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