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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26237 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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American Achilles in his Tent

In the Trojan war the Greek overlord Agamemnon slighted his strongest hero (Achilles) by taking his war-bride for himself. Achilles withdrew to his tent and the efforts in taking Troy halted as nobody could oppose Hector, the rival champion on the battlefield.

It seems American Elites have made a similar mistake in modern time by slighting their traditional warrior caste.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sharp-decline-white-recruits.html

The Army's recruiting of white soldiers has dropped significantly in the last half decade, according to internal data reviewed by Military.com, a decline that accounts for much of the service's historic recruitment slump that has become the subject of increasing concern for Army leadership and Capitol Hill.

...

A total of 44,042 new Army recruits were categorized by the service as white in 2018, but that number has fallen consistently each year to a low of 25,070 in 2023, with a 6% dip from 2022 to 2023 being the most significant drop. No other demographic group has seen such a precipitous decline, though there have been ups and downs from year to year.

In 2018, 56.4% of new recruits were categorized as white. In 2023, that number had fallen to 44%. During that same five-year period, Black recruits have gone from 20% to 24% of the pool, and Hispanic recruits have risen from 17% to 24%, with both groups seeing largely flat recruiting totals but increasing as a percentage of incoming soldiers as white recruiting has fallen...

What was the offense?

There are many reasons, when you go looking at conservative forums, but they can all be classified under a feeling of betrayal and subsequently that the American Military—even the nation itself—no longer represents them and their values. That they are to fight for an economic zone controlled by their enemies instead of a country proper.

In no particular order they complain about LGBT+ acceptance/promotion, Anti-white rhetoric and practices, entry of women in the forces, forced vaccines during COVID, futile wars for profit, fighting for others countries instead of defending the homeland, poor pay for potential deathly work, etc. etc.

Take a look at their new recruitment adds and you can find these complaints in various degrees among the comments: https://youtube.com/watch?v=luc9saxt_YQ

The dwindling pool of recruits comes at a bad time for the Washington Elite as it seems the US is having a harder time than usual being the world's policeman.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/11/conflicts-around-the-world-peak/676029/

Not a World War but a World at War

The past two years have seen the most conflicts of any time since the end of the Second World War. Just in the past 24 months, an astonishing number of armed conflicts have started, renewed, or escalated. Some had been fully frozen, meaning that the sides had not sustained direct combat in years; others were long simmering, meaning that low-level fighting would intermittently erupt. All have now become active.

The list encompasses not just the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, but hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, Serbian military measures against Kosovo, fighting in Eastern Congo, complete turmoil in Sudan since April, and a fragile cease-fire in Tigray that Ethiopia seems poised to break at any time. Syria and Yemen have not exactly been quiet during this period, and gangs and cartels continuously menace governments, including those in Haiti and Mexico. All of this comes on top of the prospect of a major war breaking out in East Asia, such as by China invading the island of Taiwan...

With several conflicts around the world that endanger American Geopolitical interests how will the Army try to boost their numbers of foot soldiers? Will its attempt(s) be effective?

I can think of several options available to them:

The Patroclus Option

Making a false flag attack, or letting an actual attack on American soil happen despite knowledge of it beforehand, to shore up support among the public. A common enemy binds groups together despite their differences and grievances. After 9/11 the America public was easy to whip into a warmongering frenzy and this support was used for two-decade long misadventures and futile nation-building in the Middle East to keep the Military Industrial Complex fed.

Though many among conservative have seemed to developed anti-bodies to this tactic. Cries about the USS Liberty are frequent in dissident right circles and seemed to have trickled down into the mainstream.

Some thoughts should also be spent on diversity being a negative here as you’ll have a harder time getting a particular group to fight when being a countryman no longer means being the same race/religion.

The Briseis Option

Appeasement and concessions to white men as a group. Highly unlikely I think, but an option. Though what it would look like I have little to no idea. Perhaps putting away the institutional opprobrium against them?

The Foreign Legion Option

Saw this option floated around on /r/Neoliberal and /r/Army. Guarantee citizenship for half a decade of service, or something similar. Many conservatives are in favor of an army boycott (like the one they have done against Bud Light), but warn that this option leaves white America at the mercy of outsiders with guns that the Regime will have an easier time moving around.

The Daedalus Option

Automate the combat with drones and AI, perhaps the most likely among the options (by my account), but a little to early to make the transition I think.

The Penthesilea Option

Put women en masse into the meat grinder. I think it the most unlikely option, though with the rise of robots this could actually be a viable path.

The Midas Option

Make it more economically enticing for new recruits to enter the armed forces. Give greater pay and greater benefits.

Guarantee citizenship for half a decade of service, or something similar.

As far as I know, a year of service already guarantees citizenship qualifies for naturalization. Although starting to depend on foreign fighters is generally pointed to as one of the points of decline in the Roman Empire.

Of the bunch, I suspect the US can, for now, afford your Midas option, or at least ways of making enlistment a more competitive time investment for young folks. It seems the current vibe is more "joined because I can't afford college" in a time when student loans and increasing incomes are providing alternatives. Plus there could be more investment in making veterans high-status, although that's probably too right-coded for the current administration to target -- and social status isn't easily enforced in a top-down fashion.

One obvious (though probably also very unworkable) option would of course just be the Finland Option: conscription.

This would burn down major cities, mostly blue ones, and degrade the quality of recruits. The American military is actually very picky about who it takes and mass conscription obviously doesn’t work with that.

probably also very unworkable

Yep.

The US clearly does not need conscription to defend itself. Its nuclear weapons more than suffice. If Finland built nuclear weapons, it probably would not have any need for conscription either.

And I think that people in the US would quickly come to understand this if the government tried to enact conscription. In the US, conscription for defensive purposes is completely unnecessary. And not many people in the US, on either the left or the right, would be ok with conscription for offensive purposes.

Its nuclear weapons more than suffice.

That and the Navy as a first line. And the Navy needs highly trained experts to operate its ships, not bodies to throw at a meat grinder. If it came to "The Big One", the US would have much more need of workers to be funneled to industry, armament manufacturers and shipyards than combat service.

Does the US need a large army at all? A small high-tech army is good enough if your goal is to topple foreign governments, it's annexing nearby countries that requires a large body of infantry. The US isn't going to send a million men into the P.R. of China or even Iran, it isn't going to start another Mexican-American War either.

Toppling foreign governments requires massive militaries. It is if anything the most man-power intensive form of war. Firing a few multi-million dollar missiles from platforms that cost hundreds of millions of dollars isn't going to knock out Iran. Even if a small force rolled into Tehran, they wouldn't be able to control more than a tiny area. Afghanistan required US troops in every valley in the country to be won.

I think the point is that the US isn’t going to overthrow the Iranian government. It’s not viable. In the same way, it was only “viable” to overthrow Saddam because the Baathists were a Sunni minority ruling over a largely Shia population who were ultimately happy to see him go (and who are now in charge).

Regime change works when a huge proportion of the population wants it and the US intervenes in their favor. Even Afghanistan had substantial and longstanding domestic opposition to the Taliban. The only other option is a government so sclerotic that it just crumpled under the slightest real pressure. Cuba would probably just collapse if the US invaded, but again it isn’t really worth it now.

The US could certainly overthrow the Iranian government; a government cannot govern if every time an official pops his head up to make a proclamation he gets a bullet in it. What the US couldn't do is replace it with anything better.

Funny, because I think we've had this exact debate over whether air power alone can win wars the last time exuberance about being able to kill people remotely got to people.

AI will just lead to a rehash. At least until the robots can do a passable job as filthy occupiers.

How many governments has the US toppled by shipping hundreds of thousands of infantrymen abroad since WWII? Iraq required less than 200k, as did Afghanistan.

How many governments has the US toppled by shipping hundreds of thousands of infantrymen abroad since WWII?

Two, but it was more of a "temporarily threatened" and less of a "toppling".

They need a large army to repress the domestic population in case shit hits the fan. "Political power grows out of a barrel of a gun" at the end of the day.

But in that case, how much of the failure to recruit the "traditional warrior caste" OP talks about is a benefit, rather than a problem? As a commenter at Jim's blog recently put it:

People who say the military of today is worse than the military of 2000 don’t know the metrics that GAE values: which military is more likely to obey orders to carpet bomb Omaha, NE?

No, they don’t, using the army for internal police has historically failed. It didn’t work for Britain in NI, it didn’t save the Soviet Union, and honestly the colonels are the ones who you need to worry about when SHTF, because that’s prime time for military coups(if the US is even intact still; state governments have militaries, resources, and territorial control beyond the dreams of the feds).

What you need to oppress heartlanders is a much, much, much larger FBI. That’s currently not in the cards.

It could have worked for Britain in NI if Britain had been willing to kill large numbers of people, but - probably out of a mix of knowing that the PR hit would be gruesome (for example, the US has many influential Irish who would have been upset) and maybe also some genuine morality - it wasn't.

In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the Soviet Union didn't seriously try to hold itself together through military force. For the most part and in most places, its military units just stood aside and did nothing while the system slowly unraveled. There was little political will to try to use force to preserve the regime. If there had been, I am not sure if the attempt would have succeeded, but there wasn't anyway so we never got to find out.

The military was in many ways the organization that least represented conservatives. It has always been the power tool of the globalists and internationalists. In a global empire, the capital city will be multicultural. The US elite won't be loyal to the population of the fly over states when their empire consists of a billion other people and their interests. The US elite won't consist of WASPs when the empire is less than 10% wasp.

The US military doesn't protect America, Americans or the American way of life. It protects international trade, aka shutting down production in the rust belt and outsourcing production to cheap countries.

Socially conservative and nationalistic minded people won absolutely nothing in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen or Afghanistan. On the contrary, these wars were against the interests of conservatism. If anything, the average conservative voter has a greater strategic interest in supporting the groups fighting against the US military.

Socially conservative

How is the modern American red triber ‘socially conservative’? Do they refrain from sex before marriage? Do they go to church every Sunday? Do they sincerely believe blasphemy is a sin and avoid expressions like ‘damn’ or whatever? Social conservatism is dead in America outside of a few niche communities of Christians, Mormons and Jews. Your average red state conservative is as ‘socially conservative’ in their own daily life - if not less so - than a deep blue Democrat corporate lawyer who lives out in Connecticut and hosts fundraisers for Biden. Unless disliking Bud Light ads is the central defining factor in social conservatism, of course.

The US military doesn't protect America, Americans or the American way of life. It protects international trade, aka shutting down production in the rust belt and outsourcing production to cheap countries.

The American way of life is, in many cases, all about the acquisition of cheap consumer goods made in China and elsewhere.

I've sometimes thought of the mainstream contemporary mode of social conservatism in Europe (and, increasingly obviously, in the US), as 'lifestyle conservatism': conserving the typical lifestyle of, say, the early 90s (or even the early 00s), what increasingly seems like the true golden age of the West, the carefree period between the Cold War and 9/11 (perhaps even extending up until 2008 crisis), with no real threats to Western dominance, continuously improving economy, no particularly onerous environmental regulations (if you're not a farmer), EU momentarily looking unambiguously like something that creates wealth for all Europeans instead of channeling it to GREEKS WHO DON'T PAY DENBT´S and so on. And, yes, cheap consumer goods made in China, too.

Lifestyle of the grill pill, currently considered to be threatened by (in Europe) 15 years of no growth, environmentalists blocking your traffic and trying to tax your meat, immigrants (in a variety of ways) and weird wokesters who think you should be interested in US-imported causes you don't understand and which don't seem to affect your life, expect perhaps negatively. Maintenance of a set of secular societal values that were common in your childhood and associated with a period of economic growth. Extremely exploitable by right-wing political parties unless they start getting uptight about sex stuff or partying; the 90s-00s lifestyle still includes casual sex, alcohol and feeling absolutely no shame about not going to church on Sundays, after all, perhaps even moreso (in the first two cases) than now.

Is it social conservatism? If your reference point is the 1950s, well, no, but that's 70 years ago - might as well be the 1850s, insofar as most people are concerned.

Going to push back a bit on "the early 90s [were] the true golden age of the West". The way I remember it, there was a lot of abundance but also a deep ideological conformity and a corrosive cynicism. I remember the 00s better but I remember it as a time that was resolutely anti-ideological, such that any hint of sincerity was mocked and any possibility that we hadn't discovered the only philosophy man would ever need was almost incomprehensible. The great questions of life were regarded as solved or irrelevant.

Our current crisis is unpleasant in many ways but at least we know the wokeness exists. It's something that one can recognise when implemented, it's something that you can identify with or stand against (even if one is afraid to stand against it publicly). There is far more, and better, free thought now than there was in the 90s and 00s.

I'm going to be blunt here - the reason why there's current nostalgia for the 90's, is that is now the age where middle-aged people were now children. Shockingly, about a decade ago, there was nostalgia for the 80's, including I'm sure paens to how the culture was better then as well, because everybody, even libs, didn't like the Commies or whatever.

Also, as somebody who was alive during the 90's, there were many, many, many, many social conservatives upset about the current state of things at the time, and looked toward the prior generation of pre-11/22/1963, just like the current middle-aged people look to a pre-9/11 age. Oh, wow, groups of people looking back around 30 years to an imagined past. Weird how that continually happens.

There will be people upset about whatever in 2050, who will talk about the 2020's as a golden time. Hell, there was nostalgia for the Depression as people freaked about how teenagers had freedom and such in the late 50's and early 60's.

There will be people upset about whatever in 2050, who will talk about the 2020's as a golden time.

The rest of your comment is defensible, but unless things pick up dramatically a decade defined by three-ish years under government lockdown being looked back on with nostalgia would require things to be pretty bad by the 2050s I would think.

People in the UK got nostalgic about the Blitz. A feeling of “we’re all in it together” is attractive for a lot of people.

There won't be nostalgia for the bad things, just like there's no nostalgia over the Rodney King riots or the OKC bombing, but for the aesthetic, and how it was better for reasons. It'll just be nostalgia for Fortnite, whatever shows on Netflix teens like these days, maybel Marvel, and the styles of the time.

As a side note, nobody was under lockdown for 3 years in the US. I'm in one of the most blue parts of America, and even here, things were fairly normal by summer/fall of 2021 as far as places being open and being able to go to them. Yes, mask mandates were longer and concerts checked for vaccines longer, and you can dislike that, but saying there were three years of gov't lockdown is just a lie.

Well, since we're being blunt...

The first issue with the whole "the past was not better" argument is that we cannot trust progressives to admit it, if it was. The entire legitimacy of progressivism rests on things getting better, so mentioning even stagnation gets them antsy, let alone a decline. Not even a partial concession is possible, nor an acknowledgement of a trade off, because if some things got better while others got worse, some people might be prone to ask "was it really worth it?". Indeed, for a defense of modern culture there's scarcely a mention of anything you find good about it.

The second problem is that the entire argument boils down to an extremely flattening equivocation: there was cultures war before, there is culture war now, culture war = culture war => things aren't worse.

As someone who also lived through the 90's I can tell you there was a marked difference between the discourse of today and back then. Back then progressives were pushing for race blindness and harmony, now they're pushing for centering race as an identity and racial conflict. Now, you can point out that harmony was not achieved at the time - muh Rodney King riots etc. - that does not detract that it was explicitly what progressives were fighting for, and now they are explicitly fighting for racial conflict. That looks like a decline to me.

As fun as it is to point at conservatives of yesteryear handwringing over trivial things, and smugly point out that society has not fallen apart, I'm not sure you can actually look at how things have developed and declare that nothing has gotten worse. Sure, back in the 90's conservatives were losing their minds over on-screen titties, and while the world has not literally ended, the rampant sexualization in media got so bad that young audiences of all people are saying it's getting a bit much for them, which to me is a clear sign something has gone terribly wrong.

We could go over the issues this way, though I'm not sure how convincing either of us will find it, and you maybe right we'll have impassioned arguments in the 2050's how not-quite-so-terrible the 2020's were, but that doesn't mean people arguing it will be wrong.

Sure, I thought of that, but the years I pegged here as the golden age - late 90s, early 00s - were horrible for me. I was not a child, I was in junior high, I was bullied, didn't have friends, any thought of having a GF was incredibly remote, the works. The post-08 years, in particular, have in almost every way been better for me. Still, objectively speaking, the global vibes had a marked difference that is also possible for me to now analyze.

Also, as somebody who was alive during the 90's, there were many, many, many, many social conservatives upset about the current state of things at the time, and looked toward the prior generation of pre-11/22/1963, just like the current middle-aged people look to a pre-9/11 age. Oh, wow, groups of people looking back around 30 years to an imagined past. Weird how that continually happens.

Well, yes, that's almost the definition of conservatism. Conservatism tends to change a lot, ironically more than liberalism or socialism. I was just analyzing the current particular mode of conservatism and its underpinnings.

Also, as somebody who was alive during the 90's, there were many, many, many, many social conservatives upset about the current state of things at the time, and looked toward the prior generation of pre-11/22/1963, just like the current middle-aged people look to a pre-9/11 age. Oh, wow, groups of people looking back around 30 years to an imagined past. Weird how that continually happens.

I think a couple big differences are that, today, this is a common view of social progressives rather than of social conservatives. Social conservatives seem to be pining for stuff that was considered old fashioned and backwards in the 90s. Another big difference is that these people were pining for the nostalgic 90s (and actually the 00s as well) at least 10 years ago, so this isn't something that happened to middle-aged people. It was that adults in their 20s and 30s (I've even seen teens, actually!) were remembering what things were like fairly recently and concluded that, in some important dimensions regarding the culture war, things were better back then, and coming to these conclusions due to the specifics of how these societies looked relative to their progressive standards.

I'd also note that the nostalgia for the 80s that we saw perhaps a decade ago seemed to be purely aesthetic, with things like 80s fashion and pop culture coming back en vogue, but I saw very little talk about how much better something like, say, race relations or censorship was back then. In contrast to the nostalgia for the 90s (and, again, much of 00s actually) seem to be around the actual ideological regimes that influenced our day-to-day lives.

I'm not saying it was necessarily the "true golden age" (a thing with no objective criteria, really), I'm saying that it's easy to view it that way. The conformity and the anti-ideological nature of it all are arguments for why people would see it that way, not against it. If one's criteria for good life are purely hedonistic and materialistic, good and free thought is not all that important - a clarity that it's been all solved and you can just concentrate on living your best life is far better.

Fair enough. It’s a common perspective and I wanted to provide a counter-proposal.

Social conservatism is relative. American red tribers don't refrain from sex until marriage but it's more often with a long term boyfriend/girlfriend that eventually leads to marriage as opposed to either hookup culture or cohabitating for 5+ years without planning to get married. Some of them do go to church every Sunday. Many go at Christmas or Easter. They don't generally avoid saying "damn" but that's been common for centuries so I'm not sure we can blame modernity for that one. If you define it by pre-1920s America standards then yeah nobody is a conservative any more but there are still useful distinctions.

The blue tribe Democratic lawyer in Connecticut is probably socially conservative than a red triber in a trailer park, but less so than a red triber of the same class. The manners of the upper middle class have always skewed conservative.

It seems like a major confound that you pretty much have to have a college degree to be a blue triber, whereas the red tribe covers the whole economic spectrum.

IME red tribe normie elites are fairly socially conservative, at least enough to raise objections to their grandchildren fornicating openly(although usually with a don't ask/don't tell) and expecting their dependents to be members of- and at least sometimes attend- a church. That's of course not getting into the omnipresent homophobia(which is enough for tons of people to call Russia based), continuation of at least occasional shotgun weddings, and belief that yes, it's better for mothers to stay home even if it's not realistic for lots of families.

A red tribe country would be by western standards fairly socially conservative, but Islamic norms would be a pretty small minority.

Anyone who thinks this is the result of the culture war should ask themselves one simple question: if there’s a huge recession and the young white male unemployment rate triples next year, do you really think these recruitment figures don’t budge?

The truth is that the US has been in an unprecedented (since the postwar era) employment boom since 2017. A young Midwestern or southern white man’s options in 2023, if they don’t go to college, are simply much much better than they were in 2010 or 2013 or even 2005 for that matter.

Why would anyone make $25,000 a year in the army when trucking companies are desperate for recruits and warehouses and gas stations are paying $60k+ a year. Where many trades pay six figures easily. Even decent personal trainers make triple what a new private does, and don’t have to spend months away from women and possibly risk their lives. What do young men care about? Girls, money and status. The military doesn’t offer the first two, and hasn’t offered the third since the Vietnam debacle.

Hispanic recruitment has risen because the population of Hispanics has risen, while black recruitment has held steady because of generations of outreach work to increase black enlistment and advertise in the black community. These offset the same impulse in those groups.

When was the last recruitment crisis in the army? Oh yeah, that’s right, it was in the booming economy of the 1990s. Who would have guessed? Triple pay for junior enlisted ranks and watch the recruitment crisis vanish.

Still, it’s a waste of goodwill. People used to want to serve for patriotic reasons. That was pure profit for the state. It was like a charity, they were fed and housed, but some of the work they did was effectively donated. As with billionaires, the state should find ways to encourage donations, not turn them away to make the diversity quota. You know, tell people what they can do for the country, not what the country can do for them, all that jazz.

Sure, in a wider sense the military has been in a slow-motion recruitment crisis since around 1979 (really, since Vietnam). Enlisted pay was boosted by huge amounts in the 80s, and that and high unemployment and Reagan patriotism kept things from boiling over. The 90s saw the military shrink significantly, easing recruitment issues (although they were a big concern in the middle of that decade). A combination of 9/11 and the dotcom bust boosted numbers through the 2000s, then the Great Recession kept things fine until the mid-2010s. Now the historic pattern is just resuming.

A lot of people who enlisted in the 2000s just had a visceral reaction to 9/11 and wanted to go kill Arabs in revenge. That sounds uncharitable, but I don’t mean it that way, it just is what it is. You saw the same impulse in Israel after October 7, it’s just bloodlust and will to vengeance. The “major” Islamist terror attacks on American soil in the last decade have been by some random guy on a gay nightclub, by a Pakistani husband and wife on a California department of health party and by some Chechens on the finish of the Boston Marathon. None killed as many people as died in other mass shootings like the Vegas one committed by a white male with no discernible motive (and almost certainly not an Islamist one). That’s not driving anyone in a red state to war.

If the Greeks had full employment for years I bet they would have had recruitment problems as well. The military is a job and right now competing jobs are looking more attractive.

It seems

Hey, I found the problem!

I like the overall structure of your post, but I think it relies on several shaky assumptions. First, does the shortage of recruits actually represent Red Tribe disenfranchisement? Second, are “American Elites” responsible?

First and foremost, I think you’re overselling the demographic shift. The rates of enlisted army service are pretty similar between ethnicities. Enlisting in the army is less popular in general, and there are more minorities now than in 2010, so it’s easy for white representation to go down.

The effect is definitely stronger for women, as the national sex ratio didn’t really change. But it’s still an overwhelmingly masculine profession, with 15% women instead of 13%. So there are definitely a few more women, especially in officer positions, which could potentially shift the culture. To be honest, I have no idea which populations send the most women to the army; I’d assume them to be more Red Tribe than the national average, but I have no data to back it up.

2010 was the peak for a lot of military stats. The most active duty personnel, highest percent male, most men and women enlisted, and so on. But why? This wasn’t 2002. None of the rallying flags were present, and national politics were as bitter as they could get pre-Trump.

I think @2rafa has the general thrust of it. Enlisting is an employer of last resort. There were a lot more people at their last resorts in 2008-2012, a lot of people who really needed a competitive paycheck and a comprehensive insurance policy. In 2024, that’s not necessarily the case. We’re coming off a couple years of COVID distortions and zero-interest-rate phenomena. That has a way of making boot camp less appealing. I would expect the entry wage—relative to inflation—to matter more than the current President or the percent of minorities.

So if 2010 was an unusually good time to join the infantry, and 2024 isn’t, are we really seeing a calculated move by “American elites”? Are they making a move at all? The actions that would fix military recruitment involve tight money, austerity, or general economic stress. If those things are coming, I expect there will be bigger fish to fry.

Numbers from the 2022 demographic report.

My first post here after being exiled from Reddit and having a long sabbatical from online commentary. I originally wanted to do it when I saw the response to an even earlier Army Ad with Johnathan Majors (it seems to have been removed, likely because of the rumors of him being a domestic abuser) and was shocked at the comments, it basically read as a /pol/ thread and the dislike bar was 9/10 negative.

Digging a little further an anti-war sentiment seemed to have spread among American conservatives with me first noticing then and there. It seems like a total flip from the 00s where being a Republican meant being pro-military no matter what. Veterans was almost a fetish to rally around, politically, from what I recall.

Right, there has definitely been a shift since the GWoT. I’m inclined to believe that it owes more to how Afghanistan played out, plus the overall economic trends post-2008, than it does elite decisions.

Edit: sorry, fat-fingered the submit button. Still working on this.

You can delete the post, finish composition, and then undelete it.

I was actually worried that my delete button had become an admin option, so I erred on the side of transparency. Ah well.

First, does the shortage of recruits actually represent Red Tribe disenfranchisement?

The marines- historically the most right wing branch of the military- being the only branch that hit their recruitment goals surely gestures at that being part of it, at least, although I'll agree that rapidly rising blue collar civilian wages getting to whites first is probably a bigger factor.

I've always considered this issue to be one of white people shooting themselves in the foot. I have so many friends, including some ex-military, who champion this as proof that the based white men go their own way. And it's just like the conservative exodus from academia. Or liberals discouraging each other from being cops? It's just- no, you fools. What do you think you're accomplishing by removing yourselves from a seat of power? You're not owning anyone, you're just marginalizing yourselves, and ceding the entire institution to your rivals. It's not a gain.

But I don't think it's the main issue. Black overrepresentation in the military has generally been due to it being a good opportunity for people at the bottom, and less interesting to anyone above. The first assumption shouldn't be that white people necessarily feel spited by America. It should be considered that it's not an economically attractive option to anyone who can make it in the private sector. People often ask why people don't just leave the hood, and the military is actually a good path to anyone who actually wants to do that quickly.

Also, to test your theory, you should really consider the political persuasion of young white people. Do you think the average white 19 year old zoomer isn't joining because he feels scorned for being white? For a white person to feel that way would be indicative of a level of conservatism I think is relatively low in that age demographic. Instead, I'd posit that these people are more leftist-inclined, and think that to serve America is to serve a country that is fundamentally white supremacist, the exact opposite problem- not to mention the military itself being a tool of colonialism etc, but the point is, their racial perspective would go the opposite way.

Even if they don't fully embrace these leftist ideals, they have enough sympathy to fuel an, "I wouldn't want to get killed for that" mentality, with many people's popular perception of what soldiers do still rooted in WWII-era meat grinder situations.

If that is the case the Army will have a fine tightrope to thread when recruiting whites since its conservative and progressive factions have so different a view on it as an institution.

You're not owning anyone, you're just marginalizing yourselves, and ceding the entire institution to your rivals. It's not a gain.

The rivals were already calling shots in the institution. The two-mothers, non-binary woman ad came from inside the house.

By your own account police departments are red-triber enclaves. But I think blue states made their displeasure felt after George Floyd and other such incidents. Budgets were cut, people were made uncomfortable enough that older cohorts took retirement...

The reason "DEI" has taken over as a general online-conservative curse-word is cause it allows them to express the insight that not all institutions need to be taken over from the bottom-up.

Police have been doing a lot of organized demonstration of their disapproval, though. By staying in the force and simply refusing to do their jobs, in a bid to prove how much they actually mattered. It's been hard to ignore, not that their governments haven't tried.

If white people exile themselves from the military, the woke mindset, I think, will suddenly sympathize with it more. They're going to start wanting to pay soldiers more and it's going to become our most dearly beloved institution instead of an evil tool of oppression. All leaving does is surrender yet another avenue of control to that camp. Even if there's already a relative top-heavy disparity in power, it would only get worse. If there's ever to be a reversal, it would happen a lot quicker if the entire ground level composition of the military wasn't comprised of woke-preferred individuals. Just like with colleges- that's how you set yourself up to lose an institution for more than just the current day, but for generations.

The military is one of the conservatives' last bases of power, even if their opponents pull the strings, it still has a high degree of conservative symbolic meaning and representation in the lower ranks in particular. Willingly ceding that leaves them with nothing but a bunch of alienated and isolated white dudes with no sense of unity. Seems a lot easier to maneuver around. What's left, farming?

By staying in the force and simply refusing to do their jobs, in a bid to prove how much they actually mattered.

Retirements spiked. Part of the "success" of the strike was forcing cities to work with less experienced cops or to try to hire new ones.

If white people exile themselves from the military, the woke mindset, I think, will suddenly sympathize with it more.

That's assuming what some people like about the military (and police) isn't inherently offensive to progressive mindsets. It requires the belief that the American empire is good and that coercing the "oppressed" like the Houthis - aka people whose maliciousness outstrips their capacity for warfare - into acting in its interests is acceptable.

I can accept they want to take over the military - because that's how totalizing ideologies work - but that is not the same as actually valuing it.

The sort of people drawn in by the "two mommies" ad were a) not likely to join in the first place and b) were likely not going to be as reliable in the event that some Oct. 7th thing drew the US into war.

Willingly ceding that leaves them with nothing but a bunch of alienated and isolated white dudes with no sense of unity. Seems a lot easier to maneuver around. What's left, farming?

Fair.

Police retirements spiked, but famously so did those in every profession.

White recruitment into the military takes place very heavily from conservative communities that object more strongly to left wing ideas as the null hypothesis than the median zoomer.

You’re correct about the economic incentives, obviously- any young white man who can pass a drug test can get a career-track hire to train job in this economy, they don’t need to join the army for it. But the military’s alienating conservative America is probably part of it, and the DEI shit is a big part of alienating conservative America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Non-Hispanic_White_Americans_population_pyramid_in_2020.svg

There are also fewer young white men now than there were a few years ago. The chart above is from 2020, so the 15-year-olds on that chart are turning 19 this year. With limited natural selection, rampant obesity and mild dysgenics, the number of able-bodied young white men is clearly in decline and will continue to decline for years to come.

We need a chart showing percentage of that age group rather than absolute numbers.

The leadership in the military was already captured. You aren't going to change it from the inside, DEI makes sure that people like you aren't promoted.

It seems like the political persuasion of young people, i.e. broccoli headed zoomers that fight oppressive power structures and therefore won't join, is just the other side of the same coin that prevents traditional conservative recruits from joining. So the elite's poor leadership is still at fault.

They cynically exploited oppressor / oppressed dynamics and inclusion to Trojan horse themselves into all the major institutions. Now you have a generation that grew up steeped in that ideology. On one hand many are true believers that don't realize it was just a ploy, they hate the military, think the holocaust didn't happen and want to #freepalestine. On the other hand the white conservative youths are the kids of the people you knifed in the back to get yourself into power, so of course they aren't interested in signing up. Our elites don't really do long term thinking.

It's just- no, you fools. What do you think you're accomplishing by removing yourselves from a seat of power? You're not owning anyone, you're just marginalizing yourselves, and ceding the entire institution to your rivals. It's not a gain.

I think you're overlooking something important here. Even if it's ineffective as a means to drive change, people simply don't want to work in an environment where they are hated and they know it. That goes double if said environment involves risking life and limb. Is it really that surprising that young red tribers might say "nah I don't really want to take a bullet for these people who hate me"?

It's not surprising and I understand that - the same thing's been talked about here for red-leaning professors. But to me, it seems that the last bulwark against total, permanent loss of presence in a system is when people give up in the face of the hostile work environment. Which I guess I can't blame them for, but it seems like it was otherwise not necessarily beyond salvaging until after then. Probably irrelevant since not many are going to take one on the chin year after year so that things maybe get better in future generations.

Do you think the average male zoomer isn't joining because he feels scorned for being a man?

Yes. This scorn need not be direct; indeed, to coddle a man (and stifle his growth, insulting his dignity as a human being doing) is to scorn him.

"I wouldn't want to get killed for that" mentality

Or to be more precise: "I'm already treated badly enough by society at large; insulted at every turn for existing, oppressed and emasculated by its shitty laws and taxed half to death in the name of some twisted self-serving morality. Why would I ever put my life on the line so that this society might survive given that, if they lost, the culture my enemy would impose on me is actually a better deal?"

Western society is overdrawn on its balance of white feathers.

It's worth remembering that Afghanistan is under Taliban rule today because pre-2021 Afghan society had no white feathers to give. No incentive to join the ANA, no reason to fight for a structure that can't pay well enough, and the society the Americans were trying to build there folded without a shot fired. Whoops, guess you needed men after all.

I've always considered this issue to be one of white people shooting themselves in the foot.

There is no "white people" there's just a bunch of individual white men. The power of "white people" will only mildly trickle down to any individual lower-middle class enlistee. Individual benefits are how they're making that decision, not the success and power of "la raza."

Shooting oneself in the foot is making the decision to sacrifice oneself for an imagined community that doesn't give a shit about you.

I think it's just that people, conservative or liberal, just don't want to join the army any more. The traditional pool of recruits may have more options than the past, or may be unfit/incapable of being recruited. And I think the LGTB+ types they are trying to appeal to are the kind who think the army etc. are all a tool of the patriarchy, violent arm of the colonisers, state power, all the Bad Stuff The Man Does.

So one set are "it's no longer a choice between go to jail or sign up with the recruiting sergeant, so no thanks" and the other set are "this is The Establishment and we are not interested, this does not fit in with our post-revolution cottagecore fantasy world".

As always whenever US military recruitment woes comes up, it's relevant to bring up that something like 80% of new recruits come from a family where someone else has served. The implication of this isn't that the US has a racial demographic recruitment option, but a familial one: that families that once would have encouraged children to join, are no longer doing so / encouraging them not to do so.

Failing to work around this issue makes many of the options presented pretentiously comedic rather than serious, because the audience that needs to be convinced isn't the recruits- it's the already-separated family members who are dissuading recruitment.

Behind a paywall, but one of the better breakdowns of the US recrutiment issues from the WSJ.

Behind a paywall, but one of the better breakdowns of the US recrutiment issues from the WSJ.

Open sesame.

And I suppose that this is further exacerbated by the decline in birth rates: if military families aren't having as many sons (or, in this brave new world, daughters) as they used to, even among the ones that do encourage their kids to join there aren't as many potential recruits.

I propose, in line with your Greek theme:

The Ephorate Option

The Spartans were famously martial, but they were also famously reticent to go to war. They would frequently hem and haw well past the point where the Athenians or Thebans would have jumped into battle. This was largely tied to the martial nature of Sparta's slave society: Sparta always had a weak birthrate and Helot supermajorities and could not afford to spend Spartan blood profligately.

What's changed from the past is that the current leader of the Red Tribe is something of a putative dove, loudly declaring the wars of the past twenty years to be mistakes, and in a sotto voce stage whisper calling dead soldiers suckers and fools. The Trumpian takeover of the GOP has left us with three consecutive presidents who ran promising to pull us out of Afghanistan and arguing that the war in Iraq was a mistake, that there was public outcry when Biden ripped the band-aid off and that we still have troops in Iraq for some reason is a kind of deep-state zombie inertia. No one with any credibility is telling young American men that the wars they will enlist to fight are just. On the Left, they have always been baby-killers, but when Clinton or Carter were president there still existed credible conservative institutions encouraging young men to join up for patriotic red-blooded reasons. Trump, with his anti-war schtick, has supplanted those conservative institutions.

Young Americans are increasingly against America's continued fealty to Israel. As the majority of America's foreign adventures are at root about Israel, this leaves little reason to join up.

If America wants young men to join the military, it needs to rebuild the credibility of the defense establishment as caring about its soldiers. Both in the sense of "don't throw lives away for failed nation building missions," and in the sense of looking after their souls, doing their best to make sure the violence they are called on to practice is righteous. Speaking autobiographically, I should have joined the military, I had all the qualifications and interests they were looking for, and was recruited intensely. But, at the end of the day, I simply disagreed with the wars we were fighting on a moral basis. So when I hear "recruitment crisis" and I see Red Tribe figures like Donald Trump catching up to where my family was in 2003 on the advisability of invading Iraq, I can't help but think that a lot of people are thinking the same things I thought in 2010.

We need to revamp how we go to war, and rework our foreign policy. We need to build a credible system by which we show that we are making intelligent foreign policy decisions. The SecDef needs to be on the job. The President needs to be competent. The Congress needs to do its job and assert authority over the war powers of the executive. We need to have faith that the military is doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons. That will make people more interested in serving: if they know that their pledge of their lives and their sacred honor won't be wasted.

On a more prosaic note...

The Malcolm Gladwell Option

There might be little mechanical and procedural tweaks that need to be twucked that can fix things right up. Marijuana usage, for example, is still a black mark on enlisting without a waiver, while alcohol usage is mostly tolerated. This may not reflect modern cultural choices. Moreso a question for career officers than for enlisted: the famous mobility of army careers, with soldiers being moved around assignments constantly even in peacetime, more or less requires that your partner subordinate her life to yours. In a world of two career households, it's a tough sell to any woman I would have considered marrying: you'll have to follow me around, your own career will have to come second, but your career will probably produce more money than mine. I thought about this while talking to a friend from Singapore about reading From Third World to First about how they tried to make careers in the military more appealing, how if I were Singaporean and an army officer even getting deployed to the other side of Singapore is a jokingly short distance from family/friends/spouse's career, while in the USA joining up meant I might end up anywhere at any time even outside deployment in a warzone. Is my young wife going to sacrifice her legal/medical/programming career to my military career?

Speaking of LKY and Singapore, they faced similar problems early on with racial composition of their armed forces:

We faced another security risk from the racial composition of our army and police. Independent Singapore could not continue the old British practice of having a city three-quarters Chinese policed and guarded by Malay police and soldiers. The British had recruited mostly Malays born in Malaya, who traditionally had come co Singapore co enlist. Malays liked soldiering whereas the Chinese shunned it, a historical legacy of the predatory habits of soldiers during the years of rebellions and warlords in China. The question was whether the army and police would be as loyal to a government no longer British or Malay, but one the Malays perceived as Chinese. We had to find some way co induct more Chinese and Indians into the police and armed forces to reflect the population.

Ours was no easy task. We had to reorientate people's minds to accept the need for a people's army and overcome their traditional dislike for soldiering. Every Chinese parent knew the saying hao han bu dang bing, hao tie bu da ding (a good lad does not become a soldier, good steel does not become nails). We set up national cadet corps and national police cadet corps in all secondary schools so that parents would identify the army and police with their sons and daughters. We wanted the people to regard our soldiers as their protectors-a reversal from the days when army and police uniforms aroused fear and resentment as symbols of colonial coercion. People must admire military valor. As Keng Swee said in sorrow, "The Spartan approach to life does not come about naturally in a community that lives by buying and selling." I had to get people to change their attitudes. We also had to improve the physical condition of our young by getting them to participate in sports and physical activity of all kinds, and to develop a taste for adventure and strenuous, thrilling activities that were not without danger to themselves. Persuasion alone was not enough. We needed institutions, well organized, well staffed, and well directed to follow up the exhortations and stirring speeches. The prime responsibility was that of the ministry of education. Only if we changed people's thinking and attitudes could we raise a large citizen army like Switzerland's or Israel's. We gave ourselves a decade to accomplish this.

Looking at a lot of the moves Singapore made, an emphasis on making military careers compatible with professional accomplishment made significant inroads. I'm also in favor of conscription, less in the model of the draft historically, and more in the mode of an expanded and revamped National Guard* which most men would be expected to join.

*Really what I'm in favor of is replacing the system of police in our country with a militia made up of anyone under the age of 50 who wants to take a few shifts a month of acting as a first responder for public order/protection calls. The militia would be funded by a flat income tax, say .5%, on anyone who doesn't serve in the militia.

Data point of one, but the only Singaporean I've known loathed the army, loathed having been a conscript, and deeply resented the government for having deprived him of two years that he could have spent staying competitive with international students. He described a world of complete incompetence and lethargy, because none of the conscripts expect to stay on and therefore none of them have any incentive to work. They just rot for two years. And the cynicism has become institutional, so it's hard for even enthusiastic conscripts to escape the pull.

I'm torn on the subject, personally. The advantages of a well-run conscript system are clear, but it's expensive to run and encourages corruption and (often) dislike of the army. Similar to forced Irish teaching in Irish schools. The Brits used to have a fairly good system where you could sign up for the officer cadets (or something to that effect) and spend one weekend per month doing fun, interesting exercises that also made you a little bit of money. Most people didn't stay on, but many did and the ones who left still had acquaintances in the army and an appreciation for army life. We stopped doing it because it was too expensive. And I doubt that one could afford to do it for the poor bloody infantry.

I think the advantage of conscription in Singapore that I'm trying to get at is that it increases the prestige of the army as a social institution, and the concomitant prestige of the career (non) commissioned officer corps. LKY is always about attracting the best.

That's what I'm saying, judging purely by the chap I knew, it did the exact opposite, it instilled a lifelong contempt that otherwise he might not have felt. You cannot 'attract the best' and conscript every able-bodied man, they aren't compatible. If the army was prestigious (as in Rome) people would be queuing up to join of their own accord.

Don't know about Singaporean system, but any prestige from conscription hinges on the implementation details. My hypothesis:

Conscription system where everyone is called up, avoiding draft is difficult, and candidates to officer and specialist tracks are selected by reliable, standardized tests and methods for IQ and other desiderata, compulsorily administered to all -> Military is unpleasant, but has some prestige to offset, because (a) if you made it to the officer track, your rank signals your IQ (b) no matter your personal rank, there is a high chance that in you observed relatively intelligent and competent superiors during your stint.

Conscription system where draft avoidance is easily possible -> Highly competent, affluent people who have most to gain from college or have family networks or otherwise good prospects of lucrative career have the highest opportunity cost from the draft -> They avoid the draft -> The majority of the elite in your country doesn't serve -> If you manage to nevertheless recruit competent officers, the elite won't observe their competence first-hand -> Avoiding draft correlates with elite status and signals good things, military career signals bad things. -> Prestige plummets.

Won't outline the failure mode where instead of standardized tests the officers are selected by either political patronage or nepotism.

Has any conscription system ever placed officers through conscription? I was under the impression that officer corps always consisted of volunteers.

To my knowledge, Israel and Finland. I think both are offshoot developments the old German system, where a prospective officer candidates were volunteers but had to serve a lengthy period of time first in enlisted and NCO equivalent positions in regular regiments before and between officer school exams.

Huh, TIL. Looked it up, guess I was wrong. I was more used to the American system and assumed it was universal, I guess.

Basically, in the Finnish system, there are two sorts of officers:

Reserve officers: Every conscript starts as, well, a conscript, equal to all others. After eight weeks of basic training, the most suitable ones for command are selected for reserve NCO training, organized in their company, and after seven weeks of basic NCO training, the most suitable ones for further command then go to the Reserve Officer School, which can train them up to (generally) a major's rank, usually lieutenant's rank. They would then be activated in wartime but don't stay in the army after their conscript service are up (apart from refresher courses, of course).

Commissioned officers: These are commissioned for army service (training, rapid response etc.) during peacetime. They are trained at National Defence University, which takes applicants on the basis of exams like any other university, though you have to be a reserve officer (in some cases reserve NCO) to apply.

Officer's rank absolutely offers prestige in Finland, even moreso in the old days than now (people unironically used to say that the Reserve Officer School offers better training for general leadership, in corporations and so on, than dedicated leadership courses), but it's probably still the case that young male job applicants are instructed that you shouldn't put your military rank in your CV when applying for jobs abroad, since it's... well, not a similar sign of prestige in many other countries, quite the opposite.

Similar to forced Irish teaching in Irish schools.

Threadjack, but I'm interested in the lessons drawn from this that can be applied to other language revitalization efforts. Young Cajuns usually find my partial speaking incredibly cool and wish that learning Cajun French was more available as an option.

And they successfully revived Hebrew in Israel. I don't know, I think it's some combination of bad timing and culture specific issues.

Re: bad timing, I will get some flack for this, but as far as I can see Irish and Scottish nationalism are heavily American- and returning-expat-influenced 'modern' nationalisms. In comparison to Israeli nationalism or Islamic nationalism, which are revivalist movements aimed at throwing off oppressors who prevented them from acting according to their ancient ways, they want to throw off the oppression of a British-tinged nationalism in order to become a modern, liberal, secular nation. The Irish people that I have known personally identified very strongly with chocolate-box Irishness but associated actual traditional Irish culture with backwardness and Catholic atrocities. There is a dislike of anything resembling ethno-nationalism that coexists uneasily with the explicitly nationalist (and anti-British) nature of the politics in both countries. Learning Irish is (I'm told) boring, compulsory, and was instituted by the bad old nationalists not the shiny new nationalists. It's resented in the same way that learning the Catechism is resented.

Re: culture, Irish and Gaelic were mostly spoken by the embarrassing parts of the country, backwards old country people that the cool crowd have no interest in associating with, and it's barely even spoken by those people. Learning Irish doesn't let you do anything cool, it's just something you have to put up with. The cool crowd therefore resent it, don't use it, don't make anything cool with it, meaning there's nothing cool you can do with it, and the cycle continues. A lot of Jews genuinely want to read the Old Testament and other religious documents in the original.

I'm aware that the above is really pretty insulting to Irish traditionalists. It's the anti-Irish-language perspective as I was told it by left-wing nationalists at an English university, recalled as accurately as I can and mixed with my own observations and those of an English acquintance who grew up in Ireland. Personally I think it's rather a shame.

TLDR: modern Irish nationalism is for various reasons surprisingly anti-Irish. Make sure that you have genuine ground roots support before making language teaching compulsory. Otherwise, sponsor making cool stuff in that language.

TLDR: modern Irish nationalism is for various reasons surprisingly anti-Irish. Make sure that you have genuine ground roots support before making language teaching compulsory. Otherwise, sponsor making cool stuff in that language.

On the other side, if you learn Irish Gaelic, you can be translator of official EU documents into this language.

And no one will ever check whether your translation is any good, no one will ever read EU regulations of banana size and curvature in Gaelic. Dream job for life.

https://toppandigital.com/translation-blog/welsh-road-sign-displays-out-of-office-message-in-translation-blunder/?amp=1

Government officials who requested a translation for a Welsh road sign thought they were receiving their translation via an email reply. They sent the text “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.” to Swansea Council for translation into Welsh and awaited a response. However, the response they received was Welsh for “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”.

Officials assumed the response was the content they required and promptly approved the text for use on a road sign used to halt heavy goods vehicles near an Asda store in the Morriston area.

“When they’re proofing signs, they should really use someone who speaks Welsh,” said journalist Dylan Iorwerth.

Seriously, though, government work is as far as you can get from cool.

Standard translation process for major institutions, EU included, is that translated documents will get proofread and possibly QA'ed, so at least someone will read that document.

I've known many young men from Singapore and this is a nearly universal opinion on their period of conscription. Its a waste of time and energy, no one wants to do it or cares about doing a good job, there often isn't really anything for them to do after they finish basic. There experience is more about what they can't do: start college, get a job, pursue a relationship. Most also express resentment that, while they are "unemployed in uniform" the women they just graduated with spend those same two years partying and sleeping with foreigners.

I hadn’t thought about the gendered aspect but you’re right. The Swiss 18 weeks seems like a much more viable form of conscription.

I'll add that this is not just an American problem but a Western one. The UK military is shrinking at speed:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12985455/Britains-shrinking-army-general-military-recruitment-crisis.html

In a one year period up to September last year, the army's strength plummeted from 79,139 to 75,983 as more soldiers left than started.

The Royal Navy is scrapping its amphibious assault capabilities and frigates due to manpower shortages:

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/shapps-rumoured-to-be-scrapping-uks-assault-ships/

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-to-scrap-two-royal-navy-frigates-say-reports/

Even the Australian Navy is struggling, despite our politicians and journalists shrieking about war with China every single day. At least The Australian newspaper is, plus the government conducted strategic reviews that conclude we have no long-term warning time before war, that the strategic situation is disastrous. Naturally, their immediate response after the last strategic review was to start another strategic review rather than do anything substantial or impactful.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/defence/workforce-crisis-threatens-to-put-two-more-anzac-frigates-out-of-service/news-story/adc8e4a1442831dd17e235389484c415

(link is paywalled but the http address tells the story)

We also have the same broad recruitment shortages, people are floating recruitment from Pacific Island countries.

And so does Germany: https://www.euronews.com/2023/08/02/germanys-army-struggles-to-recruit-new-troops-despite-official-push

The number of new recruits eager to join the Bundeswehr has dropped by 7% this year compared to 2022, the Ministry of Defence announced on Wednesday.

Now, it can't just be that there's a labour shortage and good economic conditions across the entire Western world. If the US economy is going well, isn't the German economy doing poorly? Aren't they in a recession, their manufacturing is going down the drain since they stopped (or were stopped) buying Russian energy? The UK economy is treading water. And in Australia, the standard of living dropped 5% due to higher interest rates and inflation.

I think it's more a crisis of patriotism and ideology than an economic issue. If it were economics, then all races would be affected equally, it wouldn't just be whites refraining, the ratios wouldn't be changing. Countries with stronger economies would be harder hit than countries with weaker economies. Instead, everyone is dealing with the same problem.

Now, it can't just be that there's a labour shortage and good economic conditions across the entire Western world. If the US economy is going well, isn't the German economy doing poorly? Aren't they in a recession, their manufacturing is going down the drain since they stopped (or were stopped) buying Russian energy? The UK economy is treading water. And in Australia, the standard of living dropped 5% due to higher interest rates and inflation.

Unemployment is extremely low across the West. In fact, the problem with a lack of young workers in many jobs is worse in Germany than elsewhere because birth rates have been even lower for longer than they have in the US, Australia and UK.

What? The UK outsources recruitment to a an external company?

When I read stuff like this, muy blood boils.

You forgot:

The Wagner Option

US holds proud 6th place in incarceration rate and most people here would say it is too low, would say that many more Americans belong in prison.

Nevertheless, keeping millions in prisons is expensive. Why not kill two birds with one stone, why not offer the prisoners option to expiate their guilt in service to the motherland somewhere far away, like Yemen or Iran?

In last week’s thread Cirrus addressed the gerontocracy that is due to characterize the upcoming presidential elections (and characterized the two latest ones) in the US, and drew obvious parallels with the late history of the USSR. This reminded me of a comment by phoneosaur on the old subreddit 4 years ago, which I found fascinating enough in order to save it. Either way, this generated a bunch of replies last week, but I think some relevant points were not made.

First I’d bring up the following argument from the old comment:

My hunch is that the "establishment" in each era resorted to increasingly elderly candidates because the pipeline of ideologically reliable young people stopped flowing. The establishment become reluctant to hand power to a new generation when that generation has ceased believing in the legitimacy of the power structure.

Cirrus mentions something that might first read like the opposite, but pretty much seems to point out the same problem:

I don’t think it’s a stretch to compare those Accords with modern-day Wokism currently afflicting Western European culture. The older generation of leaders will roll their eyes. But they signed on to it. The next batch of younger idealist leaders—the Gorbachevs of our future—will take Wokism seriously to the detriment of our national integrity.

I think both of them are definitely onto something, so I’d draw a different parallel to illustrate what I think is going on. In the USSR, what Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko all had in common was that they lived through Stalin’s terror as youths, and the Great Patriotic War as young adults. They had multiple common points of reference, which all made them politically cautious. They remembered the horrors of the past, and had understanding of the limitations and problems of the regime they served. Sure, they repeated the usual platitudes about the final victory of socialism, the supremacy of Marxist-Leninist thought, proletarian solidarity etc., but they didn’t take most of this seriously, and were wary of appointing younger cadres – after all, they, not sharing the common understanding and experience of the elders, not being humbled by terrible past events, and potentially being real believers or, alternatively, heretics, may end up enacting reforms that destroy the system, doing things that just don’t work out, being naïve idiots, or hotheaded, or just selling everything out to the enemy. This is just speculation on my part, admittedly – anyway, we know that the gerontocratic party leadership did eventually appoint a younger reformer of “merely” 54 years of age, when the economic and social crisis of the system became obvious.

In the US, the people in the highest political positions are mostly Boomers who lived through the political upheaval of the Johnson and Nixon years and the pre-1973 era of prosperity as young adults. (The Senate’s median age is above 65 years, and has been steadily rising for a while.) For them, these years, the good times, are basically a point of reference as a period of normalcy, and they remember the activities of revolutionary leftist movement as something to be avoided. And they are probably nostalgic for the Reagan/Clinton years. They will, of course, repeat platitudes about civil rights, restorative justice, empowering minorities, the future being female and whatnot, but they won’t tolerate anything that directly disturbs the peace of middle-class suburban normalcy, and won’t give power to true believers of social revolution. After all, they don’t want to rock the boat.

This reminds me of a different observation I’ve seen here from a Gen X-er (I can’t find the comment), namely that X-er voters are reluctant to vote fellow X-ers into political power, because there’s too high a chance that they’ll turn out to be dangerous radicals and true believers. So this isn’t a sentiment limited to just Boomers, probably.

All in all, it seems that in periods of political and economic uncertainty and stagnation, the elderly can remain in power easily, because people will want to stick with the Devil they know, and not risk future upheaval and collapse by giving power to politicians that are untried and untested.

There’s something to this, I think- the young are much more extreme in both directions than their elders- but the ‘where’s the dividing line?’ Aspect is possibly relevant and it’s less than universal. Like let’s take the turn to the right for young men; they’re disproportionately extremely moderate conservatives. On the other hand the leftward turn for young women seems genuinely left of ‘normal’ leftism.

Even my boomercon father notes regularly that ‘the old dinosaurs like Nancy pelosi are keeping the squad and AOC in check- apres lui, la deluge’. But at the same time, Jared Golden is influential within the democrats, is not currently undergoing fossilization while still alive, and is fairly moderate and normal. For some reason the weirdos are the younger people in a position to take over when our current leadership inevitably dies even in the presence of relatively normal ones.

Populism vs donor class politics.

A lot of younger Americans think health care is too expensive and has to become substantially cheaper. A lot of young people aren't enthusiastic about forever wars. A lot of young people think housing costs are unsustainable. A lot of young people would be skeptical of NSA spying. These issues cut across the left/right divide. Both a rightwinger and a leftwinger can agree that wall street is becoming parasitical and is sucking money out of the real economy. The boomer elite believe in the system, the younger party members see the system as broken and want to change it.

The situation is a bit like the situation in France in the 1780s. Older members of the elite believed in the system, a lot of young people didn't. That doesn't mean the youngsters agreed at all on how the situation was to be fixed.

This sounds correct to me, as I'm a younger right-winger and those are points of agreement for me with the left wing. I think with health care, with social order, with institutional trust, with dating and relationships, I think young lefties and righties both see the same problems. They just often disagree profoundly on how to fix them.

Though I do wonder how much the NSA weighs on your average zoomer normie, who seems to treat spying by the government and corporations as a fact of nature because they've grown up surrounded by it.

I strongly agree with your point and this is something that I've been thinking about for a while. That said I think I go a bit further - I think Left/right as a meaningful political divide is going to either go away or simply transform into pro/anti regime/establishment, because neither of them can offer anything which actually helps people deal with the problems they're facing in their daily lives. Trump is just the early foreshadowing of that realignment.

C.f. The Republican Party is Doomed by @TracingWoodgrains.

No, it's mostly a bunch of weird situations and specific political moments.

In 2028, yes, if Trump doesn't win in 2024 is alive and out of prison (or maybe if he is in prison), he'll run again.

Otherwise, on the GOP side, you'll have a bunch of normal-aged politicians like DeSantis, Noem, Kim Reynolds, Stefanik, Abbott, Vance, on the GOP side who are all normal politicians ages.

Same thing on the DNC side - Kamala, Whitmer, Shaprio, Walz, Newsom, AOC.

Again, like or don't like these people, but they're all normal politicians ages. Same thing with the House & Senate leadership. Jefferies & Mike Johnson are normal political ages. Schumer & McConnell will be both are on their way out in the next 2-4 years.

Putting aside Trump, outside of him, I'll bet you a Trading Spaces dollar both nominees are under 70.

And yet all the presidential nominees were old White farts in 2016 and 2020 as well. Writing off at least three presidential elections as a bunch of weird situations and specific political moments is a bit of a stretch. Especially in a society where celebrating racial diversity, sexual equality etc. has pretty much been sort of a state ideology for a long time.

Yes, this past decade or so has been that very specific political moment I'm talking about. By 2028, it'll be over, outside of Trump.

If Hillary had done a little better on Super Tuesday in '08, maybe she's the nominee, picks Obama, and either she loses in 2012 in Romney and Obama comes back to win in 2016 or she's a two-term incumbent, Obama's the obvious nominee, and so on.

Why are you assuming this "political moment" will be over by 2028? Is there any long-term trend suggesting that the presidential nominees then will not be old White men?

we know that the gerontocratic party leadership did eventually appoint a younger reformer of “merely” 54 years of age, when the economic and social crisis of the system became obvious.

I feel like this narrative is very forced.

First, the fact that the USSR was already actively headed towards an economic and social crisis before Gorbachev is not exactly a glowing endorsement of the abilities of the gerontocracy to balance their decades of experience with the modern needs of their country.

Second, isn't the main lesson of the old USSR that totalitarianism and the destruction of markets was awful? Gorbachev may have rocked the boat, but it's hard to imagine that more experience of his friends and family going to gulags and and dying of starvation would have increased his tolerance for totalitarianism or command economies. I admit you could argue that glasnost reflects Gorbachev drinking the kool aid, but increasing transparency and allowing government criticism could just as easily be argued to be Western influences.

Third, the fact that Republicans also have several key, very old politicians suggests that any woke/left-only explanations are, at best, incomplete.

Of course it's no endorsement. The gerontocracy inherited a system with structural problems, but they didn't rock the boat because they didn't believe that liberal reforms would work i.e. would preserve the political regime. Which they indeed didn't.

Neoreactionary internet denizen Jim has an old post where he coined the term "generational loss of hypocrisy", and I wish it was used more widely. His given example sucks, which is probably why. I'll try to convey some other examples without waging the culture war or consensus building, and feedback is welcome if I fall short:

  • As described in your post, where Soviet politicians give lip service to things because they're expected to, and the newer generation of politicians believe them sincerely.
  • Jim's example is people expressing shock that a female prison guard would aid the escape of male prisoners she was sleeping with. He claims "everyone knew women were like this". Personally, I find the leap from "women like bad boys" to "women will break their bad boys out of prison" too large, and that's why I'm sad that there isn't a better defense of the concept somewhere.
  • Trends of work and play preferences for men and women. Boys and girls play differently (paywall bypass), but after a generation of trying to remove the stigma of boys playing with dolls, Damore got fired for his memo. Set aside the arguments of the actual culture war issues and look at the "generational loss of hypocrisy": The belief that "boys shouldn't play with dolls" is very dated, and its believers are mostly in retirement homes now. While the Baby Boomers will (broadly) approve of letting children play with whatever toy they want, they also (broadly) believe that there are gendered preferences, and going against those is abnormal. They just don't say that last part out loud. By the time we're to Generation X, there's significant support for equity as defined by the social justice movement, and expressing the unsaid beliefs of the Baby Boomers creates a hostile work environment to the point where you will be fired.
  • Some climate change scientists and activists present short timelines for catastrophic destruction. There's a history of extreme claims from environmentalists since, for example, Earth getting destroyed after whales go extinct gets more donations and support than statistics, charts, and threats of "loss of biodiversity" that most people just won't internalize. People in power pay climate change lip service and make a donation, but generally don't behave as if the world actually is going to suffer these catastrophic effects any time soon. Buying houses at sea-level is an example of this hypocrisy. Greta Thunberg took the proclamations at face value and is upset that people in power aren't backing up their talk with action. Criticisms of AOC's Green New Deal include plenty in the category of "You're taking climate change too seriously": if the more catastrophic predictions are correct then it would make sense to take significant economic loss now in order to prevent it.
  • Police/prison reform. Though I'm not very knowledgeable on the history of these movements, I think a lot of the older generation knows that some people are just anti-social criminals who shouldn't be free (related study), but the newer members of the movements has been pushing for the actual abolition of prisons and police.

Yes, that's basically the main thing I was trying to get at, at least as far as the US political class and the Brahmin class is concerned - admittedly whatever parallels with the USSR are to be found here aren't that clear-cut in my opinion.*

Jim's example is people expressing shock that a female prison guard would aid the escape of male prisoners she was sleeping with. He claims "everyone knew women were like this". Personally, I find the leap from "women like bad boys" to "women will break their bad boys out of prison" too large, and that's why I'm sad that there isn't a better defense of the concept somewhere.

I'm not a regular reader of Jim and not that familiar with his views, so I won't try defending them, but I would point out that his fundamental argument does still stand in this case. That is, the ruling class in bygone days all "politely pretended women were not like this", but they also put all sorts of social, legal, religious etc. mechanisms in effect to curb women's opportunities to be like this, so that no naive man ever realized that they are like this. One of the decisions this entailed was not permitting women to serve as guards in men's prisons, because duh, not all of them will end up helping some prisoners escape due to sexual attraction, but some of them will. Those mechanisms are long dismantled by now, but the polite pretension still lingers on, which is why there are prisoners successfully escaping with the help of their sex partner female guards.

In basically the same way, I'm sure the ideology of feminism, women's liberation and gender equality used to be propagated and continued for decades mostly by powerful men who, by today's feminist standards, were objectively sexists, rapists and phonies. But this state of affairs was never going to last; eventually the true believers gain power.

Other than this, I agree with your points.

*Gorbachev and his supporters were, I guess, true believers as well in the sense that they all grew up in late-stage socialism (heh), and thought it's stable and mature enough for it to be reformable and to be able to evolve.

A bit of heat generated by Trump dubbing Nikki Haley "Nimbra", a butchering of her Indian birth name:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4420434-trump-on-mocking-haleys-birth-name-its-just-something-that-came/

I'm not sure who the media controversy is aimed at. His base is absolutely going to love it, the normal Repubs have no choice but to vote for him, and his enemies can't hate him more than they already do.

I predict if her numbers continue to climb, he's gonna mention her daughter's married to a black guy. Way too tempting for a guy like Trump.

On that, a surprising number of the establishment Republicans have kids married to black people. Haley, McCain, Boehner, etc. What's with that?

  • -11

I predict if her numbers continue to climb, he's gonna mention her daughter's married to a black guy. Way too tempting for a guy like Trump.

I'll absolutely take the opposite on that bet. When has Trump ever implied this kind of animus toward black Americans?

I'll also take a bet on Nikki's numbers "continuing to rise" if one's available (she'll lose New Hampshire and have to concede).

When has Trump ever implied this kind of animus toward black Americans?

In 1973, in 1989, in 1992, and very often in between and since then?

I have to sometimes remind myself the most people didn't grow up in New York, and didn't have Trump as a looming political and cultural figure in their life for many decades before he showed up on The Apprentice or a ballot.

When you ask questions like that, it just strikes me as ignorance, of the type anyone who grew up with Trump in their local news on a regular basis would be baffled by. Yes, he has a long and well-documented history from before he started making campaign speeches. Yes, a legacy of racism, both structural and verbal, has been a part of that history since the very beginning.

  • -24

Those three links are two stories. One of them is about some people at a Trump company who discriminated against a black guy one time. The other is about a long-disputed case from the 1970s (!) in which Trump never admitted guilt, and claimed he was not the only party sued. A reporter from the Washington Post is brandished to offer his interpretation of events as a fact-check. By this logic, since Biden said some racist remarks in the 70s, I predict he'll say the N-word live on TV. Maybe while wearing a sombrero and kissing Nick Fuentes.

When you say things like that, it just strikes me as stupidity. I think you have to be seriously illiterate to read the room and think Trump is about to attack someone's daughter for marrying a black man. I think that's hilarious.

guesswho is a long-term progressive cultural warrior, and this level of evidence is extremely typical of him.

On most forums, if you're a bad actor waging the culture war, it's probably a decent strategy to post a bunch of links like this that are ridiculous non-sequiturs. Most people are too lazy to follow them and have the (usually reasonable) assumption that what's said in them is being accurately represented. Fortunately, I think The Motte is better than that. Looking forward to guesswho's inevitable (re-)permabanning. We need good leftist posters, but he's not one.

I believe the semi-official position once upon a time was 'better a bad leftist poster than no leftist poster,' or something along the lines as a balance-of-ideology argument.

Leftist affirmative action was explicit policy at some point. I don’t think it’s been discussed recently, and I can assure you it’s not defining our relationship with guesswho.

This is one of those "you don't hate journalists enough, you think you do but you don't" moments for me honestly. I sometimes forget that I have to retroactively apply my hate for journalism into the past, and this is a good reminder. Journalism as a whole really never was much better, it was just harder to see how bad they were. This is regarding the 1992 article of course.

Guess who is Darwin from the old site.

Between this and your cheap shots elsewhere, you’re generating more heat than light. Take a day to cool off.

As for @Dean and @Rambler: yes, we know. Please refrain from attacks based on reputation. If you think someone is acting in bad faith, report it.

The awareness is for the members, not the moderators. The moderators are aware of Darwin's years of bad faith polemics and cheap shots, just as they are aware he will continue to continue them again after repeat offense whatever double or triple warning it is after triple or quadruple digit reports by now.

It's other posters who need to be aware of Darwin's well-worn character to best avoid engaging and responding in ways that provoke moderator punishments against them, as has more than occasionally happened in the last. Darwin is one of the classic cases of evaporative cooling, where bad-faith actors who tend to get more people who engaged with them riled and moderated than they themselves do. Per the failure state, the best way to mitigate the heat by such people is to warn others to not engage, and why, so they do not engage and get emotional in the face of bad faith.

The most succinct warning is what was given: guesswho aka Darwin is a progressive who is here to wage the culture war, and the level of quality has been characteristic.

Copy that.

I feel like this is a good example of the two-screens thing. Not because of the real estate cases or any specific evidence, but because of how this action gels with one’s mental model of Trump.

My gut instinct was that yeah, an off-the-cuff mention of race is the exact sort of remark trump is known for. Nothing derogatory—he’s not going to get caught with a Martha Stewart hot mic. Just his usual rambling on a subject which happens to meander past his opponent’s family.

On the other hand, if one is very used to hearing accusations of dog whistling, this probably comes across as the same sort of attack, and is easy to dismiss. Trump has definitely avoided showing that animus.

I think you’re right on Haley, too.

A lot of Trump's remarks exist in this casual blase dual-screen world where each side parses them differently. I don't think Trump just said anything racist or meant anything racist. I understand why someone primed to see things that way, or operating on a different definiton of racism, would disagree.

However, in this case, I think predicting Trump will attack Nikki's daughter for marrying a black man is wildly off-base. That's not some ambiguous remark that cuts across different ideas of what constitutes racism. That's suggestijg Trump just believes black men are inferior and it's risable to date them. Where would that even come from?

I’m saying the Trump skeptical screen doesn’t require him to believe/say that. He could just “mention her daughter’s married to a black man,” no commentary, no animosity.

He could say “lovely family” and Trump haters would take it as a dog whistle, proof of seething racism, a personal threat. Some subset of racists would also take it as a dog whistle, and chortle about how their guy Notices these things and obviously that means he cares for their cause in particular. Both of these groups would be reading too much into it.

The important thing is that might-be-controversy is kind of a hallmark of his campaign. Every time he opened his mouth, it got interpreted in three different ways. Does he hate veterans, or just McCain? Is he a misogynist, or was it all locker room talk? He’s a living Rorschach blot, and he’s very good at finding those situations. That’s why I found it plausible that he would make Haley’s son-in-law newsworthy without ever saying an explicit word about him.

I don’t see trump mentioning or taking notice of that- he’s going to ramble on about her infidelity, but anti-black racism has never been a hobby horse of his.

On that, a surprising number of the establishment Republicans have kids married to black people. Haley, McCain, Boehner, etc. What's with that?

Those people happened to find that a black person was the right person for them to marry. Why the heck would there be anything else?

I predict if her numbers continue to climb, he's gonna mention her daughter's married to a black guy. Way too tempting for a guy like Trump.

I think it's very unlikely he will do this, simply because neither Trump nor most of his supporters care about this. I think you are making the same mistake as the media by assuming "Nimra" is a racist dogwhistle. It's not, it's serving a different set of purposes:

  1. It calls attention to the fact that she doesn't use her real name, which makes her seem fake and insecure.

  2. Like all Trump nicknames, it's a power play. If you can give someone a nickname and make it stick, it reveals a kind of power you have over them. And I think it's clear that Haley could not do the same to Trump in reverse -- all prior attempts at nicknames (Drumpf, Cheeto, etc.) have failed to stick.

all prior attempts at nicknames (Drumpf, Cheeto, etc.) have failed to stick.

Yeah, it is interesting. I think it’s that most attempts (which, to be fair, often did stick amongst Democrats; you still see plenty of Drumpf/Cheeto mentions in Reddit and Facebook/IG comments) on Trump weren’t really insults, just kind of babyish name stuff. ‘Crooked Hillary’ at least kind of implies why you don’t like her, ‘Cheeto’ doesn’t.

I think if I was an opposing politician and had to pick some kind of insult for Trump it would just be calling him “fatty” or something. Just go ultra-low, “shut up fatty” in the debates tier. People might laugh, who knows? The second you go from “moron” to “orange moron” you become le epic cheeto cringe etc.

Look, Fat

Natural hilarity overshadowed by Trump’s, but still a regularly entertaining fellow.

I think if I was an opposing politician and had to pick some kind of insult for Trump it would just be calling him “fatty” or something. Just go ultra-low, “shut up fatty” in the debates tier. People might laugh, who knows? The second you go from “moron” to “orange moron” you become le epic cheeto cringe etc.

I would go for "Deadbeat Don". Four bankruptcies and all that. "Deadbeat Donnie" if I was taller than him.

The problem is that most Americans are fat.

(which, to be fair, often did stick amongst Democrats; you still see plenty of Drumpf/Cheeto mentions in Reddit and Facebook/IG comments)

It's like saying "DEMONcrats" or "RepubliKKKans". People who say such things, unironically, show they have such bad taste they cannot be taken seriously. People who say "Drumpf" or "Cheeto" or "Mango Mussolini" look ridiculous. This doesn't happen with names that do stick, to name a few: "The Iron Lady," "Slick Willie," "Dubya," "Governor Moonbeam," "Tricky Dick," "Old Hickory," "Honest Abe," "Landslide Lyndon," "Papa Doc," "BoJo," "The Gipper".

Consider the following comparison: "Moscow Mitch"; "Cocaine Mitch". Both of those names are in use, but only one has "stuck". The other makes the speaker sound like a hack. I need hardly say which.

Trump himself is pretty good at this. His epithets stick. It helps that he comes up with so many of them and most of them aren't very good. But consider: "Little Adam Schiff," "Sleepy Joe," "Little Marco," "Rocket Man," "Pocahontas," "Ron DeSanctimonious". "Lyin' Ted" was has never gone away. "Low Energy Jeb" was so powerful it effectively ended Jeb's political career. "Crooked Hillary," however cornball and unserious it is, worked.

Trump himself is pretty good at this. His epithets stick

Because Trump is willing to repeat them ad nauseum as a supposedly serious candidate. He has zero shame. Democrats and Haley fail for the same reason: they're in the wrong genre.

They try for gravitas and authority - "when they go low"...- instead of just being funny and hammering the joke in. It's Head of State, not House of Cards.

I get your point. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine any Democrat pol would’ve been able to make “Drumpf” stick no matter how many times he repeated it.

"Drumpf" has the additional constraint that it's not as good as any of Trump's bangers in terms of playground insult succinctness and is pretty weird for the pro-migrant Democrats to try to make happen.

It doesn’t stick because they came directly from comedy TV. It’s not organic it’s something that they heard on TV and repeated. Drumpf came directly from Last Week Tonight and is the last name that the Trump family had from immigration to America from Germany. It’s not only uncreative but it’s astroturfed.

It's not really funny, the only insult in it is that it vaguely sounds a little like 'Dumb' (but not much).

I've often thought Trump could have ended the primary months ago and cornered the Zoomer vote by decisively calling DeSantis "No Rizz Ron".

In all serious DeSadness would've been way better than DeSanctimonious, that was one of his weakest yet.

Rule 1 of fighting nationalists - don’t let them become proxies for their supporters. Lots of Americans are fat, lots of them have bad tans.

Nicola Sturgeon, erstwhile head of the Scottish Nationalist Party, withered away very quickly when it became known that she was embezzling donated funds. Attacking her for being too left-wing, too vague on the details of separation, or anti-English did nothing, because so are her supporters.

Likewise, Boris Johnson collapsed because he lied and went to parties during lockdown. For a populace which considers fairness and playing by the rules one of its defining traits, that immediately re designated him from “one of us” to “other”.

Rule 1 of fighting nationalists - don’t let them become proxies for their supporters. Lots of Americans are fat, lots of them have bad tans.

Exactly. You can't call him "fatty" because that's endearing and relatable to many Americans. You have to call him "gold toilet" or "Epstein island" or something. Something that makes him seem out of touch and elitist.

On that, a surprising number of the establishment Republicans have kids married to black people. Haley, McCain, Boehner, etc. What's with that?

I mean, more or less than 13% of all establishment Republican kids?

That would be higher than average because people tend to marry intra-race at a higher rate than the population mix.

The percentage of white Americans with a black spouse is surely much less than 13%.

Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, was born in South Carolina as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has always gone by her middle name, “Nikki.”

The Hill liked this line so much they copied it verbatim from their last article on this. But the article prior to that was different:

Haley, the former South Carolina governor, was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has always gone by her middle name, “Nikki.”

It's a good thing The Hill is here to remind everyone of the racial angle, since Haley so stubbornly refuses to.

I’m rather surprised, if this was him trying to find an insult rather than him just screwing up her name, that he didn’t just go for the obvious “Nimrod Nikki Haley” which sounds very Trumpy.

He probably is vaguely aware that "Nimrod" is not an insult, or maybe he was going for that and misremembered the word.

Trump is too well versed in Greek mythology to make such a low brow reference.

Nimrod is probably the biblical name for Sargon of Akkad and has nothing to do with Greek mythology.

Yeah nimbra seems kind of weak for Trump, it sounds like he flubbed the line even. And nimrod would have been great. I think any appearance of hostility between them is just campaigning - Haley isn't going to be president and wants in on the administration and Trump may or may not want her back, but he knows she's a good politician and wants her on side.

He's called her "Nimrada" before. It's clever, but not actually effective, and didn't stick, which is why nobody remembers it.

No bet on mentioning the daughter.

As for the marriage rate, a lot of prominent Republicans are from the South. There are a lot more black people in the South. Case closed?

a lot of prominent Republicans are from the South

I would've thought that would be anti-correlated with likelihood to intermarry.

Not really- there's not a lot of evidence that post-1990 Southern Whites are any more racist than Northerners, and historically Southern racism has been less concerned about maintaining distance and more concerned with the hierarchy anyways.

At least if this graphic is to be believed, the Deep South has pretty low intermarriage rates.

On the other hand, I'm not even sure the premise that an exceptional number of GOP figures have black in-laws is correct.

On that, a surprising number of the establishment Republicans have kids married to black people. Haley, McCain, Boehner, etc. What's with that?

Because they're not Aryan race warriors. Nor are other normie republicans.

Operation Poseidon Archer

Reported by CNN:

The United States has named the ongoing operation to target Houthi assets in Yemen “Operation Poseidon Archer,” according to two US officials.

The named operation suggests a more organized, formal and potentially long-term approach to the operations in Yemen, where the US has been hitting Houthi infrastructure as the Iran-backed rebel group has vowed to keep targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

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.

Israel was well on the way to coming to an understanding with its neighbors prior to 10/7.

The role of the global hegemon here, if we're really talking about 'just do whatever creates stability' would be take the population of Palestine, break it up into families, and scatter them around the globe, then decapitate the regime in Tehran and hand the reins over to a transitional government and leave. The Middle East would calm down very quickly.

then decapitate the regime in Tehran and hand the reins over to a transitional government and leave.

What keeps the replacement government from rather quickly becoming just as hostile as the current government?

Dunno, but Iran has had several waves of very large scale anti-regime protests. I think you could prevent something exactly like the Mullahs taking back over if you just hand the government over to the right people. Iran isn't really like Iraq, it's a more developed place, even with the sanctions.

The current government of Iran has a very deep organization; just beheading it won't do. As for the protests, they're probably astroturfed Western-backed events anyway.

I guess it's a selected sample, but they seem very popular among the recent Iranian immigrants that I know, and they report widespread support back home.

That doesn't matter, it's impossible to prove that a particular movement is not astroturfed. False consciousness arguments are in full effect.

As for the protests, they're probably astroturfed Western-backed events anyway.

Do you have any source for that or did you just make it up? The government wouldn't need to be so draconian if it really thought it had broad support for it's policies. The Islamist faction gained power through a coup and quickly suppressed it's rivals who helped it gain power.

If Western governments had the reach to mobilize the failed protest movements Iran has had over the last decade, we'd have just overthrown the Guardian council and been done with it.

Setting up a few people to protest and then be suppressed by the regime is a far lesser problem than actually overthrowing the regime.

'just do whatever creates stability'

decapitate the regime in Tehran

hand the reins over to a transitional government and leave

I didn't know John Bolton was on this website. You want to invade a mountainous country of 80 million that's spent the last 20-30 years preparing for just this scenario, armed to the teeth with missiles and SAMs. You want to do this after we tried exactly this twice in two of its smaller, weaker neighbours and failed abysmally. It'll tar the opposition to the Iranian govt as foreign collaborators and traitors. You want to give China and Russia the perfect opportunity to act on their own fronts, now that we're even more distracted and bogged down. Just imagine how much military aid they'll give Iran! You want to stir up Shia fervour against the West, ignite a conflict right next to the straits of Hormuz. It'll inevitably draw in Iran's allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. The whole region will be up in flames. You want to test just how far Iran's nuclear program has gotten, whether they can rustle up a few dirty bombs. And at the same time you want to scatter Palestinians all around the world, presumably in our countries, just as we're attacking and blowing up their sponsors and friends - suicide bombings galore!

WHY??? Why, after 20 years of these disastrous interventions do people still think 'our error was not attacking stronger opponents'? We've conclusively shown that we have no clue about the 'hand the reigns over to a transitional govt and leave', we can't manage it, it doesn't work and it turns into a quagmire. People don't like it when you attack their country, this is a universal tendency. Nothing could make the Iranian government more popular than a US invasion. Iraqis rallied around Saddam Hussein of all people when we invaded Iraq, the Iraqi army fought hard, albeit without a hope of success. They rallied around Iranian militias, Sunni militias, everything except liberal democracy since that's the ideology of the invader.

Who said anything about invading?

Kill the Guardian Council, the President, the top layer or two of the cabinet and the IRG, and tell the people who were trying to overthrow the government because of the overreach of the morality police that they're in charge now and leave the place to its own devices.

Seriously, OP talked about stabilizing the Middle East. The Oil Princes just want to make money, the military in Egypt wants more or less the same, the Turks just want to be able to play regional hegemon, and the Israelis just wanna feel like they won't all be killed for letting their guard down. It's the Iranian government that throws a wrench into the works. Get rid of them and break the back of the IRG and there's no longer going to be anyone who cares enough to spend time destabilizing other countries (and the Arab world will be all too happy to quietly wash their hands of the Palestinians).

and tell the people who were trying to overthrow the government because of the overreach of the morality police that they're in charge now and leave the place to its own devices.

And then the rest of the IRG overthrows (and kills) them the second you're out the door, and after their leadership struggle we end up with basically the same government in Iran. Maybe hating the US a little bit more, but who could tell?

Then add a few layers of IRG command structure to the kill list.

"A few layers" effectively means "half the country". That's the problem with Hamas, for that matter; if the population supports something strongly enough the only way to deal with them is to go full Carthage where you either kill or enslave everyone (effectively, banning their culture), raze every city, and salt the earth for good measure.

88 million Parthians is a lot of Parthians.

The IRG is a few hundred thousand personnel. If 'a few layers' was more than a couple of thousand people I would be shocked.

break it up into families

This would be a terrible idea. The palestinians are a segmentary lineage society and to break them up into families would just be building clans wherever they get dumped.

You have to separate the families from one another and dump them all mixed up in whatever unfortunate place is going to receive them. The crime rate in Myanmar or the Congo isn't any of our concern.

If you break them up into conjugal family units, you can even get some cultural change going.

You're being far too nice here from the perspective of an actual global hegemon with no ethical concerns. If you're talking about "whatever creates stability" then the Israelis are going to have to go too - they can either get wiped out and replaced by whatever ethnicity runs the global hegemon, or they can get forcibly mixed with arab populations in order to completely remove the possibility of this ancient tribal conflict starting back up again.

Just to clarify, I'm not actually suggesting this as a course of action.

The point is that the Israelis aren't actually a source of instability in the region, except in terms of their relationship with the Palestinians. Get rid of the latter and you've solved the problem. Get rid of the former and you've still got a problem because they're a radicalized Islamist population which hates all of their neighbors.

They are actually still a source of instability in the region due to their contentious relations with the other arab states, and the current state of affairs involves large sums of money being given to their neighbours in order to stop them from attacking Israel. Get rid of the Palestinians and you solve nothing - you give the entire Islamic world a causus belli against Israel and then they do things like attack international shipping vessels to disrupt the region.

And as for keeping the Israelis... ever read much Roman history? The Israelites made absolutely terrible imperial/hegemonic subjects to the point that they brag about it - an efficient hegemon would just exterminate them for good and resettle the territory.

The other Arab states couldn't care less about Israel. The Baathists were the only ones who ever actually disliked Israel at higher echelons of government and Saddam is dead and Assad has got bigger problems to worry about. The monarchies occasionally make anti-Israeli noises for their populaces but otherwise don't give a damn, Egypt has been sucking on the American military funding teet in exchange for peaceful relations with Israel for so long that the mask-for-money has become just standard Egyptian policy, and other Arab states are too distant to actually be bothered.

Can you explain to me how a 2-state solution would solve Israel’s issues in the Middle East. This all started because Palestine attacked Israel. Israel then counter-attacked. Iran wanted to mess with the Saudis and armed Houthis to attack Americans.

To be honest this war doesn’t even have anything to do with the Jews. It’s a Saudi-Iran proxy war.

And if we do a 2-state solution and Israel isn’t allowed to fight back what is your proposal?

I feel like you are not speaking clearly here since you completely ignored where should the Jews go if they aren’t allowed to defend themselves.

This all started because Palestine attacked Israel. Israel then counter-attacked. Iran wanted to mess with the Saudis and armed Houthis to attack Americans.

That is a really gross oversimplification. Under a real two-state solution enforced by external parties, there would be no illegal blockades and settlements and Israeli expansionism. Yes, I do think that would go a long way in cooling tensions and setting the groundwork for long-term peace.

And if Hamas still attacked Israel you would agree Europe can (and preferebly you useful) would help to remove Hamas completely if they attacked again?

I feel like you should have skin in the game if you proposed this peace plan.

Also, you completely avoided the fact that the Houthis are being funded by Iran who don’t give two shits about Israel but are trying to hurt Arab interests. If Biden went to Iran tomorrow and told them No military weapons will be sold to the Saudis for the next ten years the Houthi issue would disappear tomorrow.

For that deal the Iranians would kick the Palestinians out of Israel for us and defeat the Houthis.

I don't understand why this framing would have more validity than the one that says that this all started because they colonized/set up shop in Palestine, then there were multiple iterations of attacks and counterattacks and we are here. In the same vein,

To be honest this war doesn’t even have anything to do with the Jews. It’s a Saudi-Iran proxy war.

seems rather far-fetched (what percentage of combatants do you figure would say that they are doing this for the sake of the Saudis/Iranians?). This war has been going on since before the current Iranian political system existed.

And if we do a 2-state solution and Israel isn’t allowed to fight back what is your proposal?

Who is saying Israel isn't allowed to fight back in that scenario? If there is a two-state solution, and then the Palestinians cross the border to attack, then they should by all means fight back, and I'm even okay with us Europeans contributing material military help to make this happen. Conversely, though, if in that scenario some settlers with military backing still cross the border into the Palestinian state, then I think the same should apply for the other side.

The people who make the decision are Iran/Saudi.

The people who fire the guns are not. But Houthis can’t do anything without their Persian masters.

Why are the Houthis relevant to evaluating a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine? As I understand, they used the general atmosphere of chaos and anger to take a handful of potshots at Israel and adjacent shipping, but had negligible agency in bringing about that general atmosphere to begin with. Without the mutual slaughter preoccupying everyone, chances are they would not have stuck their necks out here.

Houthis are the only ones that have an effect on the globe and America.

If we are just talking might makes right Israel could just kick out the Palestinians and we solve the problem. As is this entire debate is the Israelis need to play nice with the Palestinians or America gets Arabs acting up in these other places. Since, Palestine can’t play nice with Israel I have no problem with Israelis removing them. Israel doesn’t need US guns to brute force the matter.

What leverage does the EU have? We could cut off aid to the palestinians, I’m all for it, but somehow I doubt that will sway israel. We could stop trading with israel, but that seems expensive for a conflict which does not threaten our security (unlike a certain other conflict). Assuaging the islamic world’s perpetual religious anger isn’t worth a euro cent, frankly. It’s not like the region was a bastion of stability before this, the pirates were just on the other side of the gulf of aden.

Part of me wonders how much more stable the Middle East would have been if the UN had made Jerusalem an international zone/international city like was proposed back in 1947. The proposal had overwhelming support from the international community at the time.

Being an "international city" sure worked out well for Danzig and Istanbul...

Bit of a false equivalence, because Danzig and Istanbul were specifically made international cities as a punitive post-war measure against Germany and Turkey respectively. A better analogy would be the various international and concession cities of the 19th century, which were generally pretty successful until the wave of anti-colonialism in the 20th century made them politically unpalatable. But even this is an imperfect analogy.

Let's say Israel agrees to a two-state solution but Palestine just keeps attacking Israel over and over. What is Israel entitled to do in response? Do they just keep retaliating tit-for-tat? Are they allowed to invade, depose the government, but then must leave just to return when the new government does the same thing? Do they just have to improve their defences?

Say the EU forces a two-state solution which includes EU administration of Jerusalem and the resettlement of all Jewish settlers out of the West Bank. Is a Palestinian state going to attack Tel-Aviv? Or Jewish locals in EU-administered Jerusalem? Then it's the EU's problem to solve that. That's a better arrangement than America being forced to fight all the enemies through the Middle East of a rogue Israel which it doesn't control.

This does assume a remilitarization of Europe which is already underway due to Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Is a Palestinian state going to attack Tel-Aviv?

Why not? In your fantasy, the Palestinian position is better, and much closer to victory than they are today. We know to what extent Europeans will go to disarm Arabs and impose a peace. Europeans are not prepared to trade their lives for peace in Israel, and even if they were, then I don't see why they themselves don't become the "rogue state" destabilizing the Middle East. A European force that is willing to occupy and pacify Gaza/West Bank could very well be even more threatening to a power like Iran than the Jews are today. The devil you know and all that.

I don't even disagree that if lasting peace becomes a desirable goal, then Israel's right should have to come to terms with the reality of a two-state solution. It is possible the West could play a role in making this happen, but it does feel as if we are further from this fantasy than we were 20 years ago.

Israel's right should have to come to terms with the reality of a two-state solution

Or just do some good old fashioned ethnic cleansing. They're probably extremely cynical about the possibility of civilizing the Palestinians, understandably so.

Is a Palestinian state going to attack Tel-Aviv? Or Jewish locals in EU-administered Jerusalem? Then it's the EU's problem to solve that.

And how do they solve that?

That's a better arrangement than America being forced to fight all the enemies through the Middle East of a rogue Israel which it doesn't control.

The US isn't being forced to do anything. It's choosing to support Israel which is retaliating against Hamas. It can stop at any time if it doesn't like what Israel is doing.

I do blame Biden for enabling the status quo. It's going to destroy his legacy, particularly if things continue to escalate.

Is a Palestinian state going to attack Tel-Aviv?

Probably, after all the Gazans will still have their grievances and have tried to disrupt / violate peace negotiations before. They consider Tel Aviv / Jaffa their land.

Let them do whatever they like, with their own capabilities and let them deal with the consequences. We, the West, shouldn't be standing behind the Israeli military, supplying the bombs and shells they're using, bankrolling their operation, threatening anyone who attacks them. Once they start taking our aid, we become a participant.

Azerbaijan has a spat with Armenia? Not my problem, let them handle it.

We, the West, shouldn't be standing behind the Israeli military, supplying the bombs and shells they're using, bankrolling their operation, threatening anyone who attacks them.

Why not? If Israel is in the right, it only makes sense to help them.

Why not? If Israel is in the right, it only makes sense to help them.

Theyre in the right so they get extra billions on top of their regular billions? Why would that make sense, can you actually justify your claims? Does your justification generalize to other countries?

Those Americans who wish to are free to personally send their own money to Israel. I would like it if the rest of us, however, were not compelled to also send money to Israel.

Everyone claims to be in the right, everyone has their own 'facts'. Should we support Russia in the war against Ukraine because Ukraine tried to suppress Russian minorities and shelled ethnic Russians?

Should we uphold the One China Principle and give Taiwan to China, since it's part of China and we recognize the PRC as China?

Should we invade Russia to stop their imperial megalomania and genocidal war in Ukraine?

We should follow our strategic interests, not arbitrarily pick out moral justifications and dubious 'facts'. Those who are best at convincing you that they're the victims may not be in the right. Our interests are not served by propping up the Israeli military and angering hundreds of millions of Muslims (who control resources we need), encouraging anti-Western terrorism. Nor would they be served by aiding Palestine and pushing a nuclear power to the brink. We should do nothing.

First of all, those are very different situations. It's not true that if Israel is justified in attacking Palestine that those other causes are justifiable, nor is it necessarily wise for the US to get involved. Secondly, it's not true that if the US helps one country it has to help them all.

Well, are the Palestinians justified in attacking Israel?

One common tactic they have used is to declare territory, including privately-owned Palestinian land, as “state land.” The Israeli group Peace Now estimates that the Israeli government has designated about 1.4 million dunams of land, or about a quarter of the West Bank, as state land. The group has also found that more than 30 percent of the land used for settlements is acknowledged by the Israeli government as having been privately owned by Palestinians.

Israeli authorities have also made it virtually impossible in practice for Palestinians in Area C, the roughly 60 percent of the West Bank that the Oslo Accords placed under full Israeli control, as well as those in East Jerusalem, to obtain building permits. In Area C, for example, authorities approved less than 1.5 percent of applications by Palestinians to build between 2016 and 2018—21 in total—a figure 100 times smaller than the number of demolition orders it issued in the same period, according to official data. Israeli authorities have razed thousands of Palestinian properties in these areas for lacking a permit, leaving thousands of families displaced. By contrast, according to Peace Now, Israeli authorities began construction on more than 23,696 housing units between 2009 and 2020 in Israeli settlements in Area C. Transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population to an occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.

In addition, Israeli forces have regularly fired on Palestinian demonstrators and others who have approached fences separating Gaza and Israel in circumstances when they did not pose an imminent threat to life, killing 214 demonstrators in 2018 and 2019 alone and maiming thousands.

About 1,300 complaints of torture against Israeli authorities have been filed with Israel’s Justice Ministry between 2001 and June 2020, which have resulted in one criminal investigation and zero prosecutions.

While 80 percent of the Mountain Aquifer’s water recharge area lies beneath the West Bank,[304] Israel directly extracts about 90 percent of the water that is withdrawn from the aquifer annually, leaving Palestinians only the remaining 10 percent or so to exploit directly.[305] In monopolizing this shared resource, Israeli authorities sharply restrict the ability of Palestinians to directly exploit their own natural resources and render them dependent on Israel for their water supply. For decades, authorities have denied Palestinians permits to drill new wells, in particular in the most productive Western Aquifer basins, or to rehabilitate existing ones.

A report published by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the Palestinian Hydrology Group in 2011 said that the Barkan Industrial Area settlement, near Ariel, “is notorious for flushing its leftover chemical waste onto Salfit villages.” [359] The report further states that “this chemical waste is thought to include petrochemicals, metals and plastic” and notes that “heavy toxic metals are linked to an endless list of conditions, from diarrhoea to diabetes, hyperkeratosis, organ failure and cancer.”

The Palestinians have a bunch of complaints about being suppressed and undermined. If I were Israeli, no doubt I would agree that it was right for Israel to win, vae victis, they don't matter as much as we do. But I'm not Israeli. We, the Western world, are not getting anything out of this conflict, we're paying so that another nation can do imperialism.

We're talking about a hypothetical in which the Palestinians have their own state.

But the Palestinians are far more dependent on US and EU aid than the Israelis are. We are much more funding the terror campaigns against Israel than the military operation in Gaza.

No you're not - Biden sent $14 billion in military aid to Israel for this conflict alone, plus the baseline $3 billion in military aid annually. Palestinians don't get any military aid from the West, only a few hundred million annually in humanitarian aid.

From 2014 to 2020, U.N. agencies spent nearly $4.5 billion in Gaza, including $600 million in 2020 alone.

Since 1994, the United States has provided more than $5.2 billion in aid to Palestinians through USAID.

Over 6 years, the entire UN gave about 1.5 years of annual US military aid. The US sent about 1.7 years of Israeli military aid and tries hard to avoid it going to Palestinian war effort. If anything the aid serves more as a bribe to keep them from electing Hamas, they cut funding when that happened.

I propose complete non-interference, to cut aid to both sides.

Palestinians don't get any military aid from the West, only a few hundred million annually in humanitarian aid.

Without which the entire economy would collapse and they wouldn't be able to afford a single scrap of metal, let alone a bomb or weapon. Plus the international orgs that aid and abet Iranian resupplies. Its not magnitude alone that matters, its percentage. If we left Palestine 100% on a branch, they would have nothing.

Look, if you provide 14 billion in military aid to one side and a few hundreds of millions in civilian aid to the other side (openly talking about how you try to prevent it going to their military wing), you clearly support the former over the latter. This is absolutely basic logic. Every US politician will tell you that they love Israel and hate Hamas.

Who cares if Palestine has nothing? Who cares if the Israelis have to pay for their own bombs? Not my problem!

Who cares?

Probably because the US has a need for Israel in the Middle East as basically the best army in the region. Perhaps not 100% capable of paying for their own bombs but extremely capable at using those bombs to modern military standards.

Also, America is a Democracy and I would like to remind you American Jews pay a hugely disproportionate amount of US taxes and are almost certainly net payers to the US treasury far above whatever aid we give to Israel.

Israel may have the best army in the region - they're also enemies with the rest of the region and are so politically toxic they can't fight with any US force without causing more problems than they solve. That's why the US and Israel have never fought on the same side in a war, they're the worst ally anyone could have. All liability, no benefit.

The cost of US support for Israel is absolutely staggering. The Arab Oil Embargo in 1973 did immense harm to the US and world economy, a decade of high oil prices. Anti-Western terrorism - the first WTC bombing was solely motivated by anti-Israel sentiment. Osama Bin Laden was also heavily motivated by frustration regarding Palestinians. The Iraq half of the War on Terror was primarily about Israel, there are plenty of revealing quotes from generals and senators admitting that Iraq posed no threat to America (as a glance at a map would show) but that it might threaten Israel. Israel naturally sent some fake intel about Iraqi WMDs as well, so the US would deal with their rival.

And then there's the billions spent every year on direct military aid. American Jews would need to pay a hell of a lot of taxes to pay for all of this, if we take that tax-influence model. And it doesn't hold - whites are even bigger net taxpayers than Jews, yet this didn't stop US sanctions on apartheid South Africa. They didn't even recognize Rhodesia.

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Probably because the US has a need for Israel in the Middle East as basically the best army in the region. Perhaps not 100% capable of paying for their own bombs but extremely capable at using those bombs to modern military standards.

This seems like a bit of circular reasoning. The US support Israel because it has the best army in the region. Why does US need to support Israel? Because the Arabs (generally) hate the US and the US need geopolitical support in the region. Why do the Arabs hate the US? Because the US supports Israel.

Additionally, the US actually gets very little from Israel. Israel fragrantly acts against US interests and ignores US calls all the time. Even the most milquetoast request from the US to Israel to maybe tone it down just a bit is just blatantly ignored. Israel demands the US intervene on its behalf all the time but rarely reciprocates. Prior to post-WW2, the Americans were actually seen very favorably by the Arabs.

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I disagree. 14 billion looks like a bigger number because the spending is asymmetric. Iron dome is expensive suicide vests and rockets are cheap. Defense against this kind of aggression is easily 100x more expensive, probably closer to the 10000x multiplier. So its not clear that Israel is coming out ahead.

Who cares if Palestine has nothing?

Israel. If they have nothing, Israel needs nothing. But we give them a lot, and they divert much of it to waging terror campaigns.

Israel. If they have nothing, Israel needs nothing. But we give them a lot, and they divert much of it to waging terror campaigns.

My interpretation of this sentence was that Israel needs nothing, but we give them (Israel) a lot and they use much of it to wage terror campaigns. I agree with this but I'm not sure that's what you were actually saying.

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If you dont care for why the Israelis pay for their own bombs, why do you even care about imposing a solution? I understand not wnating to give military weapons, but the Israelis can likely just succeed without that.

The Arab states dont care enough about Palestine to intervene. They dont cut off trade, they dont oil embargo the West. Why care about what Israel does enough to impose a solution, like by embargoing trade?

The Arabs get angry with us when we provide aid to Israel, just like the Israelis get angry with Iran when Iran aids Hamas/Hezbollah. It makes it much harder to work with Arab governments and it angers Arabs, who can do us harm.

Why did Osama Bin Laden hate the West? In large part he resented that we were helping Israel dominate Palestine.

According to Michael Scheuer, who directed the CIA's intelligence unit on al Qaeda and its founder, the young bin Laden was for the most part gentle and well behaved, but "an exception to Osama's well-mannered, nonconfrontational demeanor was his support for the Palestinians and negative attitude towards the United States and Israel." After September 11, bin Laden's mother told an interviewer that "in his teenage years he was the same nice kid . . . but he was more concerned, sad, and frustrated about the situation in Palestine in particular, and the Arab and Muslim world in general.

Bin Laden also condemned the United States on several occasions prior to September 11 for its support of Israel against the Palestinians and called for jihad against America on this basis. According to Benjamin and Simon, the "most prominent grievance" in bin Laden's 1996 fatwa (titled "Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places") is "bin Laden's hallmark: the 'Zionist-Crusader alliance.'" Bin Laden refers explicitly to Muslim blood being spilled "in Palestine and Iraq" and blames it all on the "American-Israeli conspiracy."

Bin Laden replied, "We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal, and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous, and criminal, whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Land of the Prophet's Night Journey [Palestine]. And we believe the US is directly responsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq."

In the first meeting between Atta, the mission leader, and bin Laden in late 1999, the initial plans called for hitting the U.S. Capitol because it was "the perceived source of U.S. policy in support of Israel.

I have no interest in an Israel-Palestine solution, just like I don't know or care about who should govern South Sudan, Somalia or Myanmar. Let them handle their own affairs. What I want is for the West not to be attached to this dead weight that causes us problems in so many fields. Wouldn't it be great if we enjoyed the support of the Middle Eastern public, or at least got along with them like China does?

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Except your example also demonstrates that "let them do it on their own" is BS. The Azeris had Iranian, Turkish, and Israeli backing...the Armenians "fought on their own" and got stomped. Little countries will always cozy up to big countries, and whoever doesn't have a patron had best find one quick or risk domination by their mobbed-up neighbors.

And so Turkey, Israel and Iran take on partial responsibility for Azerbaijani expansion, the pros and the cons. Turkey gets to suppress Armenia, they make a useful oil-rich, nearby ally. In contrast, we would gain nothing from helping Armenia, so we don't do it.

Likewise we take on partial responsibility for Israeli expansion/suppression of Palestinians, the pros (all of which are taken by Israel) and the cons (which filter through to us). We get Muslim anger and terrorism from our support of Israel, higher oil prices, enhanced Chinese influence in MENA. The Israelis never provide any useful assistance, they send us faulty intelligence about WMDs in Iraq and Iran (considering they've been shrieking about the Iranian nuclear program for 30 years). We get nothing from helping them, only pain, so we should stop it.

In contrast, we would gain nothing from helping Armenia, so we don't do it.

Armenia is just lower on our list of priorities, not totally irrelevant. Ethnic Armenians are a relevant interest group in the US and blocking Turkish expansion and coaxing away Russian allies are their own end goal, which is part of why American troops were training Armenian soldiers. It's likely we would have done something if Azerbaijan actually invaded Armenia rather than just a piece of territory we formally recognize as Azeri, even despite our multiple commitments. When Azerbaijan blockaded Armenia after the first NK war we aggressively sanctioned them even though American multinationals were drilling oil in country, so there's certainly precedent for us being willing to retaliate against them at personal cost.

Iran supports Armenia, not Azerbaijan.

I don't know that Iran supports Armenia so much as it opposes Azerbaijan, because it has its own Azeri population that Azerbaijani nationalists would love to anschluss.

They're awkwardly trying to maintain good relations with both countries these days, but they have recognized Artsakh as Azeri clay for several years now.

You are correct, thank you.

I don't see how this goes any way other than "Palestinian state is created. Palestinian state builds up military force. Palestinian state attacks Israel". Once that happens, most likely the Palestinian state is defeated and occupied and we're back where we started. The other, far less likely, alternatives are that the Palestinian state wins and genocides any Jews who don't flee, or the Samson option.

Poseidon Archer is nothing if not a wishy-washy middle ground. It's the sort of operation that exists to satisfy the impulse to do something, without having the ability to solve- or resolve- the instigating factor(s).

The Houthis endure far more- and far worse- bombardment from the Saudis than the US operation is going to deliver... and the fact that the US is now dropping bombs on Yemen without Saudi help, after compromising relations with the Saudis in no small part over disapproval and pressuring the Saudis to stop, is stark irony. This is precisely the wrong sort of target for a long-range bombardment campaign to try and resolve, if the goal is to render the Houthis unable to continue attacking the naval route... which is already seeing mass and systemic divergences around Africa. That naval traffic flow isn't coming back unless the threat is resolved, and convoys alone won't be enough.

That's not to say that the attempt is all a waste. The Brits at least have done some successful test engagements with novel anti-drone ship systems which may evolve into cost-effective ship defense norms, and the real target of using things like stealth bombers isn't the Houthis the bombs are dropped on, but the Iranians who are having it demonstrated how easily the Americans could drop on them. There's an argument to be made on regional deterrence, and that in part goes back to the analysis that October 7 was an Iranian effort to start a broader intifada, and that it largely failed and everything since has been trying to cope and compensate for not getting the effects they anticipated.

But all the same, it's not going to stop the Houthis any time soon- the public-facing problem- and it's so easy for it to be framed as a failure regardless of outcome that it's hard to see it being counted as a success. Even if no ships are damaged, basic cost-comparisons of the Houthis attack drones/missiles versus ship defense systems can make some awkward cost-benefit propaganda to frame it as a net loss. If ships are damaged, it can be humiliation, and if critical casualties occured, it'd be very easy to see it spinning into a scandal (for putting the sailors in danger, for ineffective air campaigns, for not going after the broadly acknowledged source i.e. Iran). It's an invitation to mission creed, waste, and/or easy adversary propaganda.

At best, maybe it's a politically beneficial stall tactic that lasts for the next few months, while Israel continues to cut through Gaza. But even that may give it too much credit.

The US and EU

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.

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.

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.

I very much disagree with your assessment as to what is destabilizing the region. If not for Israel some other excuse would be made. Stabilization in the Mid East is probably synonymous with aggressive depopulation and/or heavy handed colonialism.

There are stable countries in the middle east. There have been long peacefull periods. Bombing them relentlessly, engaging in regime change and undermining stable regimes has been a disaster. Libya was stable for decades before the neocons decided to have a war and flood Europe with migrants. Syria could have been as stable as Jordan or the UAE if it hadn't been destroyed.

What has created stable states in the middle east is not intervening in them.

Libya was stable for decades before the neocons decided to have a war and flood Europe with migrants. Syria could have been as stable as Jordan or the UAE if it hadn't been destroyed.

You also blame Israel for Syria? Syria had a civil war because Al Assad was shitty at managing his state. The Syrian economy didnt fundamentally improve the lives of its citizens. I remember reading that climate change forced Syrian farmers into cities in Syria. Food prices increased a lot, which led to the Syrian 2011 protests that became a national rebellion.

The Middle East is unstable because its leaders and elites have been shit at managing their states. This leads to major rebellions and wars. This is why there was a rebellion against Gaddafi in Libya and Al Assad in Syria. The French went into Libya because of a mix of morality and wanting to maintain power over their former colonial holdings. Not neocon interventionism on behalf of Israel.

Sanctions, Israeli bombing of Libya and Israeli support for jihadist groups did not help at all. Israel has clearly seen Syria as an enemy and has done its best for decades to undermine and destroy Syria.

Why do these rebels end up with air support and expensive weapons? Who trains these militias? How did thousands of mercenaries show up in Libya and why was Libya bombed to pieces from the sky? The countries in the middle east that haven't been bombed are more stable, more peaceful, don't have massive outflows of refugees and are far better to live in than the ones destroyed by interventionists who attend AIPAC conferences.

Jordan, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi is stable. Iran is unusually stable for a country that has fought a major war and has had a neighboring country invaded three times in the past decades.

Sanctions, Israeli bombing of Libya and Israeli support for jihadist groups did not help at all. Israel has clearly seen Syria as an enemy and has done its best for decades to undermine and destroy Syria.

When did Israel bomb Libya? Your making stuff up. Sanctions on Libya were because of French neocolonial and Western morality, Same with Syria.

Israel did also not train Jihadist groups in Syria. It at most, provided medical support for anyone who came to the border. Which included Syrian civilians. The West backing the Free Syrian Army was because of Western morality and some love for Western democracy. Not Israel.

Why do these rebels end up with air support and expensive weapons? Who trains these militias? How did thousands of mercenaries show up in Libya and why was Libya bombed to pieces from the sky?

You really believe Israel is the answer for all of this? Dont you see you have a ton of regional actors like the Gulf States, Iran, Algeria, Egypt or even far away regional actors like France or Russia? They are the ones who provide weapons and training. Look at Sudan currently and the RSF vs the Sudanese govt. The RSF is gaining support militarily from the UAE. While the Sudanese govt gains support from Saudi Arabia. Its a proxy conflict between them. Nothing to do with Israel.

Your looking for Israel to be the answer for why the Middle East is unstable. Its not. The Middle East is unstable because of the Middle Easts characteristics. The West projecting their values on the Middle East doesnt help. Its not the Israelis making Libya rise up against Gaddafi nor against Assad. Its not the Israelis that make Jihadist groups or political Islam attractive. Its more likely extreme religiosity and poverty.

More seriously, I think it is true that one of the worst aspects of the American era of Western hegemony is the informal and indirect nature of empire. It is much cheaper than the French, British or (arguably) Spanish approaches, but it’s much more destabilized and mostly much worse for the ruled populations. Yes, Bukele aside, McKinsey under contract from the State Department could do a better job of running most of Latin America than the locals. BCG and 20,000 American mercenaries in charge of Haiti would save countless lives. It would be both humane and reasonable for America to assume control over its colonies. Hand the treasury and tax collection of every country that was a Western colony in 1950 to Citigroup + enforcers and they would do a better job than the average corps of corrupt third-world officials. America has the right to rule Israel, just as it has the right to rule the EU. It is a shame that, in practice, it rules neither (it took over a decade, a war and a little sabotage to convince the Germans to drop their pipeline, after all).

And there’s an aesthetic aspect, too. The Union flag once flew in Vancouver, in Belize, in Accra, in Cape Town, in Cairo, in Delhi, in Hong Kong, in Auckland, in New York for that matter. The American flag does not fly in Seoul, not in Tokyo, not in Riyadh, nor in Bogota or Mexico City, not even in London. It’s sad. Painting the world blue, forcing the other nations to sing your song, bow to your flag, put pictures of your leader in their public buildings, isn’t that what it’s all about? McDonald’s and Starbucks in Jakarta and Nairobi can never fully replace that.

You personally happen to care about the aesthetics of aristocracy and conquest probably much more than the average person does. Conquering a country, building a big statue of yourself in the middle of its capital, and sending your sons over to be its governors is something that, for the average person, has not seemed romantic outside of historical fiction in what, probably 80 years or so now? We live in an age in which the underdog is celebrated, the plucky rebel who blows up the Death Star, and it does not really matter whether the Empire or the Rebellion are better at giving the galaxy on average a decent quality of life. That is why, for example, in America both the left and the right paint themselves as morally righteous underdogs fighting against authoritarian oppression. There is just not much appetite among the general public for a proud "might makes right" ideology.

This is a Chesterson's Fence situation. We decided that it was Very Enlightened to not care about things like aesthetics, building giant statues, or verbalizing imperial ambitions in polite company (you are supposed to couch your imperial ambitions in terms of Saving Democracy and Spreading Freedom, much more progressive and enlightened). But without those things, it's pretty damn hard to maintain an empire. Take something like Demographic change. Is it possible for us to let go of the grug-brain attachment to flags and statues without committing demographic suicide and losing the empire? Apparently not.

I think it is true that one of the worst aspects of the American era of Western hegemony is the informal and indirect nature of empire.

Much like the common wisdom about political positions, under no circumstances should any country explicitly seeking a world empire ever be permitted to form one.

The problem about the American empire is that it doesn't actually work without Americans (or at least, the Americans of the past). And Americans are a real special lot simply because the founding of that country was, for the most part, one massive selection effect for those with genes expressing strong slave morality (something its geography and massive amount of natural resources also enabled).

"Slave" morality is a bit of misnomer (Nietzsche had great branding, but the branding really distracts from the underlying ideas) - it's more a statement that the ultimate good in the world comes from what you can do, and not who you are. It's the counterargument to "if you have freedom, what you get is seven zillion witches and three principled libertarians", and it's an attempt to solve the Iron Law of Bureaucracy in favor of the people who are actually providing the value; it's also why civil rights legislation and feminism [have had to] use that language to get anywhere, and wouldn't morph into the naked group supremacy movements they are today until they had stripped every branch of the "protection XYZ would make it easier for us to serve you" tree. ("Who you are" is inherently toxic to a society because it comes at the expense of "what you can do".)

but it’s much more destabilized and mostly much worse for the ruled populations.

But it's much better for the Americans themselves, which is what actually matters when it comes to keeping the empire operating and dominant. And the longer you can keep slave morality as the law of the land, the longer you can keep the parasites (an emergent property of any society) from strangling the golden goose that is the cultural milieu of "people actually want to serve others, serving is the highest good, and going the extra mile is godliness".

But the one thing slave morality can't solve for is "it's for your own good". You see this in the societal zeitgeist everywhere- a lot of rebelling against the people who believe they know better, and these people are never portrayed in a positive light.

Now sure, there's some master morality in America- this is why the term "Puritans" means what it means to American ears (though it wouldn't matter if they were just slightly more strict than the other three nations- not that it was, but still), and combined with the above, why that word being used is almost always meant as an insult. But it's never really been dominant- partially due to even its master-moralizers (for the most part traditionalists, but sometimes even the progressives of their day) having slave morality as a religion that could be appealed to, and partially because economic development in the US has almost never been zero-sum.

When those things are no longer true, or as they become less salient, you can expect American-specific parasitism to be pushed harder in every Western state. You can see the ones that are closest to the American orbit flying the New American flag in their government offices- typically a rainbow flag of some sort simply named "Progress"- and espousing the related social policies that the parasitic class in American power centers prefers.

When those things are no longer true, or as they become less salient, you can expect American-specific parasitism to be pushed harder in every Western state. You can see the ones that are closest to the American orbit flying the New American flag in their government offices- typically a rainbow flag of some sort simply named "Progress"- and espousing the related social policies that the parasitic class in American power centers prefers.

I don't think this is completely true, and if anything a lot of 20th and early 21st century progressivism was imported into America rather than exported to Europe, Canada and other vassals. The US wasn't ahead of other Western countries in feminism or even racial politics, Fanon etc, Said taught at Columbia but he wasn't really a product of the metropole.

Having other countries side with you, use your symbols and laws, and aspire to your culture by choice is certainly a more impressive measure of your global stature than only being able to make them do that by force.

Go to a political rally in Seoul and I assure you that you will indeed see countless American flags; go to Mexico City, or any City in Mexico, and you can see their numerous statues of Abraham Lincoln. American flags fly in Taiwan, in Argentina, in Brazil, in countries no one would even think of, and there are statues of Reagan, Clinton, Lincoln, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, even irrelevant Presidents like Rutherford Hayes, in countries across the world, in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, even in the lands of our mortal enemies like China and Russia.

Countries we've fought brutal wars with like Vietnam and the Philippines still have incredibly favorable impressions of us and line up for American trade and security guarantees out of choice rather than at the point of a gun; there are West Africans who will frown when they think you're British and break out into a grin when they see you're American, Liberians who will proudly tell you they are in fact American as well, 750 military bases across nearly half the countries in the world where American soldiers walk armed and freely by request of the host nation, countless constitutions and legal systems inspired by the American foundational blueprint, police forces the world over taught by Americans, a world learning English and watching American media and crossing oceans and deserts to come be part of the United States.

Don't pine for empire, we already have it - the footprint of America covers every corner of the world.

"Reintroducing the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem" will not actually bring stability to the reason. It would, honestly, probably be worse(does Sixtus Enrique de Borbon Parma start another Lebanese civil war trying to retake the crown of the crusader states? He's certainly radical enough to try and there's probably enough disaffected Maronites). The alternative to Israeli domination of the southern Levant is domination by an Iranian proxy Islamic kleptocracy which commits ethnic cleansing at the drop of a hat and probably reintroduces slavery while trying to shut down the Suez canal every few weeks. Local geopolitics being what it is, they'll be at war with their neighbors all the time even if one of their neighbors is Israel.

We live in the real world. French and Italian troops storming Tel Aviv to bring racial equality to the middle east will fail and just turn into another failed state.

If your position is practical, rather than moral, wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper to stop sending aid to Gaza and Yemen, and let the populations there starve to death? It would be much more effective than bombing weapons caches, and nobody seems to care about starving Yemenis anyway.

Why would it be practical to genocide millions of people and piss off the entire middle east? Israel provides little benefit at an enormous cost. The sensible solution is to dump Israel and befriend the arab states.

Their is no evidence any of the Arab states care at all about Palestinians or Yemenis. They definitely don’t want those people in their borders.

Pakistan kicked millions of Afganistans out. It would seem to be a stretch to say any of those countries care about a Palestinian.

Pakistan and Pashto groups have been in conflict for a long time. Palestinians are often the same ethnic group as a large portion of the surrounding countries. They clearly don't want many of the holiest sites in Islam occupied by jews.

Why would Christians and Jews want many of the holiest sites in Christendom and Judaism occupied by Muslims?

A lot of Palestinians are christians and if anything the muslims see Jesus and the biblical stories as a part of their religion. Most importantly, it means 7 million Palestinians stay in Palestine and we don't get another massive neocon refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep. Europe and the middle east both benefit from stable middle eastern regimes. Israel wants destabilize the region.

Europe and the middle east both benefit from stable middle eastern regimes.

As far as I know, historically speaking, the only times the region has been 'stable' was when it was ruled by a single empire. Similar to Iraq's Sunni-Shia fighting only being tamped down while Saddam was in power.

So this seems like an argument for European re-establishing the region as a colony.

Like, do you apply the same standards to the Balkans region of Europe itself? Would we benefit if control of the entire region to one of the local powers? Would Europe benefit from stable Eastern European regimes?

Compare Libya under Gadaffi and after Israel-supporters wrecked it. Iran, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are fairly stable states because there hasn't been intervention. Egypt is stable and peaceful. There is no reason why Palestine can't function as well as Egypt.

So this seems like an argument for European re-establishing the region as a colony.'

It is the opposite. Every time the neocons send troops to the middle east we get flooded with migrants. The best policy for the west is to get out of the middle east, support stable regimes and ending support for Israel.

I generally support smaller states. However, in south eastern Europe bigger alliances are needed to defend Europe's borders from invasions from the middle east.

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Maybe 30 years ago. Saudis already signed off on Jewish ownership. Your statement is no longer correct.

What do you mean "why"? If you want to stop the Houthis from blocking trade routes, surely their disappearance would achieve that goal. Dead people cannot initiate hostilities.

You're welcome to try to "befriend the arab states", though you'll have to choose which ones. Currently you're on the Saudi-Sunni axis, which is one of the reasons the Iranian don't like you. Rest assured that your support for Israel is a minor issue at best.

Chinese ships sail through just fine. They have no problem because they haven't been killing large numbers of people in the middle east. Trillions have been wasted on warmongering in the middle east and the result is that Chinese ships are safer in the red sea.

Yes, that's pretty much what I said. the Iranian proxy groups do not target China, since they're on good terms with each other. The US, however, has chosen to side with the Saudi-Sunni side (in general). At the same time, you're also feeding your friends' enemies - literally sending aid to the Houthis and Gazans at the same time your allies are fighting them. You expect to not be hated when acting in such a two-faced manner? You're playing both sides, prolonging every conflict for as long as possible, and now everyone hates you. Just FYI, the Israeli public isn't very happy with you either. What else do you expect?

That's not practical, because it discredits America and makes enemies of a billion Arabs. Even Joe Biden enabling the Israelis in their current operation is a huge blow to the perceived legitimacy of America in the region. Israel is not and has never been worth all the animosity it has earned the United States from the Arab world. Practical considerations means it's time's up on Israel failing to secure peace after many decades and enormous leeway and support.

There's only half a billion Arabs.

Maybe he was including future Arabs too?

That's not practical, because it discredits America and makes enemies of a billion Arabs.

If the Iraq war and invasion (and eventual desertion) of Afghanistan didn't achieve this, not sure why Palestine is the red line.

I don't think you've got a strong argument for why "not sending endless amounts of aid" leads to making enemies of "a billion Arabs," most of whom have zero capability to even hurt U.S. interests.

I find the whole premise actively silly, to be honest.

That's not practical, because it discredits America and makes enemies of a billion Arabs.

Or to put it in another metric - 400 nukes.

I'm not aware of any Arab countries with nukes. Are you thinking of Pakistan?

No. I was referring to that it takes 400 nukes to make 0 arabs hate us from 1 billion

Killing a billion people would presumably make you several additional enemies among the people you didn't kill.

Ah, I see. I'm not an expert on nukes, but I'd think you'd need more than that to get them down to 0. Also, if you want to color only within the lines - i.e. not hit Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan etc. - you'd need to add some other, more accurate ordinance, just to get those corners filled out.

It does not discredit the US one bit if it stops sending aid to Yemen. Note how the crisis in Yemen is caused by their Arab brethren, not by any western entity. In truth, the way that the US currently handles the situation - on the one hand arming the Saudis, and on the other hand feeding the Houthis - is causing you to look as two-faced as possible. Same goes for the Israeli-Arab situation. You're not winning any friends by playing both sides and prolonging wars, no matter what humanitarian justifications you may think up.

You also say that "Israel [...] has never been worth all the animosity it has earned the United States from the Arab world." To counter a "never" claim, one example is enough, thus I present you with "have doughnut". Western powers are well-known for being fickle and untrustworthy, only concerned with what your allies can supply you in the short term, but you don't have to play up to stereotype by totally forgetting the past. Maybe a more mild statement is called for.

Israel as a destabilising force is overblown. The Middle East is unstable because of poverty, despotism, the smartphone revolution, the resource curse, and good old fashioned regional rivalry. Today, Few Arabs with real power actually give a fuck about Palestinians, and of those that do, even fewer give enough of a fuck that they are willing to upset the apple cart over it. Normalisation of relations between Israel and its historical antagonists was well underway before 10/7, and will be well underway again in 18 months or so.

Once you get past the racial animus, all that Israel is doing is using military force to deal with an uppity subpopulation, something Arabic states think is totally reasonable.

As others said, I do not think Israel is particularly destabilizing force in the region compared to all the alternatives. Historically you have all types of conflict in the Middle-East including religious and sectarian strife, ethnic strife, ideological strife between monarchies and republics and socialist revolutionary states as well as tribal and all other types of conflicts. If anything, Israel has quite cordial relations with some of its neighbors like Egypt or Saudi Arabia, which is obviously the reason why somebody sees an ally of my enemy as his enemy.

In fact the civil war in Yemen is a proof that Israel does not have much to do with instability in the region as it is generally viewed as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran where Saudis are actually propped up by western aid in this conflict. So now what - should US and EU depose the Saudi dynasty and establish the country as some direct protectorate to ensure flow of oil and secure Red See and straight of Hormuz?

Israel is a nuclear armed state. You want a special military operation against a nuclear armed state to enforce what is likely an existential crisis for the nuclear armed nation? Israel differs from Iran and Pakistan in that its a dense nation. Its population centers are close to everywhere. You cant do limited attacks on it without attacking an Israeli population center. Thats a redline for the Israelis. They might genuinely choose to detonate a thermonuclear bomb over Europe in response. And Europe would deserve it.

Im going to answer some concerns and questions pre-emptively. The Israeli are mostly self sufficient when it comes to weapons. They do rely on outside parties for munitions, aircraft(as in piloted aircraft), and precision guided bombs. That ignores the Israeli ability to build bomb and munition making factories. They also have access to F35s and could reverse engineer them. In the 80s, the Israelis engineered an F15 competitor called the Lavi. An F15 was the major US air fighter jet btw, before it was replaced by the F35. Without US help, the Lavi aircraft showed the Israelis have the manpower and technical expertise to make advanced war weapons on their own. It was mainly a cost issue that they decided against, and it was only by a margin of one vote that it was decided against. After the fall of the Soviet Union, over a million Soviet Jews immigrated to Israel. This was a highly educated population with lots of technical expertise. Even before that happened, they had enough of it to survive.

Many people really dont look at the 50s-80s of Israeli history. They were precarious times, but the state of Israel survived under much worse circumstances. They have only grown richer and more established.

Lets say you cut off all military weaponry to Israel, including US aid. They already spend 5% of gdp on military. You likely only raise it to 7%, with no US aid. The Israelis have the technical expertise to manufacture the basics of war.

Lets say you start a trade embargo.

How far do you take it? Are you going to starve the Israelis to death? That would kill more Palestinians than israelis...because ding ding ding, Palestinians are controlled by Israel.

Okay, lets say not that. You only hit the Israeli pocketbook. You might convince them. Emphasis on might.

All this goes out the door the instance a Palestinian state starts shooting rockets at Israel. Which I find likely. Lets say a Palestinian state shoots rockets, what happens? A Palestinian state is positioned near Israeli population centers. Most Gaza rockets only affected the Israeli South. Not Tel Aviv or the Center. That wouldnt be the case with a Palestinian state, because of how the West Bank is positioned. If a Palestinian state fails to establish peace, I find it likely the Israelis expel the Palestinians. The Israelis will get sick of rockets over their heads, eventually.

Israel expelling the Palestinians leads to a regional war. A war the middle east would not win. All Israel has to do is survive. Israel has the superior military in the Levant. It has nukes. The conventional militaries of the Arab states are made for keeping the populations in line, although I suspect they will do better than even the Israelis predict. Israel would win, because at the very worst, they would use tactical nukes on advancing Arab militaries. The Arab militaries that also do show prowess, are mainly guerilla fighters in populated territories. Not conventional forces. If their population centers were threatned, they would use nukes on Arab population centers like Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Damascus. They might even target Riyadh in Saudi Arab in the Gulf if they feel malicious.

So Israel wins. It is now a heavily sanctioned pariah state like North Korea. Except unlike North Korea, they have decades of built up infrastructure and technical expertise. The Israeli population will also be much more motivated, because its their survival at stake. Not some stupid regime.

Israel likely wins a middle east war. What you have next, is waves of millions of refugees on Europes borders. Not just Palestinians. Lebanese, Jordanians, Syrians. I could see Israel taking the East side of the Jordan and expelling any all Jordanians to give a buffer. Jordan likely collapses because of internal instability caused by too many Palestinian refugees.

All youve done is destroy the Middle East, and send hordes of refugees to Europe. You probably havent even destroyed Israel, just punched it. This also ignores the one unknown. Russia. If push came to shove, and Israel was already isolated, I could see the Russians supporting Israel in trade. A state that could become a Russian proxy to threaten Europe? Russia would love that.

Frankly the worlds obsession with the Israeli Palestinian conflict is absurd and more trouble than its worth. Fine boycott arms if you want to feel morally superior, but all you do is make the situation worse just to sniff farts up your own ass.

Why Europe even needs an opinion to care about this conflict, that they need to impose a solution, is whats ridiculous? The Arab states barely care about the Palestinians as they have shown. Not enough to militarily intervene. Not enough to stop trading oil. Why should Europe do anything only to make a contained situation worse. that they have nothing riding on?

Israel is a nuclear armed state. You want a special military operation against a nuclear armed state to enforce what is likely an existential crisis for the nuclear armed nation?

A two-state solution enforced by the EU is not an existential crisis for Israel.

I don't think the Israelis are going to nuke their Plan B. A decent portion of dual citizens have already left. If they are willing to nuke Europe for forcing a two-state solution onto them, by force if necessary, then that already says everything we need to know about our Greatest Ally.

But it wouldn't get that far, the Israelis would fold like a cheap suit if the EU plausibly threatened to enforce a two-state solution with the threat of force, with the backing of the majority of the world community. The international community brought Israel into this world, if Israel is going to throw nukes to stop a two-state solution then that is a big problem for the entire world which needs to be solved.

Thats a redline for the Israelis. They might genuinely choose to detonate a thermonuclear bomb over Europe in response. And Europe would deserve it.

History rhymes, that would end poorly for Israel, but it wouldn't come to that.

Israel expelling the Palestinians leads to a regional war.

You realize Israel has already, again, brought the region to the brink of war? The purpose of enforcing a two-state solution onto Israel with international administration of Jerusalem would be to prevent the likelihood of a regional war which Western support of Israel is currently enabling under the status quo.

Why Europe even needs an opinion to care about this conflict, that they need to impose a solution, is whats ridiculous?

You just explained why a regional war is a catastrophe for European and American interests. I've already explained that these military operations in the Middle East are a huge burden of resources and credibility, now we are fighting Yemen in a very expensive engagement that is probably going to last quite a while. It's our problem, it's not just Israel's problem.

Why should Europe do anything only to make a contained situation worse.

I do not know what you are smoking if you call the situation "contained." It is not contained. Israel has failed for decades to contain the situation. They aren't capable of it. It's time for the international community to intervene.

don't think the Israelis are going to nuke their Plan B. A decent portion of dual citizens have already left. If they are willing to nuke Europe for forcing a two-state solution onto them, by force if necessary, then that already says everything we need to know about our Greatest Ally.

Most Israeli jews dont have a second passport. Theyre for the most part, born and bred in Israel. If anything, some have a passport to Russia. Thats about it.

If they are willing to nuke Europe for forcing a two-state solution onto them, by force if necessary, then that already says everything we need to know about our Greatest Ally.

You propose military invading a nation and then that nation not responding? Is this not ridiculous bad faith? If you invade a nuclear armed nation, why are you even remotely surprised in response? Europe would deserve a nuke or two if they were that stupid.

the Israelis would fold like a cheap suit if the EU plausibly threatened to enforce a two-state solution with the threat of force, with the backing of the majority of the world community. The international community brought Israel into this world, if Israel is going to throw nukes to stop a two-state solution then that is a big problem for the entire world which needs to be solved

The world didnt bring Israel into this world? What are you even on about? The British limited immigration to Palestine during the Holocaust. America embargoed Israel from 1948-1962, onlyproviding weapons sales when they also sold to Egypt. The British and Americans tried to limit arms going to the Israelis during the war of independence. It was the Soviet Union, France and Czechoslovakia that allowed arm sales to israel that helped the Israelis win. The israelis arent dependent on arms sales any longer.

History rhymes, that would end poorly for Israel, but it wouldn't come to that.

I mean....if Israel uses a nuke, it means they already made the rational calculation your going to destroy their survival. Why not use a nuke if thats the case?

The purpose of enforcing a two-state solution onto Israel with international administration of Jerusalem would be to prevent the likelihood of a regional war which Western support of Israel is currently enabling under the status quo.

And you would station European troops inside Palestine and Israel?

Europe cant even defend its borders, and you want it to manage a conflict in the middle east? Youd have 7-8 million angry Israeli Jews doing an insurgency, and possibly 5 million Palestinians, because they would not likely react to European forces being maintained there positvely.

You realize Israel has already, again, brought the region to the brink of war?

Yes...50 years ago. Not today. No one is going to war over Gaza or the West Bank. No one cares enough. Not Egypt. Not Jordan. Hezbollah is content lighting some rockets on fire at the Israeli north.

You just explained why a regional war is a catastrophe for European and American interests. I've already explained that these military operations in the Middle East are a huge burden of resources and credibility, now we are fighting Yemen in a very expensive engagement that is probably going to last quite a while. It's our problem, it's not just Israel's problem.

And Ive just explained why enforcing a solution just to make an even bigger mess for almost no gain seems ridiculous. There is no regional war going on for the West Bank and Gaza. Why do you propose a military solution to something that doesnt even matter to Europe? Why do you propose a solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict at all, when no one in the Middle East cares enough except for Iranian proxies which mainly focus on attacking Israel?

You also seem to think most of these military operations in the Middle East are for israels sake. They arent. Israel was neutral about the invasion of Iraq. No Netanyahu wasnt Prime Minister even though he was in favor during the time, Ariel Sharon was. Israel didnt care about Gaddafi in Libya. Houthis are being bombed because they attack all shipping going through the red sea, not just Israeli. Almost none of these military operations are for Israels sake. Israel fights alone usually, at most relying on foreign arm imports when necessary, and rely on domestic arms manufacturers when it can.

I do not know what you are smoking if you call the situation "contained." It is not contained. Israel has failed for decades to contain the situation. They aren't capable of it.

I mean they mostly have. The West Bank doesnt explode in violence. The only reason Gaza became such a handful was that Israel chose to leave it. Why pray tell, should Israel deoccupy the West Bank and Gaza when the history has shown that they are contained when Israel has military control, and the region doesnt ignite on fire without big political moves.

For someone who wants less problems for Europe, it seems very counter intuitive to desire a possible military action against Israel and enforce a failed Palestinian state, which would likely set up a regional war when there isnt one anyway.

From what it sounds like, you seem to think Israel is a weak little state that will fold at the drop of the hat. They arent. They are the Middle East's Prussia. A military with a state.

I mean....if Israel uses a nuke, it means they already made the rational calculation your going to destroy their survival. Why not use a nuke if thats the case? ...

From what it sounds like, you seem to think Israel is a weak little state that will fold at the drop of the hat. They arent. They are the Middle East's Prussia. A military with a state.

You are talking out of both sides of your mouth... Israel is this invincible Middle East Prussia, but then at the same time Israel's survival is threated by a Palestinian state. Which is it?

Forcing Israel to accept a two-state solution is not going to destroy Israel. It might destroy some expansionist ambitions fueled by fanatical belief in biblical prophecy. And that's a good thing, that has not been good for the region.

That's why Israel would capitulate. If the entire world is pressuring Israel to accept a two-state solutions, with EU peacekeepers to put down any troublemakers on either side to make it happen, there's no reason to humor the notion of Israel nuking Europe.

Israel was neutral about the invasion of Iraq.

This is a whole other debate. They publicly had one position, but privately they funneled bogus intelligence about WMDs to the White House, including claims like an Iraqi spy supplying a 9/11 hijacker with Anthrax while in Prague. Israel pushed this intelligence in October, just a month after the WTC and anthrax attacks.

For someone who wants less problems for Europe, it seems very counter intuitive to desire a possible military action against Israel and enforce a failed Palestinian state, which would likely set up a regional war when there isnt one anyway.

Because the US/EU has no control over Israel yet we are responsible for and impacted by what happens in the Middle East. When the Yemenis shut down shipping lanes, it's the problem of the United States. You've already explained why a regional war in the Middle East would be a catastrophe for Europe, so why do you keep asking why the US/EU cares what happens there?

If it were up to me, there would be a one-state solution with equal political rights between Israelis and Palestinians, and constitutional protections for any minority groups. But you would regard that as a bigger existential threat than a two-state solution. So the reality is you have no solutions, you are demanding we accept the status quo, or demanding we accept an ethnic cleansing of the region which will destroy our credibility and myths surrounding our own hegemony. The international community is getting tired of it, and yes they brought Israel into this world with a vote. That's the sort of origin story that gives the demands of the international community a lot of weight.

You are talking out of both sides of your mouth... Israel is this invincible Middle East Prussia, but then at the same time Israel's survival is threated by a Palestinian state. Which is it?

I have not been clear. A Palestinian state would not jeopardize the existence of Israel. However, when a Palestinian state fires rockets over Israeli population centers, you hit a red line for what the Israelis will be willing to take. There is only so much duress they will be willing to live under.

with EU peacekeepers to put down any troublemakers on either side to make it happen, there's no reason to humor the notion of Israel nuking Europe

You want the EU to project force out of Europe to make israel capitulate, when they cant even find the will to help Ukraine against Russia?

Because the US/EU has no control over Israel yet we are responsible for and impacted by what happens in the Middle East. When the Yemenis shut down shipping lanes, it's the problem of the United States. You've already explained why a regional war in the Middle East would be a catastrophe for Europe, so why do you keep asking why the US/EU cares what happens there?

A failed Palestinian state, would lead to a regional war. As it currently stands, the Houthis will end their stupid attacks on shipping once the Israeli war in Gaza ends. We would not be having this discussion, if Israel had just kept up its occupation of Gaza. There would be no war in Gaza, no massive civilian deaths. That is what is likely if a Palestinian state is made in the West Bank. Not a political solution or peace in anyway.

So the reality is you have no solutions, you are demanding we accept the status quo, or demanding we accept an ethnic cleansing of the region which will destroy our credibility and myths surrounding our own hegemony.

I say, yes accept the status quo. Why not accept the status quo of Israeli occupation? The current Gaza war is only because Israel left Gaza. If Israel hadnt left and ended the occupation, it would be all quiet on the Palestinian front.

I dont say accept ethnic cleansing. I dont want that. Im saying, a failed Palestinian state will resolve into ethnic cleansing. Notice, I mean failed. There is a possibility for success with a Palestinian state.

A successful Palestinian state will have to be at least 20 years down the line. Reform the PA. The PA is a corrupt govt, like very badly corrupt that siphons off most the aid given to it. Gradually deradicalize the population. Make economic incentives that intertwine the economies of Israel and Palestine.

An economic peace must come first, than a political peace. Once that is established, we can talk about a Palestinian state.

As I see it, an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank will just result in more fighting. Just like Gaza did. That will result in a regional war and more death and instability in the Middle East. Better for the occupation to continue than for chaos.

The international community is getting tired of it, and yes they brought Israel into this world with a vote. That's the sort of origin story that gives the demands of the international community a lot of weight.

The international community recognized Israel. They did not bring into existence. You can partially thank the Arab states for expelling their Jews for that. Without the million or so Mizrahi Jews from the Arab states, Israel would not have survived. The international community did not build up Israeli institutions, and for the most part, did not give the Israelis out of good will. The British and Americans embargoed the Israelis.

If it were up to me, there would be a one-state solution with equal political rights between Israelis and Palestinians, and constitutional protections for any minority groups.

Neither side even wants this. And not to mention, that a one state would look like Lebanon. A failed state run by either religious Zionist militias or Islamist militias. Add in nukes, and youve successfully destabilized the middle east for another several generations. Very divorced from the realities of wanting stability and peace.

That's why Israel would capitulate. If the entire world is pressuring Israel to accept a two-state solutions, with EU peacekeepers to put down any troublemakers on either side to make it happen, there's no reason to humor the notion of Israel nuking Europe.

I have to say, the very idea of lethargic, cowardly Europe trying to occupy Israel is about as unserious as it gets. Europeans don't even have the political will to defend their own back yard in Ukraine, let alone shed blood in the middle east. Besides, how do you suppose "EU peacekeepers [...] put down any troublemakers" such as Hamas, any better than Israel can? As in, technically, how? Your track record in fighting guerillas isn't very good.

Frankly the worlds obsession with the Israeli Palestinian conflict is absurd and more trouble than its worth.

I’ve been saying the same thing for a while. I don’t get the west’s obsession. People are marching in the streets of London flying PLO flags… why? It’s just another ethnic conflict in the middle-east, and a low stakes one at that. It’s baffling.

When you see grassroots, suspect astroturf. Someone's propagandizing, organizing, and funding those marches. You'll likely find a web of NGOs behind them, but maybe it won't be opaque enough to hide the (Middle Eastern) state funding.

Probably. I'd expect this to be more well-known, though, especially these days and in pro-Israeli circles. I think there's also a torrent of info and mis-info coming out of true-believers in the Palestinian cause - there are quite a lot of Muslims in the world where that can originate from. Still, I'd imagined the median person to be more apathetic than this.


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