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I'm afraid this jingoistic intoxication will get worse when the US proceeds to topple some other incompetent country (probably Cuba next). This is all fine and good so long as the actual decisionmakers are sober and don't infer they can start anything with China, but will they be sober? Currently you're burning through interceptors and, if this is not AI fog of war slop, even losing F-15s (alledegely to friendly fire, I presume due to lack of relevant training. Should have called upon Ukrainians to teach you guys air defense). But long term, Iran is poised to lose the war, of course, so the sense of invulnerability will be restored.
First of all Iran was not a "military ally" to China in a way that matters, this is just cope to inflate the sense of achievement, just like hyping up Iranian "gigantic military built over 40 years" (I see you double down on it). For reference, India, Kazakhstan and Pakistan are also there, are they Iranian allies too? Are India and Pakistan allies? They've just had a war. "Heavily involved in selling oil" just means that due to sanctions their oil was selling at a discount, which the Chinese opportunistically exploited. Here's what Foreign Policy had to say last September about the nature of the relationship:
That's diplomatic; on a personal level, Chinese consider Iranians worthless backstabbing third worlders. So, their lack of direct involvement is quite understandable. The article lists some symbolic gestures (Beijing inviting Iranians to Victory day parade, agreement on implementation of the 25 year investment pact) but that was transparently a panicked reaction to a crisis. Objectively they're given about the same treatment as Starmer, Macron, Carney and other foreign dignitaries. I don't want to say there's nothing to multipolar agenda, obviously China prefers Iran to remain a thorn in the US/Israeli side and also to buy cheaper oil. But that's a benefit of bounded and not great value, and ineptitude and duplicity of the mullah regime qualifies it further.
No, Iran is only about Iran and Israel, not China. Except psychologically (I'll return to this).
I think what we're learning is not so much that the US is a supreme military power but that it's been a very reluctant hegemonic empire indeed. Why do these shitholes even exist? Venezuela, Cuba? Seriously? The former is a pure petrostate that had failed to keep its oil rigs running due to decades of mismanagement and populism (and also sanctions). The latter is a country famous for sugarcane that's importing sugar now because Communists have ran the industry into the ground. Just months ago, Iran had almost collapsed due to a drought, not to mention that it's deeply infiltrated by Mossad. Why does the US tolerate such enemies instead of giving them a push? Why does it just allow the hostility to persist? Well, Trump has been asking himself just this, it seems. The answer is, there's no good reason. The US can afford to crush them, because it'll be pretty cheap (especially given the fixed costs of US military power).
The problem comes with assuming that China is anything like them. I get it, too – Communists, enemies of America, poor, theoretically allies (though China has no real allies except for North Korea and informally Pakistan, to counter India). But it's dangerously delusional. At the end of the day, the reason America can do this, the reason it has all those stealth jets and satellites and AI and smart munitions and everything else is that it has a large, productive, complex, technologically advanced economy. Even the industrial sector, for all the talk of hollowing out, is the world's second largest (though it depends on how you treat value-added figures – in physical output, it might be closer to Japan than to China). And these guys are so far down the line they barely have an economy.
I like the measure called Economic Complexity Index, maintained by Harvard Growth Lab. In intention, it tracks how capable a nation is of mainitaining industries that generate globally competitive products, though in reality is just measures export diversity. It's not pefrect – for example, Australia and the US get punished by the predominance of a few commodities in their export basket – but it's a decent proxy if you keep that in mind. Say, in 2024, Venezuela was ranked #133 out of 145 countrires. Cuba is #122. Afghanistan is #110. Iran is #87. Russia is #67. Canada (commodity exporter) is #35. USA is #20, between Hong Kong and France. The top 10 all have negligible commodity endowment. The list is as follows: Japan, Switzerland, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Czechia, Israel, Slovenia, China (climbed 7 points in the last 16 years; the US has fallen down by 7 again). Discounting the fraction of the economy involved in fossil fuels and agriculture (a generous choice), I'd say the US would end up roughly as complex as China. They have a nice visualisation, you can click through it, eg here's the structure of American imports from China, and here are exports. Or, here are Chinese exports to Japan which as we know is number 1. And the other way around. It's quite clear to me that the ranking is directionally aligned with reality. And it's a ranking of complexity. In terms of volume or human capital employed in militarily relevant fields, it's not close. China doesn't need "allies" because it surpasses the entire Western bloc in scale.
Reminder that China is already testing two 6th generation jets in the open, and given that you haven't resolved the issue of launching 5th generation from Ford in over a decade (their EMALS works flawlessly btw), there are hardly any grounds to expect the gap to widen (or even to exist).
How's that working out? I see Iranian ballistic missiles hit Israel online. Reminder that it's a barely functional theocracy, these aren't some fancy MIRVs or HGVs. Forget THAAD, actually, you're struggling wtih Shaheds.
Starship is a real argument for interception, but the gap in rocket technology is likely smaller than it seems. We'll see over 2026 if China can begin landing their boosters, and they won't need Starship unit economics to scale up production.
Currently estimated at 600 warheads, vs American stockpile of 3700. It's a completely sufficient deterrence. You glibly dismiss 50-90 million dead Americans, I suspect that's a lowball but the point is that you're unlikely to destroy China either, for all the memes about Three Gorges Dam. Their cities are denser but made of concrete far more resilient to nuclear flash than your suburbs, for starters. That said, we're all far from the genocidal peak of Cold War, and these assets on both sides would be used on counterforce strike.
What I want to say is that this isn't just a funny hypothetical. "How do we fight China" is the question on the mind of American planners, and the answer is "we don't, not really". China is your only rival and pacing threat, China is likely to take Taiwan in years, and there are no adequate answers sans praying to AGI and Elon Musk to bail the US out. Accordingly this showboating in hostile shitholes, while inflating their alleged capability to proportionally inflate American dominance, to the extent that it's not executing on prior plans and commitments – is best understood as procrastination in the face of unsolvable strategic dilemma, with a nice bonus of inciting this feverish national pride and maybe improving the GOP's chances in the midterms.
What F-15s were lost? Is this something Russian or Chinese media is saying? Everything I've read says that the US has lost absolutely zero planes so far, just a few unfortunate men on a base in Kuwait that was struck by a missile. But other than that one incident, US missile defense in this conflict has been outstanding.
Sure, I never claimed that there's some great love affair between China and Iran. It was always just a partnership of convenience. Nonetheless, it was a real partnership, and I'm not how China is going to deal with the loss of this oil supply, on top of the loss of Venezuela. I suppose they'll just become even more dependant on Russia, just as Russia is dependant on the money they get from selling oil and gas to China. But if that link is broken, both nations fall apart.
Why do you discount fossil fuels and agriculture? Both of those fields are actually quite technologically advanced in the US. We're not some 3rd world nation doing subsistance agriculture or relying on foreign companies to drill oil for us. Those are some of the most crucial and high-tech fields in the economy! Meanwhile, the areas which China exports to us are in manufacturing, which is something we are actively trying to increase. Many Americans would consider it a great boon to have more manufacturing jobs and less imports from China. But if the US stops exporting food and oil to China, I don't see how China replaces those.
No I don't glibly dismiss it at all, I simply recognize the reality that the US now has far more relative power in nuclear weapons than it had at any time in the Cold War, when the USSR generally had more warheads. It's not about fighting China directly, it's about gaining operational freedom to act in other areas, as I wrote here . If China wants to invade Taiwan, they must be terrified that it would end up in a nuclear war with the US. The US can freely act against other countries with no such worry about China.
America has many planners, who can plan a great deal of actions. That's how we fight Venezuela, and Iran, and aid Ukraine, and perhaps take down Cuba, and who knows what else, all simultaneously. Because we are a world power with global concerns. That is rather different from the state of China, which has to spend 50 years worrying about how it can take over some small offshore island because it represents a huge political threat to the legitimacy of their government. But sure, we can also plan for how to win a war against China, that's a fun hypothetical for our military planners to consider :). Starving them of oil seems like a good first step.
Bias statement: I greately enjoy Pax Americana, I write this from the perspective of a frustrated and worried citizen who sees their mantle of "global superpower" slipping and is sad that the response to that is to shoot ourselves in the foot over and over again.
It's crazy you just skipped over that point lol
This is a great first step, and given they are the leader in ev's and power installation, it looks like they might be thinking about this too!
A few more things to consider, just riffing off the top of my head, happy to expand on any of them
Dominant position in heavy REE refining, yes, everyone else can stand up this capcaity, no, no one has to the same extent despite saying they want to for 20 years
One shipyard can build more ships than all US military shipyard combined
Military doctrine literally explicitly built around countering US forces
USA keeps shooting all its interceptors, of which it builds a far too small amount, to defend Israel (greatest ally btw)
If you dont want to read this , here is an AI-slop summary:
US + allies (Japan + Philippines + farther bases; excluding SK/Taiwan) — change last
10 years:Japan added only 2 HAS (and IAS grew from <60 to100), the Philippines stayed at 0 HAS (IAS roughly doubled from a low base), and the “farther” US operating areas remained 0 US HAS; overall, in the within-1,000-nm cut (excluding SK), the US added +2 HAS total.US + allies — current (per the paper): Japan has 36 military airfields with
140 HAS(most Cold War-era); the Philippines has 0 HAS across 13 bases; and the farther US/partner areas listed are almost entirely unhardened with 0 US HAS.China — change last 10 years: PRC HAS rose from
370entering the 2010s to “over 800” (i.e., +430-ish HAS, more than doubling); non-hardened IAS grew from just under 1,100 to >2,300, reaching >3,100 total shelters nationwide.China — current in-theater (per the paper): 134 PRC air bases within 1,000 nm of the Taiwan Strait with 650+ HAS and almost 2,000 IAS.
A collection of INDOPACOM leaders shitting their pants:
Adm. Samuel Paparo (Commander, USINDOPACOM) — Senate Armed Services posture hearing (Apr 10, 2025): “China is outproducing the United States… the trajectory must change.”
Adm. Samuel Paparo — USINDOPACOM Posture Statement (2025): “the trajectory must change. China is out-producing the United States…”
Adm. Samuel Paparo — testimony coverage on shipbuilding (Apr 2025): China building naval combatants “6 to 1.8” vs the US; “I could go through every force element…”
Adm. Samuel Paparo — Sedona Forum (McCain Institute coverage, May 2025): “every force element… is a bad trajectory.”
Adm. John Aquilino (Commander, USINDOPACOM) — Senate posture statement (Mar 21, 2024): PRC continues “aggressive military buildup”; “the risk… is high and trending in the wrong direction.”
Adm. John Aquilino — same statement (Mar 2024): “On a scale not seen since WWII… [PLA] has added over 400 fighter aircraft… more than 20 major warships…”
Adm. John Aquilino — Senate posture hearing (Mar 10, 2022): described an “extensive buildup of nuclear capability”; when asked if expansion was dramatic: “Extremely, quickly.”
Adm. John Aquilino — interview coverage (Apr 2024): “I’ve watched it increase in scope and scale, it is not slowing down.”
Adm. Phil Davidson (Commander, USINDOPACOM) — Senate testimony coverage (Mar 2021): cited “the… numbers of… ships, aircraft, rockets… they’ve put in the field,” and warned “the threat… [is]… in the next six years.”
Adm. Phil Davidson — later public quote (Sep 2021): “all those trend lines indicate… within the next six years they will have… capability… to forcibly reunify [Taiwan]…”
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The most recent reporting suggest Kuwait shot down three F-15Es in a friendly-fire incident.
See: https://www.twz.com/air/f-15-spins-into-the-ground-while-on-fire-in-middle-east
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