This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
One possible negative consequence of the Iran war that I haven't seen talked about much is that it might encourage both the American establishment and the American public to think too lightly of war with China. More the latter than the former, really - I am sure that the former at least understand the danger of nuclear war and have no interest in getting personally hit by nuclear weapons. But even they might become a bit too reckless as a result of these easy military victories. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the public has very little understanding of military affairs and probably don't really understand the difference in power between China and every other US rival. The way I would put it, the Iran war is like an NBA team playing a college team, maybe even a high school team. Yes, Iran is keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed and are pulling off the occasional successful strike against Israel and the Gulf countries. But that is happening because they are lucky in terms of geography to be sitting next to one of the world's most economically important waterways and are also right next to the Gulf countries. In terms of pure military-on-military action, the US military is dominating while suffering barely a scratch.
War against China would be like an NBA team playing another NBA team, maybe a weaker NBA team but an NBA team nonetheless. There is a danger of insufficient caution causing a series of minor escalations to blossom into full-scale war against China.
The Persian war, our battle of Carrhae, is giving China pause about its Taiwan invasion plans if it has any brains. If Iran can close the straight of Hormuz then Japan can close the south China sea.
No the obvious conclusion is that all those US forward bases are utterly useless in a real war and they are practically out of AD and standoff munition with no way to manufacture more. Hence: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/on-rare-china-visit-taiwans-opposition-leader-calls-for-reconciliation
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, let's not get over-excited.
More options
Context Copy link
Unless the Chinese leaders are total idiots, I think they probably realized many years ago that effective closure of all of their sea-going trade routes is a likely outcome of an attempt to invade Taiwan. So I doubt that the Iran war has changed their calculus in that regard. I'm sure that they have been very busy analyzing the war to get other kinds of information, though.
I don't know if China has any serious intention of attempting to grab Taiwan, but certainly they have plans drawn up for how to go about it if they do decide to try. My guess is that, unless they are total idiots, they have baked in the assumption that they will lose most or all sea-going trade for the duration of the war, and they might be banking on the assumption that their industrial might will compel countries to trade with them again after the war concludes. Not all countries, but at least enough countries that the invasion may end up having been worthwhile.
If I were the Chinese leaders, though, I probably wouldn't try an invasion regardless of how the Iran war is going. There is just not enough possible gain given the risk.
More options
Context Copy link
No, not really. Does Japan have a network of defensive and offensive emplacements that had been put in place over decades? Do they have a massive indigenous drone program that does not rely on foreign imports? As a society, are they tightly integrated into the global economy (and hence dependent upon foreign imports) or are they mostly self sufficient? Is their primary foe on the other side of the world with an anemic manufacturing base, or is it directly adjacent to them and with a huge domestic manufacturing base? In another world, Japan could close the south China sea without any problems - but not in this one.
Japan could probably mine the SCS pretty easily with their fleet of submarines, which might close it to international traffic based on the risk profiles we've seen.
They have a pretty large submarine fleet incidentally, nearly as many AIP submarines as China does, and a competitive production rate.
This does nothing to change their position - Japan is far more dependent upon sea-based imports than China, and any kind of escalation will result in them hurting themselves far more than they hurt China. If China was somehow completely cut off from the sea, they'd still have access to extensive land-based trade networks, including Russian fossil fuel supplies. If Japan is cut off from sea-based trade, which China would be able to do far more easily, they have no other options.
Yes, it's absolutely true that Japan versus China wouldn't be much of a contest.
But note that part of the Chinese situation is that they are locked "behind the first island chain" which creates chokepoints. Japan doesn't have the same weakness because their back is to the Pacific.
Is Japan actually capable of preventing China from interdicting traffic to their rear as well? I don't think JP air defence is good enough to prevent China from making the rear approach a logistical impossibility too, even if you ignore their navy.
How would China interdict traffic to their rear?
There are a few ways. Here's how I see it:
Ballistic missiles. Japan has a limited number of ASBMs and would need to guide them via satellite, unless they pushed back Japan's air defense coverage quite a ways and got radar aircraft operating over, say, the sea of Japan. Even then I am not sure if radar would be able to reliably ID ships versus, let's say, very large radar reflectors towed by small boats (not something you want to launch missiles at). Imaging satellites and SAR satellites are nice for this, as long as it doesn't rain or nobody lasers them/jams them to blind them or shoots them down (Japan has SM-3s). So basically, China using its limited stockpile of ballistic missiles on transiting cargo vessels would be possible but annoying, and Japan has hard-kill (Standards, to shoot down the missiles and/or targeting satellites) and plausibly soft-kill (radar jammers and decoys, lasers, cyber, etc.) to interfere with the kill chain. China would also plausibly run out of missiles before Japan ran out of ships.
Submarines. Chinese submarines would need to either take a long detour or pass through the (Japanese-controlled) island chain to break out into the ocean and intercept convoys. And Chinese submarines aren't supposed to be the quietest – I would still assume they are pretty troublesome, though. One issue with submarines, generally, though is that they are louder when they are faster. So lurking in chokepoints is ideal. But it's hard to lurk in chokepoints right next to enemy territory. Japan can rigorously patrol an area around their ports, and Japan has a lot of ports and Chinese submarines would not necessarily know which ones were slated to receive cargo. I think submarines could be effective once they got on station, but it's not risk-free.
(This is why it's very annoying to be e.g. China fighting a joint coalition of the US, Australia, Japan etc. – if the US decides to blockade Malacca, you've got to sail out there and fight them. Whereas if you want to blockade Japan or Taiwan, you've also got to sail out there and fight them.)
Surface ships/carrier aircraft. This has the same problem as the submarines except for instead of being sneaky and underwater you are not so sneaky and very much above the water. It would be nice if China could get a carrier battle group out in the Pacific to interdict trade (setting aside the diplomatic implications of course) but again you're either detouring around Taiwan or you are forcing your way through the island chain in the face of Japanese shore batteries, airstrikes, submarines etc. You would be wary of doing this for the same reason that the US is wary of parking a carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf right now. And this is all really annoying because, again, any path you take to get out into the Japanese rear with a carrier battle group passes under the nose of Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, etc. not to mention US spy satellites. In a world of perfect spheres where it's just Japan versus China this might not matter but in the real world with information-sharing (and Twitter posting) this might mean Japan screws up your entire day with a submarine. And even if they don't then you might still need to defeat their (large) navy, possibly supported by shore-based aviation, in a surface battle.
Airstrikes from shore. If this is Perfect Sphere World, the North Koreans and Russians aren't helping you out, which means their airspace is closed to you (this might also prevent you from using your SRBM arsenal against Japan without coming off as very rude as well, incidentally), so instead of fighting over the Sea of Japan you're basically flying out from Shanghai or Qingdao to try to interdict shipping in Tokyo or Sendai.
You will have trouble doing this with bombs from tactical aircraft. The J-16 is a big bird, the J-20, too, but Tokyo - Shanghai is about a 1000 miles and that's if you fly right over Japan and its associated air defenses. The J-16 probably has a combat radius of, like, 600nm miles (it will depend a bit on payload; anti-ship missiles are pretty heavy) - although in theory you could refuel it. Google suggests the J-20 has somewhere in the ballpark of twice that, so you might could fly a J-20 around and bomb ships in Tokyo harbor without flying right over the entirety of Japan, but you're still going to be right on top of Japanese air defenses and fighter/interceptors, who will be operating well within their operational range (whereas you will not be). That matters a lot since your aircraft will have much less time for combat engagements and will be putting in a lot more hours to fly fewer sorties, whereas the JASDF will be able to put up more, shorter sorties – in effect they will be fighting more efficiently. You asked about their air defense – they have more than 300 fighter aircraft (and two aircraft carriers) plus ground-based defenses and their own navy, which as we said might be running convoy duty. So actually carrying out attacks will not be trivial.
You also have your strategic bomber force. You can send bomber raids, escorting them with the J-20s and J-16s, and try to intercept the cargo convoys with antiship missiles – again, though, you have to find them, and that means either turning on the old radar (which can tell everyone that you are there and invite them to shoot you in the face) or find them with EO/IR sensors (which is fine but probably also means you're running the gauntlet of getting spotted by their EO/IR sensors). This is another pretty decent way of overcoming defended convoys as long as you're comfortable with the risk of operating under the threat of Japanese fighter coverage.
I think in Sphere World the Chinese can probably win this. Of course in Sphere World China could probably just nuke Japan, but setting that aside, we're just going to try to destroy as many Japanese fighters on the ground with ballistic missiles as we can and then throw every airplane we have into SEAD/DEAD/CAP until we grind them down and then we are going to do bomber raids out in the Pacific against their fleets until they are sunk and then we will just bomb every ship approaching Japan unopposed. We can combine this with amphibious attacks on the island chain and then, once we've punched a hole in that, send our CBG into the Pacific and screen for their submarines with a dozen frigates. A few ships might get through this but it would probably succeed in shutting down the bulk of trade in a relatively short time.
Now, if this plan seems familiar, it's because it would be similar to the US air campaign against Iran (complete with possibly invading islands and such), except that the US air force is better and larger than that of the Chinese, and the Japanese air force and air defenses navy are better and newer and more numerous than those of the Iranians. In non-sphere world, even if the US was for some reason not going to defend Japan, if China was trying to do it without facing unacceptably high losses you can see how they might actually choke on it. If The Big One happens I think China is going to be extremely busy with the naval target set and might not bother to launch a dedicated anti-shipping campaign (although the mere threat of one might be effective enough in many cases).
But possibly I am missing some obvious options here.
China has access to the same drone technology as Iran, and that's assuming they don't have even more advanced models, which I find highly likely (especially given their close relationship with Russia). Deterring commercial shipping is substantially easier than deterring enemy navies, and entirely possible with drones - especially with drones that cost significantly less to manufacture than the interceptor missiles used to shoot them down, which means China can simply force Japan to use up their entire supply of interceptors. If the interception rate is anywhere below 100% the effects on shipping insurance costs will be ruinous already. Making commercial trade with Japan unviable is infinitely easier for China to do than it is for Japan to strike back in the same way, and at the same time Japan is far more dependent upon foreign imports. China's resource base, trade networks (good luck interdicting trade between China and Russia from Japan) and massive industrial/manufacturing advantage mean that any real long term conflict is simply a matter of time. Even if you make ludicrously charitable assumptions regarding Japan's military capabilities, China's utterly massive economic advantages are enough to make up for them.
I'm not familiar with the concept of "perfect sphere world" so I'm not going to really comment on that aspect - but I will point out that North Korea and Russia are deeply connected with China and will have zero problems with China using their airspace to attack an American vassal state. At the same time, if you talk about America getting involved you have to realise that the pivot to Asia never actually happened - and the US looks like it'll be tied down in the Middle East for a long while yet, in a conflict which is destroying their munition/interceptor stocks and causing immense economic damage. If the US puts together a force capable of challenging China, they have to abandon Europe, Israel and the Middle East - and I don't think Israel is going to allow that (looking forward to seeing renewed press coverage of Trump's ties to Epstein after he tried to pull out of the Iran war again!).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is such a brain dead analysis. What’s the US military “dominating” exactly? What did they achieve after a whole month apart from killing a bunch of useless geriatrics? Every single US base in the region is either abandoned or is operating under routine fire and losing planes on the ground daily. The aircraft carriers are hiding behind the landmass of Oman and Saudi Arabia. Regime change is obviously not coming. Kurds are not rebelling. I have not seen any evidence at all that American bombers can operate over Iran without resorting to standoff ammunition (or well, getting shut down). Fantastically expensive and limited weapon systems for all of this nonsense is mainly being transferred from Asia-Pacific.
Unless Trump can pull off some incredible feat of deal making/chickening out and salesmanship, this is turning into one of the most spectacular military quagmires in modern history. The only consolidation will be that there won’t even be an option of US fighting China anymore so the world might become a safer place for it.
Edit: welp the whole discussion became quickly moot as team domination and lethality once again just gave up, seemingly bored of dominating. I thought I could stop having this idiotic discussions when the exact same thing happened in Bab el Mandeb pretty recently but not so lucky yet. Looking forward to the next round of domination
The US military has caused vastly more destruction to the Iranian leadership and military than the Iranian military has caused to the US leadership and military. This is just an objective fact. I'm not rooting for the US in this war, in case you're curious, though I'm not rooting for the Iranian government either. Actually I'd be pretty happy if Trump, Hegseth, and their entire crew somehow got blown up by an Iranian bomb tomorrow, although my happiness would be tempered by the knowledge that this would almost certainly lead to a devastating retaliation against Iran, and also by the knowledge that the Iranian leaders are complete scumbags to their own population. The thing is, the US military is so large and powerful that the lost soldiers and aircraft and so on that Iran has caused is just a tiny scratch. The carriers might be hiding, but that's because there is no compelling need for them to come closer that is worth, to the Trump administration, the bad optics of seeing a carrier on fire. In an existential war, they would come out. Same with the bases, the only reason they've been evacuated is because this is a war of choice for the US, not an existential war.
I'm not saying that Iran is losing strategically, although I think that is a complex and very fast-evolving matter. Note that I said "in terms of pure military-on-military action the US is dominating". Which is true, it's like a grown man kicking the shit out of an infant.
Is there some mind virus affecting Americans that cause them to lose every single war since Vietnam in the same way? The point of a military is not to masturbate over KD ratios it’s to achieve strategic and ultimately political objectives. You can kill a lot of people and if you are still losing nobody gives a shit.
US left its bases because they are getting blown the fuck up every single day with no functional AD and radar left after about the first week. In an “existential war” they could indeed try to maintain those bases with gigantic casualties but that’s hardly a consolation is it?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think both what you and @Goodguy wrote is true.
On the one hand, the US can clearly bomb Iran with impunity, their air defense seems to do little to keep the bombers away. (The aircraft carriers are indeed hiding, but that might also be an abundance of caution. Are they effective from where they are currently anchored? If so, it is probably clever to keep them out of harm's way, if not, that would indeed showcase the (presumed) effectiveness of Iranian anti-ship missiles.) They probably killed more senior leadership in a few days of war than what the Allies managed between 1933-45. They managed to pull off an impressive rescue operation. The casualties have been just as lopsided as in the Gaza war.
The problem is that you can win every battle and still lose the war, tactical victories are meaningless without achievable strategic objectives. So they turned the Ayatollah into a martyr and are instead dealing with Ayatollah Jr, whose father and wife they just killed in an airstrike. How is that an improvement? They have the firepower to level Tehran, but that would only get them a cozy cell in the Hague, not prevent IRGCs from continuing to launch missiles from 100km of coastline against any oil tanker for the forseable future. They are spending a shit-ton of taxpayer money to dominate a battlefield while also being totally unable to prevent Iran from wrecking the world economy to a degree which is presidency-ending.
I mean, even Operation Barbarossa took six months to go from optimism to 'why are the Soviets not sticking to our plan?', and a further six months to go to 'oh shit'. Trump's plan went well for the day when he killed the Ayatollah, and then he was completely unprepared for Iran not being Venezuela and surrendering at the earliest opportunity, but instead closing the strait (as everyone had predicted they would).
I think the closure of the strait is rather exaggerated. The real threat is Iran quite clearly being able to blow up the fields/refineries/pipelines/ports themselves in a way that would leave the strait rather unimportant. By closing the strait they just got to demonstrate how quickly they can do incredible damage without anything irreversible.
More options
Context Copy link
According to Wikipedia, combat range for an F-18 is around 500 miles, and over 700 for a F-35. Note that that's without refueling, which the US has access to via local bases.
Would being closer be better? Well, yeah, you can reach more places, take heavier payloads, spend more time over target. Would it be better enough that there's any point risking even having to maneuver against a missile? Haha no.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Now you have.
Thanks I stand corrected. There is evidence of 1 bombing. I hope the army command will hear this news soon and not empty East Asia of all its standoff ammunition.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Then you're not looking in the right places
This link has a couple photos of planes loading JDAMs in UK airbases. No evidence that they are actually flying over Iran with it.
Given that by far the most bombing has been concentrated in coastal areas it’s quite possible that they have some corridors that doesn’t need standoff munitions. This was reported yesterday by the way: https://asiatimes.com/2026/04/us-diverts-jassm-er-missiles-to-iran-risking-deterrence-vs-china/
Whenever there is a big bombing run near Iranian cities we get a decent amount of photos/videos.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
We haven't really seen what PLA is capable off. So the answer is we don't know.
I can only speak for myself, but this is one of the questions, alongside with other great questions of mankind like What does it feel like to stick your penis into a toaster? where I am perfectly willing to keep my ignorance.
Even if China was merely an upscaled Iran who took a beating while lobbing missiles at regional US allies and disrupting the SE Asia trade, attacking them would dwarf any other Trump decision in stupidity by orders of magnitude. And in reality, they are certainly not just an upscaled Iran.
Of course, the other unknown is the US military, which has not been in a conflict against peer adversaries since WW2. A lot of the funding of military hardware seems to be as much about state politics as it is about enhancing capabilities, and if it turns out that their hardware is not so much better that it makes the Chinese hardware moot, the production capabilities of China might prevail in attritional warfare.
The US easily beating Iran on a tactical level (and only there!) does not prove anything, they are spending more on this war per week than Iran spends on defense per year. At this level of disparity, anything less lopsided would indicate total incompetence on the part of the stronger party. (Nor would these figures stay the same if the US foolishly tried to occupy Iran.)
More options
Context Copy link
There's a decent chance that in reality the PLA would stomp the US military in any Asia Pacific conflict. Their latest gen weapons are very very efficient and the whole military industrial complex rot that infests the US military doesn't really exist over tere.
Didn't they just disappear the guy in charge of their anti-stealth tech because in the aftermath of said tech being utterly ineffective in Venezuela and Iran they discovered that the guy had just made up the data saying it would work on US stealth bombers?
China has large cultural problems of it's own, and I frankly wouldn't be surprised to discover Russian levels of materials were garbage or simply non-existent because they were secretly sold off the back of a truck.
More options
Context Copy link
And then there's a decent change they're a paper tiger like it turned out the USSR had been since at least the 1980s.
This is not clear whatsoever.
More options
Context Copy link
The US military is far more combat experienced, has a more flexible doctrine, and Chinese equipment hasn't performed with flying colours in Persia.
What equipment does Iran have from China? There was a report that they were going to sell them anti ship missiles but that was before the war. It's possible that radars were smuggled in as a test, but you can't hide those things, they have to be sitting out in the open to do their job.
https://dominotheory.com/hq-nein-analysts-say-no-evidence-iran-is-using-modern-chinese-air-defense-systems/
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think this is quite true.
It does not follow, of course, that just because the China MIC has serious corruption issues that their stuff doesn't work. But I think imagining the Chinese as blessedly serious and entirely above all the petty squabbles in the US of A is grass-is-greener thinking.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is what happened with Venezuela and Iran, but I don't think the results of the Iran war are all that encouraging to take on someone even bigger.
Two movies, one screen. All my Republican Boomer relatives are convinced that we’re kicking ass in Iran and that the Iranian people are on verge of revolting and forming a new democratic government with our help. I’m pretty sure they’d be happy to see us take on China as well in a few months.
If the Iranian people could revolt, they would have. The regime has taken all their weapons and killed all their leaders, over the past 47 years; they are utterly defanged. The diaspora has been hanging out in nice countries enjoying themselves, not training up for military action in third-world shitholes. The dissidents are waiting for the West to save them. Spoiler: we won't.
More options
Context Copy link
Indeed. They were hyping up the rebellion leading up to the war. If it didn't happen after all these decapitation strikes, it's not going to happen now. It's hard to imagine the regime not gaining legitimacy from all this.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link