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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   509 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 18, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Some headlines from this week:

Geopolitics

United States

Ex-Sailor Sentenced to 12 Years in Terror Plot Targeting Naval Station Great Lakes

The Rest of the Americas

Gangs kill over 40 in Haiti's Arcahaïe as local authorities call for reinforcements

Europe

Denmark to buy $9B air defense systems as tensions with Russia grow

Middle East

"A year after Israel's pager attacks in Lebanon, survivors rebuild". Just a really funny headline

Iran

Israel strikes Yemen's Hodeidah Port twelve times after Houthi attack on Israeli airport, claiming it was used by the Houthis for weapons transfers from Iran.

A former U.S. Navy sailor, Xuanyu Harry Pang, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for plotting a terrorist attack at Naval Station Great Lakes and attempting to assist the Iranian government in smuggling radioactive materials into the U.S. for a dirty bomb. Pang, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to destroy national defense premises, conducted surveillance on the base and sought maximum destructive locations in Chicago. The judge highlighted the profound betrayal by a service member against his fellow sailors, noting the potential catastrophic consequences of Pang's plans.

Gaza

Gaza hit by telecoms blackout as Israeli tanks and infantry advance

Israeli finance minister describes plans to turn Gaza into a 'real estate bonanza' as bombs hammer the enclave

More than 10% of Gaza’s population has been killed or injured, former Israeli military chief says

Yemen

Asia

SoftBank openai deal delayed

18 members of the Pakistani security forces were killed this week. Pakistan suspects Afghanistan-backed terrorists.

North Korea's Kim Jong Un oversees drone test, and approved a plan to further strengthen unmanned aerial vehicle

Kim Jong Un declares AI military drone development a ‘top priority’

Chinese Coast Guard: "Philippine boat deliberately collides with Chinese coast guard vessel despite warnings, responsibility for the collision lies entirely with the Philippines."

India/Pakistan

Pakistan hard hit this moonson

India's Modi calls for peace in Manipur, launches projects worth nearly $1 billion. Though the reception wasn't uniformly good though.

Africa

Sudan is currently experiencing the world's largest displacement crisis, with over 30.4 million people requiring assistance. The crisis has resulted in alarming rates of malnutrition

Libya: More Than 100 Sudanese Refugees Dead or Missing in Shipwrecks Off Libya

Sudan: Rebel drone strike kill dozens.

Biorisks

DR Congo begins vaccinating against new Ebola outbreak

Israel strikes Yemen's Hodeidah Port twelve times after Houthi attack on Israeli airport, claiming it was used by the Houthis for weapons transfers from Iran.

This is where my ignorance shows up - how hard is it to destroy a port? I mean Israel has been bombing it repeatedly for a while, and it's way too short timeframe to build a new port, so why it's still capable to accepting any weapons transfers from anywhere?

how hard is it to destroy a port?

Fairly easy. Just sink the docked ships. They will create barriers with their hulls.

That heavily depends on what exactly is meant by "bombing" and "to destroy". A few guided missiles or bombs sent from fighters are good for destroying individual buildings but won't do a whole lot if the goal is to make the entire port area long term unusable for docking ships. Even the Beirut port is still standing just fine after a one kiloton explosion. I suspect you'd need an actual nuke to truly destroy many ports so that they couldn't be easily made ad hoc serviceable in short time again.

It's not "long term" really - they bombed it quite recently. And it's not just standing ships there - it's unloading, etc. - it must take some infrastructure? How hard it should be to destroy this infrastructure to the point it can't serve as a port anymore?

You can remove a lot of the infrastructure if you don't mind slowing down the unloading. Even oil pipelines can be replaced with tanker trucks if those are available.

Imagine bombing a large parking lot with cruise missile or two. Sure, it'd lower the capacity and temporarily halt the use but it wouldn't take all that much effort to continue operation again. A port at its basics is just a dropoff point / parking lot for ships with the most basic structures being inherently resistant to any secondary effects of bombing (ie. anything outside the literal crater).

Just for comparison I used Nukemap to simulate dropping a 20 kT nuke on the Beirut port and there's no way to position that such that it'd take out more than half of the port with heavy damage (a heavy concrete pier is probably going to shrug off 5 psi overpressure). You'd have to use a dozen precisely aimed 10 ton bombs (roughly the yield of the largest non-nuclear bomb in US arsenal, not exactly something to be fired from a normal jet) to actually destroy all the piers themselves.

Nothing about Nepal?

Old news a this point, my observe loops are at least a weekly cadence :)

Old news by this point.

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