2024 US Election: Page 112 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

2024 US Election

Mirth

awooga83 the Russian 'military' is a meat grinder and always has been. They've lost 300k men to a senseless war on their own border in the past 4 years. To put it into context, that's almost double the number of lives that the US has lost in all their military conquests since 1945. No other major country would dare to call that kind of loss of life as anything other than an utter failure - particularly within miles of their own border. In addition, they've also lost almost all their allied partners during the same time (except in the Sahel) - for a country that was regarded as the 2/3rd most significant military power in the world, it's been a huge downgrade.

Obviously the EU hawks are using the mood music to finally push for looser budgets after cuts since 1990 but if you dig a little deeper you can see it's essentially the European military industrial complex reasserting itself to capture spend after losing out to the US for 30 years rather than a war economy preparing for an existential crisis.

awooga83

Probably the least surprising admission to come out. So essentially US launched an illegal war as there was no evidence of a credible threat.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-tells-congress-no-sign-that-iran-was-going-attack-us-first-sources-say-2026-03-02/

JazzG

The world is changing, France trying to take the lead on this. Wonder if the Germans will be onboard....

Claudius

Thank you, Trump. In an era of advanced cyber hacking and ever more autonomous AI capabilities, I’m comforted that France is expanding its nuclear arsenal to create a more peaceful world

Gurgen

Time to buy more of that nuclear tech ETF

awooga83

Gurgen

As long as the Dow is up, everything is fine

Gazza M

the world's most bribed man seems to be struggling to please both his israeli and qatari benefactors

Burnwinter

Gazza M

Reckon it's nothing much to do with Trump except for the idiosyncratic way in which Trump speaks for the US in setting the boundaries of its alliance with Israel.

The US has a medium term plan to draw down its posture in the Middle East and pivot to the Pacific and China. Israel's regional belligerence and score-settling has been accelerated by this.

The medium term dynamic is that the US is drawing down, Israel's urgency committing genocide and crippling Iran is set by the US timeline, and Israel is trying to get as far as it can get and the US is telling it how far.

This commentary regarding Qatar reflects the growing relative stakes for the US of Qatar's eventual inclusion in the sort of "Gulfrael" GCC-Israel regional arrangement it's been trying to mediate under the banner of the Abraham Accords.

The future form of this arrangement is what's lining up against the medium term regional logic of the role China is taking on stabilising the IR in Iran, and covertly feeding the IR intel about US and Israeli military disposition, shipping lanes, etc.

We'll see the next step when Israel tries to switch from "crusading ethnostate" mode back to "good regional citizen" mode. At this stage it'll probably indict Netanyahu or ex-military officials, express contrition for excess deaths, demonstrate its capacity for good faith peace negotiations, etc.

Trump is a very unusual character but he lacks the individual clout (and the incentives) to divert these sorts of tectonic inter-imperial shifts. He plays the margins of changes he doesn't determine, seeking the benefits for his domestic reputation and sometimes big state-linked payoffs for his crony investors and businesses. It's how he's handled Ukraine as well.

The contingencies and risks of the situation are stuff like unanticipated resource bottlenecks, rapidly changing military technologies, and the sheer weight of the carnage and trauma that has been inflicted over decades.

awooga83

Gazza M yeah trump is a total fool he keeps trying to treat this like some boardroom power play and never owns responsibility. I have no doubt based on the briefing he knew this was happening and probably thought this will work to threaten them and then doesn't even have the guts to own it.

Guy is a total coward and fully unfit to be a president.

Gazza M

Burnwinter alot of what you say is true, but it imo exculpates trump as the only president that was drawn into a hot conflict with Iran. his predecessors, flawed as they were, resisted this particular middle eastern adventure because the consequences were foreseeably disastrous

Burnwinter

Gazza M it imo exculpates trump as the only president that was drawn into a hot conflict with Iran. his predecessors, flawed as they were, resisted this particular middle eastern adventure

True maybe, but we can say two things on top.

Firstly, Biden and Blinken went along with the genocide in Gaza and did nothing to stop it.

Secondly, any claim that there was a heavy pressure on prior administrations to go to war on Iran that Trump is only now buckling to, erases the conditions of the multipolar shift and belies the military adventures in Syria, Iraq, Libya etc of prior Democrat and Republican presidencies.

We can't definitely let Trump off the hook or put him on it, in the end.

To me the weight of discourse often goes against him, and blames him too much for trajectories that will keep on going after he's long gone. I reckon Trump gets on the social media megaphone on foreign affairs, and has even authorised stunts like the kidnapping of Maduro, exactly because the realpolitik cynics who surround Trump know his goose is cooked at the polls. He needs some sort of Hail Mary global incident to change that.

After Trump goes, it's pretty likely a Democrat President will end up claiming credit for some sort of "good regional citizen" turn by Israel. And that same President will still be presiding over a pivot to the Pacific, a quagmire in Ukraine, and so on …

awooga83

Blinken has been making this exact point, every president Biden and Obama have had Israel say the same thing we need to do this and we will just do it whatever but they both resisted that threat.

Mirth

awooga83 Your comment reminded me of this:

awooga83

Burnwinter Firstly, Biden and Blinken went along with the genocide in Gaza and did nothing to stop it.

I think that's fair but in their world view (whether you agree with it it's relevant to how they frame decisions) what happened in Gaza was a direct result of Israel being attacked so they saw it as defensive actions (again whether you share that perspective is immaterial because your trying to understand another person's process)

But Biden and Obama both said they would not support what they perceived as an aggressive action in Israel part of attacking Iran like this. Again for this purpose your subjective view isn't relevant if you think well there's no difference you have to understand another person's world view to understand that which requires what's normal for them and their baseline etc and the supporting evidence would be no such conflict of this nature with Iran was initiated under them.

I don't think trump agitates for this stuff he's just really easy to manipulate despite his talk and that's what's happend someone gets in his ear and he doesn't have the capability to critically analyse stuff and wants to appear tough and decisive but cannot think through what might happen.

Burnwinter

awooga83 But Biden and Obama both said they would not support what they perceived as an aggressive action in Israel part of attacking Iran like this.

The US has been non stop on lunatic foreign military adventures for this entire century. There was never much of a brake put on it by Obama or Biden, they just used different methods and rhetoric.

To me it's not in any way clear Trump's worse though the Ukraine, Venezuela and Greenland actions have rattled US allies according to their own accounts. And the danger of thinking Trump's worse is you start to imagine voting him out fixes it. It won't. US imperial decline might finally slow it down a bit in the Middle East though.

awooga83 what happened in Gaza was a direct result of Israel being attacked so they saw it as defensive actions (again whether you share that perspective is immaterial because your trying to understand another person's process)

I can't credit Israeli strategy understands or has understood its own process that way. Sure those are the sorts of things that will be said, and innocent people were killed on October 7.

awooga83

Burnwinter

The US has certainly been involved in plenty of foreign disasters but the lesson post Iraq at least until recently has been don't go down that road again. I don't say that the US is radically different just that trump is so easily manipulated and unable to have his own critical thought on this stuff is he can be railroaded much more easily into anything he's basically a total mug and whatever views you have about other leaders they had more independence then Trump that is a fact.

I think trump is worse because threatening NATO allies with annexation is something different, not seeing Russia as a threat to the world as well is really dangerous but the reality is it comes down to trump it's very easy to manipulate again in a way previous presidents weren't. He's just out of his depth in this space. The reason trump is worse is because he never considers longer term impacts and nuances which other presidents have been able to do and led them to consider some of these engagements more critically. Trump is impulsive and has no ability to think strategically that is a major flaw in a leader in this context.

The Israel perspective is probably different to the US due to the circumstances. The comment I was particularly addressing was Blinken saying they didn't support an attack in Iran like this and in their world view defending Israel they would support but if usual started something like this they would not. How ever you perceive that world view it is plausible for the Americans to hold that and the corroboration is that no such conflict with Iran as this occurred under those admins.

I'm sure Israel given repeated attempts to do this have a wholly different world view and have tried with every president to enact it.

Burnwinter

awooga83 The US has certainly been involved in plenty of foreign disasters but the lesson post Iraq at least until recently has been don't go down that road again.

They hung about fruitlessly in Afghanistan till 2020, triggered the FSA, the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS with the help of the Saudis in the ruins of the Iraqi border with Syria, fucked up horrendously in Libya, failed to check Israel's "mowing the grass" every few years, tried to stage a coup in Venezuela with Guiado, nudged Ukraine towards NATO despite decades of US foreign policy establishment opinion on the risks of that ... and I think they've roughly gotten their wish in Ukraine, that's just a bit unpalatable if you thought they cared as much about its people as a hard border between Russia and the EU.

We've been lied to daily about all these conflicts in western press when they were at their peaks. That's not an optional thing: the US lies about all of it. Everything said about the assault on Iran is nonsense.

Now, I'm not all about saying the US is always the worst in every conflict. But they've been proactive and reckless non-stop. They fostered the worst case Israel for years, and now they're getting dragged around by the Israeli war aims their weakening empire conditions. And they've been punishing Iran with vicious sanctions for decades. This isn't a Trump thing, even if Trump adds his own flair. It's the US thing.

Burnwinter

awooga83 How ever you perceive that world view it is plausible for the Americans to hold that and the corroboration is that no such conflict with Iran as this occurred under those admins.

Israel has been on a massacre footing for several years now, which it was well prepared for prior to 2023. It's turning now to Iran because it tried a gratuitous bombing campaign there last year, got away with it, and has seized the opportunity of the civil unrest before Christmas to try again. They've admitted they have no positive plan.

Israel has acted independently and more or less forced the US to workshop the headlines with them several times during this assault. They've assassinated Khomenei and flatly announced they'll do the same to his son if they can. This isn't a war on terms we can recognise, so Iran's deeply provisioned and planned capacity to respond indirectly is even more worrying. It's too relatively cheap and easy to suppress logistics and manoeuvres, and cost Patriots with drones. The same logic that crippled the fanciful Ukraine counteroffensive. We'll see more of this.

Anyway, the idea this couldn't be similar under the previous administration doesn't stack up to me. This already was happening regarding Gaza: it was notorious Blinken could get no traction and was getting played. And Israel will continue to have influence in the US strategy for the region, because the US no longer wants to run wars there.

Mirth

Burnwinter it’s all true but it’s also true that Trump seems particularly unaware of how this could damage his own interests never mind the rest of the world. Iran is a magnitude larger and more significant than any of the other previous US encounters that have existed over the past 30 years and I think the nervousness in the wider world reflects this.

awooga83

Burnwinter I don't disagree Israel have wanted to and prepared for ages but the fact remains they have clearly been trying this for years and previous US admin called their bluff and they didn't do it.

I think your right they also see this moment as worth going for it partly because you face a total idiot in the whitehouse he's easy to play. Both Israel and Russia have recognised he's just one of the thickest leaders there has ever held the office and can be manipulated into stupid positions and has no strategic brain.

It's not just he's a madman he really is stupid which is the most dangerous aspect and why trump is genuinely worse then almost anyone before and most the leaders taking advantage of him know it and know how to play his egotism.

Dom

Burnwinter This already was happening regarding Gaza: it was notorious Blinken could get no traction and was getting played.

Blinken's a murderous Greater Israel thug who personally approved the bombing of ambulances, killing of journalists and obstruction of aid.

The Democrat public 'disapproval' of the famine, infanticide, killing of medical personnel and destruction of hospitals was kayfabe. It's often forgotten that Biden and Blinken were phoning Arab dictators in the region to take all Gazans into their countries as refugees so the territory could be permanently claimed.

Gazza M

UAE'll be a collection of eerie and gaudy ghost towns by the time this war's over. I think it's highly likely they'll divest from Man City. No point spending billions on sportswashing if the aura of it being an anarcho-capitalist safe space has been shattered. No-one with any sense is moving back to that hellhole.

Burnwinter

Mirth

Trump's a madman, but there's no history to make us think "elect a Democrat" solves US foreign policy. It's as silly as the people who thought Trump would set up "isolationism".

Is Trump calling the shots on this conflict anyway?

Netanyahu knows the US can't stop him, has a massive plurality of Israeli public support to attack Iran, and knows this is a moment that won't be repeated in future.

These "When is it best to go to war?" hypotheticals are subject to regular internal white paper fantasies in the military bureaucracies. With massive stakes for the MIC beneficiaries. A contingent need to bomb the hell out of Iran and Hezbollah 20 different ways was definitely prepared for prior to Gaza.

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