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0 pointsgiraffe_lady15h ago0 comments

Nah it's good. It shows exactly how far you can get with just a modest understanding of what strategy actually is at the level of nation states plus publicly available facts from the news.

Especially in the heavily jingoistic american context, where all of the focus is implicitly on the military means and technology and execution, but people have lost sight of, maybe can not even state plainly, what the point of a military is, what considerations are part of deciding to use it to accomplish a goal.

If you're going to accomplish a strategic goal with a military action, that goal had better be achievable through military action and this one plainly isn't. A historian can see it, a blogger can see it, a programmer can see it. Why wasn't it seen by people whose job is ostensibly to see it?

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SubiculumCode12h ago

It doesn't even consider potential primary objectives, especially when viewed alongside the recent actions in Venezuela:

1. If US was to replace Iran as the one to control exports of oil through the strait, then thos would gain huge leverage on China via control of energy exports from Iran, Middle East more generally, as they have already done in Venezuela.

2. Making it clear that partnership with Russia and China will not provide security, which was shown to be worthless. This counters “The East is rising and the West is declining”, a go-to Xi Jinping line.

4. Securing South America for near-shoring production, decoupling of supply chains from China. Iran, China, and Russia have lots of

5. Disrupting Iranian ability to support Russia against Ukraine via manufacturing of drones in Iran and in Venezuela.

Whether these points are actually part of the strategy, I do not know, but they have been raised by others in the space, and seemed absent in the article.

dmichulke3h ago

If I understand correctly, I see all your points as potential rewards.

These rewards are useful to the US if they accomplish regime change to a friendly regime or at least military occupation of a good strip of land.

The article is about how these two preconditions for obtaining the rewards are unlikely to be fulfilled and, at the same time, non-accomplishment might achieve the opposite:

- Iran (and by necessity, other Gulf states if they want to export oil) align more with China

- US-partnership will not provide security (Arab states, South Korea and other allies are now less secure and the US can't protect them)

- US and allies are in a worse position to secure South America

Huge risk with little chances of a reward. That's the article.

Modifying the rewards does not change the game unless the probability of obtaining them increases or that of the risks decreases.

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