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But without proper planning or strategy. Trump apparently didn't consider that Iran might close the straits of Hormuz, only now is there bleating about insuring vessels, only now are defence company executives being summoned to boost production. The plan seems to have been 'big strike package and then we win', which just isn't how things work.
Maybe nobody in the US decision-making cabal knows that Taiwan imports the vast majority of its food, energy and fertilizer by sea. Maybe they aren't aware that Taiwan can be blockaded into submission while China retains access to land markets and enjoys self-sufficiency in grain if not meat. Maybe American leaders are still thinking in terms of wars lasting a few days or weeks, rather than years. Wars between strong powers tend to drag on for a lot longer than expected. What is the plan to defeat China in attritional, industrial warfare?
THAAD getting wrecked by Iran's missile and drone arsenal is also pretty alarming. THAAD is what's supposed to defend Guam and other US bases necessary for this war.
Capability is not just tactical success but understanding the nature of the war you're going to fight, preparing the proper force and choosing the right missions and tactics. Executing the wrong approach proficiently isn't good enough.
He could well be saying 'how do we deter Trump, he doesn't seem to think strategically at all.' And that is indeed a nightmarish situation to be in, since quantitative superiority means nothing to a man who doesn't understand numbers, just makes them up. Qualitative superiority is useless since Trump always thinks he has the biggest and best of everything. What can you do but roll the dice and let the outcome speak for itself? Or just wait for more unforced errors? The waiting for unforced errors strategy seems to have been going pretty well for China thus far.
I am very certain that the US military considered the possibility that Iran, known for threatening to close the straits of Hormuz for decades, might close the straights of Hormuz. I think the stuff about insurance was in response to rising insurance premiums - there's really no point in saying anything publicly about that ahead of time.
Trump has also been on the production thing for some time now.
Unlikely, CSIS has done public simulations of Taiwan blockades, and some of the players are or were in said cabal.
It's very unclear to me the extent to which this damage is real. A lot of reported hits on THAAD locations doesn't necessarily mean much given that it's a semi-mobile system. We'll see how it shakes out.
If it turns out that "the missile will always get through" – which is obviously true given enough missile mass – then that's bad for the power that needs successful missile defense to win a war in Taiwan. And that power is not the United States. China cannot win a war over Taiwan if their ships get sunk by missile salvos. If the US and Chinese Navies sink each other in a Taiwan fight, the status quo is maintained and the US wins.
I tend to agree with this. I would just add that RandomRanger doesn't have much credibility when it comes to these sorts of issues. Earlier, he indicated that he was "confident" that Israel had bombed a girls' elementary school in Iran. Recent news reports are suggesting that if it was probably the United States. Of course it's too early to know for sure what happened -- and certainly too early for anyone to be "confident" that it was Israel.
It looks to me like RandomRanger is so consumed by hatred of Israel that he just isn't capable of critical or objective analysis when it comes to any issue that involves Israel.
Man, who cares? Neither the US nor Israel would just bomb one specific girls' school for kicks, it makes no sense. They are acting in a coalition. The news here is that the school got bombed and not by Iran.
It seems to have been absolutely the US, and it makes perfect sense. They bombed a half-dozen other buildings in the same complex, with the girls' school being in a walled off corner of same. But "US strike hits 7 buildings in IGRC base including semi-adjacent school" doesn't play well with anyone. The US doesn't want to talk about how they got a target wrong/out of date, and people who hate the US don't want to talk about how "yeah, this kind of thing happens in war, just like friendly fire, it sucks but it's understandable since it's not like the US is omniscient & omnipotent".
The problem with "shit happens in war" is that, while true, it still rests on an underlying belief that the war is justified. "We accidentally bombed a school while fighting against tyranny" is easier to swallow (assuming it's credible) than "we accidentally bombed a school while carrying out a raid because we didn't like their drug importation laws."
As the USG made approximately zero effort to sell the effort to the US public and has had incoherent messaging, that belief appears not to be particularly widespread. As civilian (and, for that matter, military) casualties continue to mount, it raises the question of what aim is justifying them. By the Trump admin's own words, we're not spreading democracy and we're not responding to an attack or imminent threat. Best I can tell, this has either been an exercise in kinetic gunboat diplomacy or the US getting suckered into doing the heavy lifting for an Israeli attempt at regime destabilization.
I'll note again that people were fairly willing to swallow the collateral damage of coalition air and artillery strikes around Raqqa and Mosul because it was generally accepted that the alternative of leaving ISIS in control of these cities was even worse. They were less willing to excuse civilian casualties resulting from bad targeting/intel (or callousness) when it came to the broader efforts of Inherent Resolve, where it simply seemed to be adding to the carnage of the Syrian Civil War rather than achieving anything desirable.
I mean didn't Iran just literally kill within an order of magnitude as many civilians in a week as Israel killed Gazans in the whole recent affair? Intentionally and not as collateral damage? Like I don't know, it's not hard for me to find the good guys in this conflict.
I'm not sure I see the relevance. Iran massacring tens of thousands of protestors would a strong point in favor regime change but that isn't what is happening. "We're the good guys because they're the bad guys" logic doesn't check out because not starting a war was an option. It is possible that both parties in a conflict are bad actors, and is possible that well-intentioned actors are exercising criminally poor judgment. The fact that collateral damage happens in war is why you need to think carefully and exercise judgment before going to war. Even if your adversaries are the most despicable people in history, you still have to ask yourself if starting a war will make things better.
In point of fact, we have very little reason to extend the benefit of the doubt to the current US administration. They've failed to articulate a clear purpose for war (basically everyone has offered a different rationale), but they have been openly disdainful of humanitarian concerns and dismissed democratization as a priority.
What I mean to illustrate by pointing out the tens of thousands dead at the hand of the regime very recently is that accidentally hitting a school needs to be put into context with the status quo. "Shit happens in war" is a little easier to swallow when even worse shit is happening without the war. If we're trying to determine how the ledger balances out, I just can't see how some mild collateral damage could possibly factor into the calculus. Certainly it's worth considering if we actually can topple the regime and how that'd play out, but we really could be bombing a school for every ayatollah we take out and it really would change the balance much here.
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