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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   933 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 7, 2026

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.

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Russia had its annual V-day parade, although... without any military equipment. And they had to ask for a ceasefire so they wouldn't get droned. War is hard, huh?

'The U.S. is effectively checkmated in Iran—and this defeat will carry lasting consequences unlike any America has endured before, Robert Kagan argues.'

It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the world, because they were far from the main theaters of global competition. The initial failure in Iraq was mitigated by a shift in strategy that ultimately left Iraq relatively stable and unthreatening to its neighbors and kept the United States dominant in the region.

Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be “open,” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/05/iran-war-trump-losing/687094/

If they've lost Kagan, who's left? Mark Levin and Laura Loomer? Personalities not known for strategic insight, to say the least.

I want to highlight how odd this is. With the Iraq war, the neocons were really slow to admit how badly they erred. At least they could point to the destruction of Baathism, tanks rolling through Baghdad. Even here he refers to Iraq as an 'initial failure' that was somehow redeemed later in the Surge. Nothing was lost that some artful rewriting of history can't obscure. That's nothing compared to the catastrophe in Iran, this blunder can't be swept under the carpet.

And yet the general public doesn't seem to see this at all, the comments on twitter are all like:

That is literally just a quote from 2016+ anti Trumper

It’s going to take longer. So what? The blockade will work but will take a little longer than desired.

Having established air and sea supremacy and sitting days away from utterly ruining the Iranian economy, accomplishing all of this in the span of a month, the US has... lost?

Starting wars in the Middle East and attacking Iran is Kagan's big thing! Imagine how bad the strategic situation has to be for people like Bolton (he wrote a similar essay earlier) or Kagan to admit defeat, even their bloodlust has been quelled by how badly this has gone. Kagan cofounded the project for a new American century, which had Iran on the target list from day 1, then the FDI which was the same thing with a new name. Kagan called for regime change in Iran in 2009 in the Washington Post, he hated the JCPOA and sought military action. Trump has done everything he said and yet Kagan and Bolton don't go for tactful silence, don't reimagine and bullshit and prevaricate like they did Iraq, Kagan says here that the policies he's called for over decades are a big fat irredeemable failure. Do we think he's really so wrecked by 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' that he'd flush his whole ideology down the toilet and humiliate himself just to stick it to Trump?

Imagine doing Stalinism so rigidly and incompetently that Stalin writes an op-ed in Pravda saying you've gone too far and starts blackpilling, how bad would things need to be? Pretty damn bad. The war is lost. Blowing up power plants in Iran isn't going to achieve anything other than raising energy prices as the Iranians wreck the Gulf. 'Sea supremacy' is a joke if the critical waters in question cannot be secured and are in fact controlled by the enemy.

Do we think he's really so wrecked by 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' that he'd flush his whole ideology down the toilet and humiliate himself just to stick it to Trump?

I think this war is a terrible mistake, so I'm pretty sympathetic to the thesis you're putting forward, but I consider myself unqualified to tell how well it's going, and with that in mind I'd go with: yes. All these neocons suddenly turning into doves strikes me as a particularly bad case of sour grapes, they're salty because they're not the ones who get to do it.

Would he "flush his whole ideology"? I don't see why not, a few years later they can flush what he's saying now - see also, as you pointed out yourself, his description of the Iraq war.

But isn't it straightforward to consider the goals and whether they've been achieved or look like they're going to be achieved sometime soon? Has the US made gains and if so, where are they?

Was territory secured? No. Has a friendly government been installed? No. Have resources been secured? No, quite the opposite, resources have been threatened as fuel prices rise... Is there a plan to achieve victory? Probably not, Trump has been pursuing all kinds of ideas in quick succession - threats to bomb energy infrastructure, a blockade, some kind of diplomatic solution, escorts for the strait of Hormuz. It doesn't seem like there's any well-considered plan for victory.

Meanwhile Iran already seems to be picking the fruits of victory, announcing tolls for oil tankers, declaring sovereignty over cables in the straits of Hormuz. They seem to have secured some territory.

The closest thing to a success is the notion that Iran's missile and drone capabilities have been degraded. But they still seem to be capable of bombing the UAE, pipelines, oil tankers. The Iranians could also claim 'oh well we've degraded US air defences in the Gulf and burned through much of the US munition stockpile', that seems a draw at best for the US, considering both gains and losses.

On the other hand, I guess you might be right about Kagan and it's just shameless pandering to Democrat sensibilities so that he can try Real Regime Change in a few years. Maybe defeat-maxxing is the start of a revenge mythology, like how the Italians seethed about losing in Ethiopia and went back in under Mussolini?

It's a massive own goal by the US. Possibly era defining.

On Wednesday, the UK held an election for local authorities (borough councils, district councils, county councils etc.).

Although the votes are still being counted, the results so far have been astonishing. From a starting position of 2, Nigel Farage's Reform party have gained an incredible 1,426 seats. Labour, who hold an outright majority in the House of Commons after their landslide victory in 2024, have lost a whopping 1,375 seats, and Labour MPs are already calling on incumbent Labour prime minister Keir Starmer to resign within the year. The picture is only marginally better for the Tories, with Kemi Badenoch's Conservative party losing 552 seats so far.

The districts which voted for Reform include working-class districts which reliably voted Labour during the war in Iraq, the fallout after Blair, the Great Recession and when outspoken socialist Jeremy Corbyn led the party. After the general election in 2019, common wisdom had it that the so-called "red wall" had collapsed, with numerous working-class districts making the historic decision to vote for the Tories rather than Labour. Now, it seems, working-class Brits have had it with both major parties, and have decided to take a third option. Brendan O'Neill at Spiked is already arguing this might be the most seismic realignment in UK political history since the founding of Labour itself. If Farage and co. can maintain this momentum until the next House of Commons election, it doesn't seem remotely out of the question that, for the first time since 1906, we might witness a political party other than Labour or the Tories achieving an outright majority in the House.

Local government has very little power in Britain, which is an extremely centralized state. Garbage collection, potholes, community centers. Even education, policing, healthcare etc are directly or indirectly controlled by the national government, something that is especially true in England.

Is it a realignment? A lot can happen in 3 years. I think after Kemi goes some kind of Reform - Tory merger is likely. Reform aren’t very right wing, really, they’re closer to the GOP or maybe the centrist wing of Meloni’s faction than they are to, say, the French National Rally, who are themselves moderates compared to the AfD, who are themselves….

Thanks for the brit-posting. If I wasn't so lazy I'd make an effort to do more of it.

Another thing to add is that yesterday also saw the Scottish and Welsh parliament elections, where Reform also made huge gains. They went from 1 to 17 seats in Scotland, making them the joint-largest party with Scottish Labour behind the SNP, and from 2 to 34 seats in Wales, where they're now the second-largest party outright after Plaid Cymru.

I have a feeling the SNP is just an utterly spent force. I doubt there's any coming back from Sturgeon's lethal combination of woke posturing and fiscal improprieties.

The SNP lost a few seats but mainly to the Greens who are just the SNP but more left (and are also pro-independence). I don’t think it says much about the cause really.

Has anyone been keeping up on the Iran conflict? I've been seeing some commentary on Iran running out of storage capacity and I don't know if it's bullshit or not, or even how to find out short of going there myself.

Shutting down wells would not do permanent damage, afaik. They would be back up to running at full capacity within a year. Even Kuwait where everything burned in the first gulf war didn't do much lasting damage.

Thinking that time is on the USA's side and Iran would have to fold when running out of oil storage is Trump Logic.

Nothing is "permanent" - if they were able to get the oil out of the ground the first time, they obviously can do it again, and with existing infrastructure it probably will be easier this time. The question is how much would it cost and who will pay for it. Iranian economy was not in spectacular shape when it started (remember the whole story begun with riots caused by economic hardships) and probably is much worse now. Would it be enough to break the IRGC? Unknown, and maybe not - hardcore organized groups survived in much worse conditions. But it certainly makes it weaker, less capable of projecting its force outside (Iran's favorite mode of operation) and more open to negotiated settlement. "Have to fold" is a very hard condition to satisfy - in WW2, Japan had to get two nukes dropped on them to be ready to fold, and Germany had to be completely occupied. Occupying Iran is not a proposition that is seriously considered, neither is nuking them. That makes "have to fold" hard to achieve - however, "more open to settlement" can still be done. Or at least "beaten up enough they wouldn't ask for seconds for a while" if anything else fails.

What about burning the oil wells ? Once they start burning they are pretty hard to put down.

Hard, but not impossible. I don't think Iranians are going to set them on fire though, and neither US nor Israel want to either - if they did, they could have done it already.

More open to settlement, is not a given either. While the people of Iran are and will be suffering, a theocracy led by hardliners don't necessarily have to care about that. Saddam's Iraq survived a long time under brutal sanctions that killed a lot of people. The Taliban was subjected to every hardship yet never surrendered. Same goes for the North Vietnamese.

Time is even more against the world and the US than it is against Iran, I think. People will be starving to death in other places relatively soon. The US is the world hegemon and the guarantor of trade routes. Iran doesn't have those responsibilities.

Well, yes, it sucks to be ruled by insane maniacs. US is not ready to commit the resources necessary to overthrow those maniacs. Nobody else is even remotely capable of doing that. So it will continue to suck for those people, and will probably get worse. At least the US can prevent the insane maniacs from impacting too many people that aren't currently under their rule.

Associated Press:

Alberta separatist group says it has enough signatures to trigger referendum on leaving Canada

Alberta separatists said Monday they have formally submitted almost 302,000 signatures to try to trigger a referendum on the province leaving Canada.

The group needed 178,000 signatures to force the province to consider such a vote.

The question of separation could go on a provincewide ballot as early as October, as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said she would move forward if enough names are gathered and verified. Smith has said she personally does not support the oil-rich province leaving Canada.

A “yes” vote would not trigger independence automatically. Negotiations with the federal government would have to take place and Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said some Indigenous groups who are already using the courts to prevent an independence referendum would use venues including the courts to stop independence from happening.

Mitch Sylvestre, the head of Stay Free Alberta, arrived at the Elections Alberta office in Edmonton on Monday leading a convoy of seven trucks to deliver the names.

Béland said a referendum is likely to lose.

“Right now, support for independence in Alberta is rather low. Less than 30% and much lower if we only focus on hard core supporters. And the odds of a victory of the pro-independence camp appear to be low at this stage,” he said.

What are the odds the ongoing Andes hantavirus outbreak turns into another global pandemic just six years after Covid?

A KLM flight attendant has been hospitalized with suspected hantavirus infection. That's one of the best jobs for spreading a virus with a very long asymptomatic incubation period.

Extremely low

Here you go: https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2052394475582803988

I hope that's the only use they'll find for it and it won't develop into anything worse.

I predict the media will make much of this, the CA will recover, no further clusters will be discovered, and the cases that do emerge will be quickly quarantined and contained. But the key phrase is that the media will regularly run insinuating, panicky articles until it blows over

All this hantavirus stuff is strange. When I first heard of it 20+ years ago (I think a death on the Navajo Nation in NM or something), it was clear that it took close inhalation from an immense amount of mouse fecal material (like being in a filthy crawl space without a ventilator mask for hours). Now between Hackman's wife and the cruise ship outbreak, that no longer seems to be the case.

edit--I was off by 10ish years, it was the 1993 outbreak I remembered.

Their initial recommendation was to name the pathogen Muerto Canyon virus, after an involved area on the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo people reacted strongly against any further association with the disease that had led to so much initial prejudice, and tribal elders appealed to officials to reconsider. Ultimately, the new agent was officially named Sin Nombre virus (virus with no name).

A deadly new virus came out of a place called Cañon del Muerto. C'mon man.

Last I heard this was not yet confirmed but it's suspected to be a known and normal variant that does human to human transmission reasonably well.

The disease lacks several factors that would make it pandemic-able however.

Medical community is mostly non concerned.

It's been around since forever in western North America -- endemic in deer mice IIRC? This new one is a different strain I guess, but now that I think about it the mouse droppings thing was a very early nudge towards me being radicalized by public health morons.

"You need to be Extremely Concerned about cleaning up mouse poop in your cabin" -- which you and everyone else has been doing on a yearly basis since Time Immemorial, riiiight...

Hantaviruses are found all over the world and not that rare. There are around 100000 cases caused by different Hantaviruses per year globally. What's different is this strain sustaining spread between humans (but not particularly effectively).

I understand that that's the story -- I just don't believe it. (as with the earlier story that you are particularly likely to die a horrible death from sweeping out your cupboards without putting on a bunny suit first)

What part do you not believe?

That hantaviruses are found all over the world? That there are around 100000 cases per year? That this strain spreads between humans? That the spread is not particularly effective?

That they are particularly dangerous.

•extremely rare version that can pass from person to person

•pops up 800 miles from its closest recorded habitat

•in a cruise ship, the perfect floating incubator for massive global transmission

This sounds like a bio-weapon deployment.

Weaponized hantavirus? It's probably a short list of countries that could even do it, and the blowback would be extreme if a western country ever authorized it and it was leaked. I think China already got hurt by the Coronovirus shutdowns, I doubt they would want to roll the dice on something like that again. China is already winning economically in the status quo, no need to kick the table over.

Targeting a cruise ship is a little too slapdash for countries with the means to do it.

Biological weapons are not nuclear weapons, gigantic state capacity isn’t necessarily needed.

pops up 800 miles from its closest recorded habitat in a cruise ship

Come on, is this where we're at? Most people on cruise ships live elsewhere. They're only on the cruise ship as tourists.

It's a different one. Still an American type, but from what I've read it looks like this specific hantavirus can be transmitted from person to person. Not as easily as common cold or flu, but still.

I'm also reading that close prolonged contact is typical, not just droplets across a conversation.

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