site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1249 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 15, 2026

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.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A small but I think interesting speculative, tentative (both of these things because it's honestly too soon to tell how these things will ultimately play out) note on Recent Events, first with Venezuela and (perhaps?) secondly with Iran: the "Donroe Doctrine" in practice is avoiding a specific fail state of the neoconservative (or US-led international rules-based order or whatever you'd like to call it) modus operandi.

Specifically, the Donroe Doctrine has been to avoid creating a power vacuum that could be filled by forces unknown. Instead, coercive diplomacy is applied to weaken a regime, but rather than attempting to topple the regime's leadership, the coercive diplomacy is then treated as leverage in an ongoing series of negotiations.

You can see this most clearly in Venezuela - even though that operation involved seizing the leader of the country, Trump's strategy obviously was not to pursue the removal of the rump regime. Instead he preferred to negotiate with it. Now with Iran, with potentially regime-shattering protests apparently in play, it seems that the Donroe Doctrine might be to the hang the threat of removal over the head of the regime to induce preferred behavior rather than intervene directly. (Watch me jinx things and airstrikes happen as soon as I push the "comment" button.)

If you look back past the raid in Venezuela, you can see signs of this as well. Trump was comfortable drone-striking Qasem Soleimani, but not as part of a scheme to overthrow the government of Iran. Trump has always talked about working with Putin (or Xi, or Kim Jong Un, or what have you) even when he was taking direct adverse action against them (most notably against Putin).

I suppose there are a number of things one could say about this, but one observation I think I would make is that this is not new way of doing things, and in fact it's been practiced quite recently ("stop doing this or we will launch another 50 Tomahawks at you" is a pretty typical message for US presidents to send), so it's not an innovation per se. At the same time, in the recent past, there did seem to be a general vibe of "we want to remove the bad guys and let the good guys take over" even if we were only engaging in coercive diplomacy, and that vibe seems less present now.

The other one is that this way of doing things is actually well suited to a world where the US status as a superpower is challenged. Paradoxically, as the days of monopolarity slip into the rear view mirror, instances of US gunboat diplomacy may proliferate. This is for (at least) two reasons: firstly, as soft power slips away, the US will need to exercise more hard power to maintain credibility. Secondly, nation-building is an expensive and long-term commitment. Black-bagging dictators really isn't! By plentiful use of coercive diplomacy, the US might be able to achieve far-reaching effects at much less cost, letting it focus more budgetary effort on areas of major geopolitical focus.

Finally, I think there's a clear danger here: if you have a successful string of black-bagging, drone-striking, or otherwise exercising coercive diplomacy against people who annoy you, it can grow intoxicating and seductive. This is obviously a threat of nation-building as well, but a string of quick, cheap, successful operations can lead very quickly to an expensive failure if you keep rolling the dice. And, well, Donald knows better than anyone: nobody likes to lose.

But I'm curious if this sketch rings true to others. What am I missing?

It’s not that there are no cases of successful gunboat diplomacy; there are. But as the British found out when they tried it, in a lot of cases that road leads to boots on the ground, flag on a flagpole imperialism anyway, because the threat of intervention has to be backed up or because the people you put or keep in power need help.

Where the acquisition of Greenland fits in. I get the idea that having access to Greenland would be strategically advantageous for the United States, it just seems a weird drum to bang on. And no, there is no military action in Greenland as there is in Iran and Venezuela, but it is a sovereign country and Trump has made noises about how "We need Greenland." How does that fit in the "Donroe" Doctrine?

Umm Louisiana purchase and Alaska fit quite well in the way US has done things. Find a nice chunk of land you want, wait until the remote power that controls it is in vulnerable position, acquire it for penny on the dollar with vague rumblings about just taking it.

What people don't understand is that what USA is doing is mostly return to form. What donald trump is doing will probably get critique from Teddy Roosevelt about the style, but not about the substance.

I'm going to go with a perhaps controversial opinion here and say there is no doctrine here at all, Trump is acting opportunistically and for his own reasons that range from a a simplistic and transactional view of geopolitics down to petty ego. He's surrounded by yes men and getting high on the news coverage of himself, it seems most likely he's seen information about resource deposits and decided he has to have it, plus securing his place in history as a US President that expanded the nations borders with a big chunk of land.

The only "doctrine" you might be able to find will come from the courtiers whispering into his ear, trying to aim the loose cannon roughly at problems they want dealt with, but even then that's going to be filtered through Trumps own strange lens and more probably than not there will be different parties trying to push him in different directions.

This Greenland stuff is madness, there's no reasonable justification for it from a military or political standpoint, anything the US wants from Greenland they almost certainly could have negotiated for and gotten without any real hassle and certainly without threatening the existence of NATO and setting off alarm bells in Europe.

I'm going to go with a perhaps controversial opinion here and say there is no doctrine here at all

I was going to post something similar about Trump not having any coherently formulated foreign policy but I think you can still make the argument that his various decisions do reflect an underlying pattern, even if that pattern is purely reflective of his psychological profile rather than an explicitly thought-out philosophy. Whether the most appropriate word for this is doctrine or something else is maybe a different discussion.

I think Greenland is another case of the Donroe Doctrine being a twist on the traditional American doctrine. Obviously Greenland has been a long-term strategic objective (the USA invaded it during World War 2, and my understanding is that we just refused to leave afterwards and attempted to buy it; eventually NATO plus an operating agreement with Denmark secured our interests there). So why bang on the drum?

One possibility is that it's a weird Trump-y thing, and I definitely think he has handled the optics of it differently than most presidents. It's also probably true that it would be nice to base nuclear weapons there, if you're the US, and my understanding is that Denmark prohibits this. It's also worth keeping in mind that Denmark's stance on Greenland is "they can leave any time they want." If you're the US you would be wise to ensure that does not happen on terms unfavorable to you. I worry that the specific methodology might be counterproductive, though.

But if you go back to my post about the rise of coercive diplomacy going hand-in-glove with American status as a decaying superpower, it makes a lot of sense to me as an attempt to consolidate the hinterlands. If the US views its relationship with Europe as less secure going forward, while at the same time the threats from Russia and China have increased, attempting to shore up our defensive posture now before the situation deteriorates further makes a lot of sense.

it just seems a weird drum to bang on

It's especially weird because the US already has access to Greenland.

The US used to have an order of magnitude larger presence there during the earlier decades of cold war. The old agreements are still in place and nobody would have complained if they'd have simply founded a bunch of new bases there.

But of course with Trump it's much more about The King getting what the king thinks he needs to feel kingly than it is about any actual usefulness.

This is why I don't buy any of the mental gymnastics about the strategic value of Greenland and how the Euros are just being obstinate to stick it to Trump over a very reasonable request. Denmark has historically been very accommodating and for some reason Trump decided that we (the US) needed to threaten to mug them.

Greenland is not a proper "sovereign country". Denmark is, but Denmark owning Greenland is just a historical accident, it got it in a divorce with Norway in 1814. Their sovereignty over Greenland is like British sovereignty over Hong Kong - today it's there, tomorrow maybe not. It's not like Iran or Venezuela, it's more like, say, Alaska or American Samoa. I think if Obama asked Denmark for Greenland, in order to establish The First Innuit State in History or whatever, they might go for it (they aren't racists after all!). But of course, no European can say "yes" to that orange clown, that's just unthinkable.

And yes, as the Northern routes are opening up Greenland becomes rather important. Europe's war doctrine is "it will be ok somehow, and if not, US will certainly do something about it and we will criticize them for doing it wrong", so it's not likely they were going to do much about it. They might now, to spite the orange clown, but they certainly weren't before, especially not Denmark, whose fighting days are well behind. So, bringing it up is a win either way - either there's US presence in this strategic region, or Europe bumps their own presence, even if to spite Trump.

When do you think we should start taking the news coming out of Iran seriously? What likely leading indicators will we see when things start getting serious for the regime?

I feel like we get the "Iranian protests threaten regime" news cycle periodically, but I have trouble trying to figure out what to trust. We'll of course get biased interpretations, but what concrete facts will tell us when to start thinking big?

I'm all in. Nothing ever happens

Absent outside intervention, regimes fail when security forces defect or desert. If the US (or someone else, I guess) isn't going to intervene, the IRGC can just keep shooting protestors until the survivors get the message. The only other possibility is that the rest of the military decides to intervene on behalf of the protestors, but my (extremely uninformed) impression is that, in true police state fashion, the Iranian military is largely neutered precisely to avoid that outcome.

If you see signs of entire military units defecting or walking off the job or refusing to open fire on civilians.

Been monitoring it. My current read is.

  • In number of protestors, Ayatollah's Iran has seen larger protests before. IRGC has quelled protests of larger scale.
  • In terms of violence, these are the most violent protests Iran has seen since the revolution. This is in terms of property damage, outright protestor violence and retaliatory shooting.
  • Protests were getting more intense until mid last week. Conflicting reports on scale of protests this week.

Protests are materially new in a few ways:

  • Khamenei is old (this time for real) and has no true heir lined up
  • Tehran water crisis is real. Civilians are stressed.
  • Legitimacy of regime materially affected after
  • For the first(?) time, protestors are chanting in support of regime change

Note, the Bangladeshi protests that led to regime change went on for 2 months, until Hasina was eventually pushed out. It took ~4 months in SriLanka. Iran is not an Arab nation, I think recent regime change in developing/middle income stable nations is a better proxy for what a revolutionary protest might look like, compared to Arab spring. In Nepal, banning internet forced more people into the streets, not fewer. So, hard to assign a positive or negative signal based on just the internet blackout. The main difference is that the IRGC is totally loyal to the Ayatollah, so an early military coup to limit causalities is unlikely.

It's honestly difficult to see what can happen besides a revolution or millions dying at this point. They have a severe drought because of mis-managed water supply. They have Weinmar levels of inflation. They have possibly tens of thousands of protestors shot to death. They foolishly cut off internet, giving the locals little better to do than join the protests. If soldiers defect because their families are starving, it's a revolution. If the regime keeps their enforcers fed, it's mass deaths.

Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent claims that the Iranian government is wiring money out of the country. Not sure if that's business as normal or if that's a sign this is the big one.

If you believe more people have died in a week of Iranian protests than in 6 months of the largest European war since WW2 your assessment of the situation is questionable, to be polite.

Which figure are you referring to? Millions dying refers to the possibility of a severe famine, and yes, millions of deaths would not be unheard of in a famine.

Shooting protestors is easy when they've lines up on the street for you. But notice that I didn't commit to there being thousands, just said possibly because that was a report I saw.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats