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I really don't like making grand pronouncements (I think it's a bit narcissistic) but since I seem to have a reputation on The Motte I think it's only fair to take my licks:
Blah blah blah, words words words, excuses excuses, feel free to get your licks in now.
It’s not a victory because as I and everyone else here told told you over and over again the war wasn’t actually over and when the Democrats blow out the Midterms, Trump will have to cut an embarrassing and humiliating deal. The Iranian regime is still around and the US accomplished almost none of their stated war aims (only sank their blue water navy). The best case scenario is now the pre-war consensus. Nobody will ever be dumb enough again to try to topple this regime, so it completely backfired. They will almost assuredly keep their nuclear material. It was a national humiliation.
Like what pisses me off the most is that the rest of the world is now going to have to pay a Hormuz toll for however many next decades because of this crap. And if things get worse, we may also end up having to pay a Bab Al Mandeb toll to Yemen. The US is effectively insulated from this becuase it's literally on the other side of the world but the rest of us all have to suffer
'If'? And only to Hormuz and Yemen?
Mate, the last year hasn't just shown the limits of the American ability to mitigate drone attacks on maritime shipping. It also included a demonstration that the Europeans and even Chinese could not or would not provide expeditionary security for the maritime commons they import substantial inelastic goods through.
On one hand, at the time this was a glorious success of european sovereignty in avoiding entrapment and resisting Trump. On the other, every relevant actor along the Asia-to-Europe maritime corridors has reason too look at how they can apply their own tax on European imports and Chinese exports, given how hard it is to prevent (and how few are willing to try). When it becomes apparent you'll keep paying regardless of the cost- and that is the nature of an inelastic good- then you should expect more people to try to become middlemen.
Most states won't go to outright state sponsors of piracy, but the actors that do? Somali pirates from the last decade will be quaint in retrospect.
A couple of years ago I wrote a post about how drones represented both a military revolution and a revolution in military affairs as a technology. The former is technology doing an established role better, and the later is technology that changes the relationship between societies and the conduct of war itself. In that post, which began with how I thought drones were going to be disruptive to the international order as many people thought AI will be, I included the following-
Congratulations- we're here. A multi-decade pre-existing conflict between a revolutionary-ideology state and its regional neighbors metasized into a broader conflict when regional players brought in external allies, and the combination of what was functionally an air raid campaign and the opposing drone insurgency into neighboring states broke anachronistic understandings of international commerce.
And as it turns out, a relatively poor state in economically dire straits has matched the ability to leverage their drone-defense advantage with trying to extort regional waterways. As it also turns out, as unpopular as naval extortion is globally, spending blood and treasure to protect shipping is even more unpopular. So it's going to be spending treasure instead.
This was always going to happen. This is a matter of emerging capabilities and pre-existing incentives, not personalities or specific polities.
Iran is not the only state to feel it needs money, nor is it the only one near a naval trade route, nor is it the only one with drones. It wasn't even the first. Ukraine had that distinction with the black sea campaign years ago. Complaining that the good times wouldn't have ended had Trump not pulled the trigger is like blaming WW1 on an assassination and not the web of alliances and German cult of the offense and the rise of nationalist identities within empires.
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