521–530 of 774 posts
Not an American but live here. But I don’t understand the fixation of US in middle east theatre. With the abundance of onshore oil through fracking revolution, presumably US doesn’t need to police the Middle East. The president himself said US doesn’t need their oil. So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the exte…
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Not an American but live here. But I don’t understand the fixation of US in middle east theatre. With the abundance of onshore oil through fracking revolution, presumably US doesn’t need to police the Middle East. The president himself said US doesn’t need their oil. So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the exte…
1. After the midterms, we'll get a read on how much AIPAC is still able to buy congressmen.
2. Before Trump obeyed Israel and bombed Iran, we had the illusion of being invincible. But now, we are faced with the brut reality that we cannot guarantee the flow of oil through the Hormuz straight, nor almost anywhere else in that whole hemisphere. Even to Europe: Ask Putin how much drones have changed the game.
This really eliminates any remaining motivations to keep pricing oil in USD. Which removes most of the motivations for the world to keep financing our deficit.
At this point our best option is to just leave the region, and try to transition to renewables absolutely as fast as we can. Oh, and raise taxes on everybody, because demand for our bonds is going to crater.
1. The US has been strategically and militarily defeated by Iran and this has been clear since at least April to anyone who was paying attention and has achieved none of its objectives. More [1];
2. Continued use of so-called "stand off" weapons confirms that the US has been unable to achieve air supremacy over Iran and use gravity bombs. The article mentions this but doesn't really explain the implications; Reaper drones have been lost in large numbers. Air sorties are limited to also firing stand off weapons, mostly. One reason for this is an Iranian developed weapons system of loitering missiles that the US has designated as 358 and 359 missiles [2];
3. The US is spending an unprecedented amount of money on a war it has already lost that nobody wants. In some ways this mirrors the Nixon-Kissinger plan to bomb Cambodia until morale improves. Nobody wants to admit defeat. But wars are good for business. Some people are getting incredibly wealthy off all this. Munitions are the ultimate product. You use them once and then have to buy them again, often at $1M+ apiece;
4. This is the real story of American oil dependence over rewnewables. Nobody goes to war over a solar panel [3];
5. The article also mentions the drastically low inventory levels of missile interceptors (eg PAC-2, PAC-3, THAAD). This is in part why several US bases in the Gulf have been effectively destroyed and abandoned because the military cannot defend them. Iran is using very cheap weapon systems, particularly the Shahed drone, and can produce them in much higher numbers. Shooting down a $20k drone with a $1-4M missile does not scale;
6. This is going to rewrite Gulf politics as the promise of the American security-for-oil guarantee has shown to be a paper tiger. This is going to force a change for Gulf countries;
7. For all the complaining about the JCPOA, this administration has for absolutely no reason kicked the hornet's nest and the price of ending this war is going to be far, far higher. That will include (IMHO) an end to economic sanctions, unfreezing of Iranian assets, weakening of the petrodollar, compensation for Iran in the hundreds of billions and a concession that Iran can and will charge tolls for transit of the Strait of Hormuz in concert with Oman. Well done, everybody, the system works.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRAtD7iAgwY
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wMoKLuL8Jc
[3]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have the same issue with the conventional bombs and their guidance kits, which when delivered in contested areas are not usually cheaper. The issue is general industrial capacity, not missiles specifically.
JDAM's are a lot cheaper. They are a guidance kit bolted on to a MK-82 gravity bomb. There are a lot of MK-82's in stock, as they have been made since the 1940's. Problem is you put a crew and an expensive airplane at risk. We are out of missiles because the current administration wants to minimize combat losses. Looking at the dollar cost; it seems like a bad idea. But is this war worth any of our soldiers / sailors…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
China, in it's modern incarnation, and every living member of it's military, has never seen a single real battle. Nothing. No one has any rank that has bearing on any kind of combat. Just decades of self-congratulatory war games. China has tons of weapons and resources. But it would remain to be seen if they can actually fight when every single person along the entire chain is a total day one rookie.
I think this comes out in the wash mostly. While we're going to have lots of officers who've been to war for a while yet, turnover eventually evens the playing field. The people who would be doing the actual fighting in a war today have never been to war. And as we've seen in Ukraine, warfare is always evolving, making some subset of past war experience less valuable.
Its the difference between having a CEO who was a competent engineer for years before becoming the CEO, and having a CEO who went to business school and played software dev tycoon for 10 years before walking in the door to be CEO on the first day of their first real job.
Not an American but live here. But I don’t understand the fixation of US in middle east theatre. With the abundance of onshore oil through fracking revolution, presumably US doesn’t need to police the Middle East. The president himself said US doesn’t need their oil. So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the exte…
Not an American but live here. But I don’t understand the fixation of US in middle east theatre. With the abundance of onshore oil through fracking revolution, presumably US doesn’t need to police the Middle East. The president himself said US doesn’t need their oil. So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the exte…
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Not an American but live here. But I don’t understand the fixation of US in middle east theatre. With the abundance of onshore oil through fracking revolution, presumably US doesn’t need to police the Middle East. The president himself said US doesn’t need their oil. So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the exte…
What’s even more puzzling is that line of reasoning was one reason why trump was elected in the first place: increase domestic oil supply and get out of foreign wars
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think the US has shown itself as to be extremely competent in the Iran war? If you were talking about Iraq, that was completely different leadership.
The US killed almost the entire Iranian regime leadership with minimal cost. What definition of competence are you going by?
Iran gained straight of hormuz. It gained chuckpaz and confidence too. It is now itching to play major regional power
>The U.S. Army has used up So not the US. There is also the Navy, Air Force etc Borderline clickbait
This should be higher, the Army never had a lot of ATACMs to begin with as launching missiles at things is not really their job. Doesn't make the points about this administration not having a real plan invalid though...