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“ The assumption that any decision made by the US is law, and that everyone else will follow regardless of whether they were present at negotiations or not.”
I don’t agree with your Ukraine point. The US decided they didn’t want to pay for Ukraine because it’s not America first and largely not a US interests. The Trump administration has been consistent in wanting Europe to spend more on their military. My understanding of the MAGA position is MAGA never had a problem with the EU paying for a European war.
As far as both countries on the same side needing to agree to continue a war it’s generally not that both countries need to agree to end it. Either can continue or end the war when they want to but when the stronger nation decides to end it usually the weaker ally has to follow the big dogs decision. If Israel keeps dragging us back into the war I honestly would have no problem with Trump bombing Israel. Remind the Jews whose daddy in this relationship. Might even be fairly popular in domestic politics.
France and Germany did not join the US in Iraq, so the US ability to dictate to its allies is at least somewhat limited. They aren't obligated to join everything the US decides to do.
Yes, the US got away with smashing a sovereign nation with no criminal charges or serious reprisals. But:
I'd have thought we'd be clear on this after this whole mess. Yes, the US doesn't have to go with its allies into Iran. Yes, the US can just kill a leader of a formidable nation and Trump will likely retire to golf in peace. What did you achieve though?
We basically won the war so we won’t agree. Their leaders are dead. All aims were not achieved like complete regime change but the reason we failed at that is primarily domestic US politics and an unwillingness to cause a lot of Iranian civilian deaths.
Whether the War was worth it is a much different question than whether the US is in charge.
How America chooses to cope is irrelevant. It's especially irrelevant because, for all of the talk that the US would see red bro and just crush if it really wanted to, the supposed wildcard President backed down. You can't even blame it on the effeteness of some Obama-style figure drunk on dreams of liberal internationalism. This is the most vocally ruthless Presidency in a while, that ran around threatening to wipe out their entire civilization and...what happened?
Maybe don't start wars you can't win without massive casualties you're not willing to inflict? Especially don't threaten it if you won't go through.
In any case, I don't see how this isn't a loss. The strait isn't open. The IRGC is still functional enough that the US has to negotiate with it to open it. The US is apparently going to have to pay danegeld and Trump has downplayed disarming them. Iran just now suspended talks again and is working (successfully) to drive a wedge between the US and Israel*
The reason regime change was such a central pillar of the thinking (not some sort of stretch goal) was that it was the only path anyone could see to stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions decisively. That failed.
* Regardless of how one feels about Israel, your enemy being able to do this to you is a sign of weakness.
People like you make me want to just kill every Palestinian and Iranian to prove a point we won because we can.
Iranian Nukes are pushed back a decade minimum. We can bomb then again in the future because easily because their air defenses don’t exists anymore. Their conventional military is degraded.
You are setting the win conditions to Iranian statehood or turned into glass. We don’t want that.
Can I see if we have any agreement on certain factual questions:
It’s a Win America is stronger today than it was pre-war. You’re not being honest if you disagree with this. And we can still come back and bomb the shit out of them again.
Sure this is more like winning the Championship 4-2 instead of beating Iran 11-0 and to use a soccer analogy getting Iran Relegation. Relegation was the desired outcome but we still won the championship.
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Yes, but people like you make me want to defect to China. Going full psycho is not just another move you can pull out of your repertoire like you're playing blackjack and deciding whether to hit or stay. When you are in protracted legal wrangling over a breach of patent costing 10m USD, the reason you don't just pull out a gun and waste the judge, plaintiff and opposing council isn't because it won't work, it's because making it clear that you are a psycho with no switches except 'kill' and 'don't kill' acts as a strong signal to everyone else that they need to drop everything and focus on killing you now.
Case in point: all of Israel's former allies now loathe them. To the extent that there is any support for Israel remaining, it is that senior politicians manage to temporarily squeeze it out whilst avoiding increasingly bipartisan pressure from all the up-and-coming politicians. Whatever the provocation, going straight to 'kill everyone' is not a good move unless you are obviously so desperate that there is no other choice. America is very clearly not in that position.
Was there any way that Israel could have realistically fought Hamas without their former allies loathing them? They could have done better, but it would have still been enough that they'd be loathed, IMO.
They were doing fine, prior to Oct 7th. Hamas did what they did precisely because they were losing ground; Arab countries were normalising relations. What they should have done - and it's not perfect, and it would have been very hard - is put back up the fence, gritted their teeth, and carried on the way they were going.
I can't think of a nation that has reacted that way to this sort of thing.
It's not just psychologically impossible for the populace to absorb, it's just a bad part of the world to be seen as weak. The minute it happened the people who supported Hamas were emboldened. In the West protests started immediately.
Netanyahu and co. just gambled they could contain Hamas easily and lost. Once the attack happened it was just functionally impossible to not react and no reaction would have been good.
Whether or not how Israel waged the war was wise or whether it could do better I don't know. The enemy gets a say too and I think it's telling that the best we can come up with here to avoid the consequences is "turn the other cheek". I don't think that particular Jew is in charge.
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You don’t pull out and kill the judge in a patent dispute is become the US federal government has a monopoly on violence here.
Who has an international monopoly on violence? That would be the US which makes them the judge in this case.
Yes we can just do things and there is no one that can stop us.
And spare me….but but but there are exceptions to the US having a monopoly on global violence. Yes I know it’s not a 100% true it’s only 80% true. We can bomb Israel tomorrow if they disobey us. We can cause Iranian population collapse if we want to.
I have no problem if you move to China.
Better work on keeping it that way, then.
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The US doesn't have a monopoly on violence, it has a commanding market share. This should be terrifying.
There is no monopoly on force. There is no Constitution, there is no rulebook, there is no immovable constraint on escalation nor any way to roll back decisions you've made. That means America isn't a judge either. It's just another monkey, just one with the biggest stick. And yes, that stick gives it leeway.
But a monkey with a big stick can still suffer consequences, especially if it shows the other monkeys that it is willing to destroy them for things that do not warrant it.
This isn't the time of the Old Testament. Or the age of the Romans. We live in a world where you can wipe millions out with '40s tech, and can do an even better job of it with biological research.
What, you think you're the only ones who can be ruthless? A lot of these countries have proven themselves as or more ruthless than Americans. In this situation people don't even have to want to be suicidally defiant, you can see how these things can escape containment or get out of hand.
In any case, your theory of the case is simply not shared by most of the world leaders (thankfully). You have to explain why they're all wrong for not escalating to hell when facing serious resistance.
I feel like you are referencing a right-wing view that it is terrifying the US has dominant power which is true and I agree with. But we do in fact have dominant power which is what I am arguing is true.
It’s interesting you reference a constitution because I don’t believe the US has a constitution witness 2nd Amendment cases where the right to bear arms as written on paper is far broader than what the US regime allows.
The opinion of other world leaders is irrelevant here. I am stating their opinions do not matter because America is the hegemon.
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Perhaps this is a sign of poor understanding of international relations on my part, but I would assume that you would at least want to present a shared front with your allies during formal negotiations. Make sure you have pressured your ally before negotiations if need be, so that you know ahead of time that they will officially support the deal you sign.
It seems that Trump just skips this entirely. He simply ignores his allies during negotiations, then expects them to support a decision that blindsided them completely.
Lipstick on a pig stuff. Yes Trump ignores the genuflecting to Europe etc to make them feel good that their opinion matters. But realistically the US opinion has been all that matters for decades.
Except that yet again, the gap between “the US is vastly more powerful than its allies” and “US opinion is all that matters” is biting the US in the arse.
How is it biting us in the arse? Ever since the rise of American Tech and Energy Independence what happens in the rest of the world just doesn’t matter to us.
The consequences to the US is a bunch of French men angry tweeting us they are freezing and can’t drive their cars because no petrol.
In this particular case, because America's ally Israel's opinion differs from America's and it's mucking up American diplomacy.
The US though is not bearing any of the costs. US consumer suffer some on high oil costs versus producers having windfall profits so they balance.
Probably costs us a little extra money running blockade but that’s probably not much more than just having sailors doing nothing and cruising around.
I am not opposed to bombing Israel to show them who’s in charge.
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