This is all happening because of the current situation.
Also, it’s not enough to be able to theoretically able to defend them; they have to believe it. These aren’t drones, and the crew wants to stay alive. Nor do the owners & insurers want to eat the cost of a sunk tanker. Nor for that matter do any of the people involved have any great reason to trust either the competence or the honesty of the US.
I certainly wouldn’t sail a ship through the straits right now and expect to come out the other side.
One consequence of this war will be that antisemitism will flare up in the USA. Right wingers are already saying that whatever happens in the end, and they seem to imply it will be bad, it will not be trumps fault. It was the Jews. See for instance Joe Kent, who resigned as national counter-terrorism center director because (the following quotes are from a Xit directly addressing his hero):
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
“Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran”
“This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and you should strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory."
“This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.”
Make antisemitism mainstream again! (MAMA!)
It seems to me that this will weaken Israel’s position in the future. MAGA will blame Israel (meaning the Jews, all of them) for trump’s problems, the Democrats will blame Israel for supporting trump. Bipartisan support for Israel will no longer be. Even Germany will show less good will towards Israel in the future.
It’s the renewed small-state nuclear threat that keeps me up at night. I’m not talking about the other “Big Two” adversaries that have global reach and a [plausibly] semi-responsible appreciation in the calculus of deterrence (Russia & China).
No, I’m talking about the small-state adversaries like North Korea & Iran who would want to protect their regimes from US belligerency, and those small-state allies like Taiwan, and other larger states like Japan, South Korea, Poland, and Ukraine who have sizeable factions that want nuclear weapons to defend themselves against regional threats because they can no longer depend on the United States.
Non-proliferation philosophies, hopes, dreams, and desires? Out the window. Now instead of eight-or-so “semi-responsible” states with their own well managed & secured stockpiles, it’ll be a dozen more for a crapshoot of ‘who’s-got-what-and-where-is-it?’
Yeah kids, it’s all fun ‘n’ games until 20 kilotons pops off in Seattle or Miami.
Tripler
Diplomacy is so 2015. . .
Donald Trump does not think strategically. Nor does he think historically, geographically, or even rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that occur weeks later. He does not think about how his behavior in one place will change the behavior of other people in other places.
He does not consider the wider implications of his decisions. He does not take responsibility when these decisions go wrong. Instead, he acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever he said or did before…
…If allied leaders thought that their sacrifice might count for something in Washington, they might choose differently. But most of them have stopped trying to find the hidden logic behind Trump’s actions, and they understand that any contribution they make will count for nothing. A few days or weeks later, Trump will not even remember that it happened.
Yes. Why throw away money, effort and resources on a disaster they didn’t cause for somebody who won’t even thank you for the effort? I can’t blame the rest of the world for not wanting to step up next to Trump and stick their hand into the same wood chipper.
4 posts were merged into an existing topic: Speculation About Trump’s Underlying Reasons for Bombing Iran and Other Targets
This is a current event leading into major consequences IMHO:
In short, the bromance of Bibi and Trump is cooling down, with Trump underbussing Bibi, and yet still claiming that they’ve got a good relation, but Israel is making too many of it’s own moves (contradicted by “sources” inside the government) and Trump won’t cooperate anymore.
Meanwhile, current and former administration members are happily slamming Israel and moving into extremely unsubtle antisemitism, saying that the powerful “Israel” lobbying groups are the ones responsible for all of this.
[ Pausing for a moment to remind all that I’m a secular Jew with family in Israel, so I -may- be more sensitive, or even oversensitive on the nuance here, mea culpa]
By my read (touching for a moment on history) Bibi and Trump both wanted this to happen to shore up their own positions while at risk of serious political fallout at home. Now that they’ve got much of what they want, many cracks are showing.
But on the focus for Consequences. The article shows decreased popular support for Israel in the USA. With many leftists appalled (for good reason in many cases) with the civilian causalties and injustice (quibbles with degree, but injustice no less) in Palestinian territories. Israel and MAGAmerica is increasingly separate from the rest of the world that isn’t ruled by pragmatic autocrats. Prices are rising here in the states, and Trump has a very tried-and-true scapegoat that he and his supporters seem to be pivoting for.
The weird support of MAGA/Theocratic Christian Right Wingers seems to be nearing it’s end, and the pivot has already seen (along with the aforementioned Israeli attacks) substantial rises in Antisemitic violence targeted at Jews in general. Combined with tactic and or direct support from the government, it’s going to get ugly fast.
Israel, for reasons right and wrong, is going to be further isolated, and is likely to be the target of more unified regional attacks as soon as Trump tires of the current conflict, especially as I suspect other regional powers are going to see the damage to Iran means that the playing field has been vastly reduced.
So even if Trump successfully pulls out of the Middle East, the regional stability seems as if it will continue to worsen, and if America (whether MAGA or some hypothetical future democrat pulls back after the excesses of Bibi’s government) doesn’t continue to support (or even just remains neutral) for Israel, then they’re likely to fall further towards a rogue-state status based on their enemies and actions. Which means we may well see Israel be willing to embrace that path, especially after the actions of Hamas’s October Invasion reinforces their belief that everyone is an enemy, and seeing the USA’s removal of support as a “betrayal”.
Which means the region is bound for greater instability, no matter the short term “victories” as claimed by various leaders.
US officials are furiously trying to avert a potential monthslong closure of the Strait of Hormuz, privately acknowledging that reopening the key waterway is a problem without a clear solution and dependent at least in part on what lengths President Donald Trump is willing to go to force the Iranian regime’s hand, multiple administration and intelligence officials tell CNN.
“One of the core conundrums of this conflict is the Iranians have real leverage with this, and there’s not an obvious fix for it,” an intelligence official said of efforts to reopen the strait.
I’ll take “No Shit Sherlock for $100”
I mean, seriously? The vulnerability of the Straight of Hormuz is something that has been very well known for… 40 years? More?
NOW, they are “furiously” trying to figure out how to un-fuck this latest Trump fuck-up?
Hey fellas! Heads up! IT’S TOO LATE.
Maybe, MAYBE a coalition of countries could have pulled it off. But no. You insulted your best allies, mocked them, told them you didn’t need them and even threatened to invade them.
Your allies. Threatened to invade them.
So now, they are busy making plans, trade treaties and alliances WITHOUT you. Welcome to the next century of slow disintegration of the country.
I don’t want to hear anymore about "Oh, when Trump is gone, things will go back to normal. No they won’t. It’s broken. It can’t just be glued back together with a “Oh, it’s all good now.”
One medium-likely consequence is this policy being adopted:
My link does not go into how this would affect how we should think about who won the war, if anyone. I guess it depends on what it means for the strait to be open to Iran.
Haass writes from an old-time anti-Trump American GOP perspective where he is thinking the U.S. would do things his way due to the Trump/Hegseth way having shown itself to be a failure. But I wonder if Trump will declare victory and give up, telling Israel to do the same and leaving it to other powers like France and the UK and maybe China to promulgate and enforce the open or closed to all policy. This of course has bad implications for the United States.
I imagine more like, how to figure out a solution that Trump doesn’t just immediately blow up mid-random-ramble, or in reaction to someone saying this means he backed down.
Bombing of Iran demonstrates clearly why Iran needs the atom bomb.
I don’t imagine Iranians are the only ones drawing that conclusion.
Specifically, that the USA and international community bombs you hard if you’re trying to get a nuke, but treats you with the utmost deference and respect if you’ve already gotten nukes.
The lesson for every regime is to find some way to get from Point A (no nukes) to Point C (nukes) without Point B (the bombing.)
Yes; it’s just the latest example of how if you want the nuclear powers to engage in actual diplomacy, you need nuclear weapons of your own. Otherwise you’re just a punching bag they’ll smack around any time they feel like it.
I will be long gone before the USA is ever trusted again, or ever helped again.
All because of one ‘man’. There is plenty of blame to go around, but it starts at the top.
So true.
And the lack of trust is but one result I expect to outlive me.
Trump is responsible for this breakdown of world order, but that he was able to accomplish it so easily shows how fragile it was. We’ll never restore the old order, but hopefully, like after WWII, we can build something better than before, and learn the lessons from this era.
With Trump’s latest “We’re going to pull out and leave the mess for others to clean up” ‘plan’, I’m thinking there’s the potential for a non-US coalition to fix this, but they’ll obviously need to get Iran on side for anything to work.
So I’m thinking, re-open the strait for everything except US shipping. Punish Trump for starting this whole mess, but let the rest of us get on with life. Pay the Iranians some reparations, even if we call it something different, and tell the US to get bent when they complain.
The biggest lesson for any future order is that no one country should have a veto on collective action. No one should be able to make you support an action, but if 99% of the world wants something done, the 1% shouldn’t be able to stop it.
How many times has a veto on the UN Security Council screwed things up? Just this week, we saw Viktor Orbán and Hungary block EU support for Ukraine. That shit needs to stop.