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Agreed, the USA could do this. Would it be worth it though? Would this be accretive for Pax Americana? Does this make America more secure as the world Hegemon? Or is it instance #69 of China getting to sit back and look like the rational reasonable alternative to the western "rules based world order"?
Sure, we can practically genocide (I know this word is not to be used lightly, however I'm not sure what else to call "wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to your clean water and energy nationwide?") Iran, but does that really make things better?
"The USA destroys Iranian industrial civilization, millions die" strikes me as one of the main events students memorize in 2126 for the "5 main things that caused the fall of American global empire"
Obviously this would be a terrible choice; I don't know if it would be better or worse than not preventing Iran from getting nukes. Depends on whether it makes them North Korea or they actually start a nuclear war or attempt nuclear blackmail (e.g. "Israel's Jews all leave or we nuke things") over it. I don't think these are the only two choices, but if they were, the choice of committing genocide upon Iran would be available.
Reasonable take! I like it
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Are you implying that NATO did genocide in Serbia?
"If President Milosevic really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO's five conditions and we will stop this campaign. But as long as he doesn't do so we will continue to attack those targets which provide the electricity for his armed forces. If that has civilian consequences, it's for him to deal with but that water, that electricity is turned back on for the people of Serbia"
I mean I'm not a fan of that either for similar reasons, so if NATO had choked out Yugoslavia so hard that hundreds of thousands-millions of Serbs/etc started dying of dehydration and chlorea then yeah, that would be.
Im not a big "collective punishment" or "just overthrow your government despite the fact you don't have electricity or water (they do, they have guns so they have what's left of it)" and if you accomplish this impossible task you can drink clean water again"
If we want the Iranians to overthrow their government (I do , I want this for them) we should actually help the fucking protestors. But we clearly missed that window bc the Iranian govt killed 10-30,000 of the people most likely to stand up and rally around.
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