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Notes -
Operation Poseidon Archer
Reported by CNN:
I have mixed feelings about this. It is clearly the responsibility of the imperial hegemon to protect global shipping lanes. But by that same logic, it's time for the imperial hegemon to force a settlement onto the Israelis due to their never-ending destabilization of the region. That would entail the EU forcing a peace onto Israel, performing a Special Military Operation within Israel if necessary.
Bring back the 117 AD borders, with EU administration of Jerusalem. Jews may live in Jerusalem, wail at their wall and study Torah in peace, but it is utterly nonsensical for the West to continue to bear the burden of Israeli destabilization of the region.
This washy middle ground of appealing to imperial obligations when it comes to Middle Eastern intervention, without control of the "vassal" state destabilizing the region, is a never-ending pattern that has to stop. The US and EU has more than enough leverage to force a settlement onto Israel.
The EU is itself a vassal state of the US and, honestly, has more anti-leverage than leverage in this regard. It's only European countries that are really affected by this; trade between China and the US naturally continues uninterrupted.
I mean, the US does have control over Israel. They already know who their leaders are, and they already know who their sympathizers/propaganda arms are (ADL members and wealthy American Jews happy with Israel's existence have names, addresses, and a host of young and violent enemies as willing to act on that information in 2024 as they were in 2020). Sure, going full Kristallnacht is probably not a good look for the Left, but the Left is powerful/popular enough to keep its brownshirts safe while they commit the violence (under the banner of anti-Naziism, naturally) so I don't think they really need to care.
No, the reason Israel gets a free pass is because, like South Korea (and the Philippines, to an extent) is with respect to China, they're a Roman beachhead right on Parthia's doorstep. So I'm not surprised the Romans are not particularly concerned about what the king of Judea does to non-Judeans on his border; I'm also not surprised that the Parthian response was to charge a massive toll for any trader wanting to transit the Silk Road.
It was pretty negligent of the Romans to permit a Parthian proxy to entrench itself between a Roman ally (the King of Arabia) and the Silk Road itself, but they were busy wasting quadrillions of denarii (and exhausting the will of the people) on some revenge mission in the strategically insignificant no-man's land between Parthia and China to bother.
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