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.
- 13
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So about Iran - a lot of places and few times here people mention that IRGC are well trained, motivated and such. Usually from people that are skeptical for one reason or another about the war. I am sure they utilize the lion's share of the Iranian resources available, but the evidence of them being competent is scant at best. They consistently fail to protect people and infrastructure, their proxies are also not terribly effective. So where does their good reputation come from?
Propaganda. Iran, for all its faults, is a reasonably functional nation with a well educated population. Iran has a similar HDI to countries like Brazil or Mexico. Iran has the ability to put out propaganda about the IRGC, and does so.
That said, there's basically no country that could stop the USA from bombing the piss out of them if the USA wants to. China and Russia could nuke the USA, but it's not clear if they could actually protect their airspace otherwise.
Rather, and I'm going full Philly here, we need to realize that effectiveness for Iran (and for their proxies) is like the movie Rocky. Not the later sequels where Rocky Balboa becomes champion, beats Mr. T, wins the cold war, etc. But the gritty, original, actually good version of Rocky, where the story is just about this big palooka taking on (fake) Muhammed Ali. And he doesn't win. He doesn't even really get close to winning. But he goes the distance. He doesn't get knocked out. He takes it to a decision, he takes it to the closing bell, and at the end of the fight he's beaten all to hell, but the champion has to go to the hospital too. Rocky endures.
If the Iranian regime comes out the other side of this without being removed from power, the regime will spin it as a credibility win because they held together and the United States couldn't dislodge them. So hopefully there is an effective plan in place to dislodge the regime because the alternative is much worse.
The Vietnam War was the last time anyone deliberately took on the US military in a conventional fight (Noriega and Saddam Hussein made some very bad decisions that led to a conventional confrontation, but that was very much not what they expected to happen). North Vietnam a) got pasted in basically every head-to-head engagement with US forces (and that while quality of the US military was at a low ebb) b) ultimately succeeded.
One of the consequences of US conventional dominance is that no one wants to fight us. This is good, but it also means that the amount of foreign policy problems the US has that can be solved by the brute application of conventional force is fairly low. This is compounded by the accumulated psychic damage of Vietnam and Iraq, which has greatly attenuated the ability of the USG to count on popular trust to justify a sustained war effort (which is to say, I think complaints that the public has gotten soft are misunderstanding the problem).
That is a major stumbling block for people who want the US to pursue an aggressive, hard power-oriented foreign policy. Most potential adversaries know that even if the US goes ham in the air, it isn't going to put troops on the ground to force the issue. So if you can bunker down and ideally turn up the heat in response, America will lose interest because Americans do not believe in US foreign policy. Hell, one of the reasons the US foreign policy community has been guzzling the special forces kool-aid is because promises results without the cost, footprint, or media attention of large (whether or not it delivers is another matter).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link