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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   8213 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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What I find most interesting about the current Israel - Iran conflict isn't necessarily a lot of the geopolitical implications / consequences (although of course they are important), but instead the way the war is being waged. It seems, so far as I can tell, that they are almost entirely "trading missile strikes" and that no boots are on the ground, there isn't even really much of a naval component. Just missile centers in cities or in the desert shooting at one another, causing damage that, from a citizen's POV, is essentially random.

I know that the World Wars were considered horrible because death in combat felt so random due to bombings, machine guns, etc. Are we now entering a new stage of warfare where soldiers are barely even involved, and we just shoot missiles at each others population centers, trying to decapitate the enemy leadership?

On the one hand, it's certainly... cleaner, I suppose? Much better than the horrid conditions of trench warfare during the World Wars, at least based on what I've read about it. Still though, it feels extremely cold and random, disconnected from the perspective of the average person.

Then again, the whole war in the Ukraine is very much boots on the ground, even if drones are heavily involved. I'm not sure (obviously) exactly how the future of war will develop, but we are certainly seeing interesting new innovations as of late. And we have barely even scratched the surface of using AI in warfare!

What are your best predictions for how future warfare will develop?

This was the same method used to destroy Libya. The US sanctioned them, bombed them to pieces and financed various jihadist groups and slowly destroyed the country. The US failed at nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan and moved on to nation destruction. There was no attempt to build a liberal Syria, there was instead a project to simply destroy Syria. There has been no attempt to fix Yemen, the goal is simply to turn Yemen into a shattered wreck with no capacity to do anything.

The US empire has gone from trying to control the world to simply trying to smash anything that challenges it with not much more justification than might is right.

Given that Syria has normalized diplomatic relations with the U.S., bombing them to pieces seems to be the most effective nation-building strategy that has so far been tried. Don't invade, don't occupy, just bomb anti-American regimes. The bombings weaken the regime and allow a rival to take over, and the desire to not get bombed makes the new regime want to stay on America's good side. Simple as.

Are you being serious here?

Is there another nation-building strategy that has been proven more effective? I only said it was the most effective strategy that has been tried so far. I didn't say it was neighborly.

Of course. That of the British. You take some locals with legitimacy, give them just enough weapons to rule the place and enjoy the plunder.

The US has been down that road before in Iran specifically too. But their guy started to reneg on the plunder and they thought they could switch him out by breaking everything, and instead created an enemy for decades.

Next time just replace the guy with his son or something.

I didn't say it was neighborly.

If 'nation-building' is supposed to mean anything other than conquest, then it is deranged and incompetent.

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