don't appeal to male sexual preferences, as well as accepting sectarian leftist propaganda as a passive backdrop.
Press X to doubt. 2 reasons:
Any foolishness from the side of Republicans will be seized on by the Dems to be more foolish themselves. It'll allow them greater leeway to hang themselves politically by supporting nonsense like defacto open borders or wokeness 2.0 or whatever else they can cook up with. Then that'll alienate more people, and we'll be back to equilibrium.
MAGA voters could choose to end this war at any time by aggressively protesting what Trump is doing, threatening to withhold support, etc. Trump listens to them in broad strokes, and becomes much more TACO-y when he senses the ground shifting beneath him. So far though, MAGA has not done this. It's going along with the Iran war despite the massive hypocrisy of many MAGAs of previously being isolationist. There's a few tiny cracks and some softening support here and there, but Trump's base remains relatively united behind Trump.
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