China has played much much better chess so it's not surprise they're benefiting. However, I don't really see how China will benefit from Iran being in ruins. Can you elaborate on how China benefits ?
From what I can tell, The USA is either going for force a regime change or it's going to ruin Iran. Where will China get oil from then? You might say Russia but that's a precarious situation for them to be in.
The Belt and Road initiative gets a shot in the arm. No tarrifs, free trade, lower cost finance with fewer encumbrances. Efforts to establish the Renminbi as a second reserve currency have been quiet, but these trade alliances and alternate banking arrangements are already making it a possible reality. US perception is that belt and road was unpopular and a failure, but its little different from US economic imperialism. The amount of money flowing through BRICS and the rise of China as the world's largest creditor is testament to this.
Cheaper weapons have shown to be effe tive in holding off a technologically superior force, and China is both great at producing them and happy to sell them to spec.
The US not being able to produce weapons at a fast enough cadence to refill the stockpile is an indicator that US weapons manufacturing is currently unsustainable, and prohibitively expensive. Both are weakness.
The US has shown that it cannot maintain moderate effort on two fronts. Not only is it financially almost unable to do so, only by the good graces of being the reserve currency, it would significantly struggle to maintain distributed engagements - this is military intelligence if an adversary wanted to engineer multiple conflicts requiring US attention globally to spread the US thin.
A year ago, when discussing AI adoption in an European business, the idea of looking at Chinese providers or Mistral was not seriously considered.
The obvious answer was Microsoft/Azure and OpenAI.
That has changed nowadays.
As a direct consequence of the behavior of the American government towards its "allies".
You can extrapolate from that.
This isn't about short term oil supply problems when the whole world (lead by China) is moving to renewables anyways. It is about long term strategic consequences.
I don't think it has just changed to "China is ok" though, it seems to be more like, Europe has decided to build more of it's own infrastructure and military capability.
I think the over-reliance mistake won't be made again for a long time.
I don't disagree that it's beneficial for China, likely in the short term, but I also don't think a lot of countries are just happy to go full Communist party either.
> China has played much much better chess so it's not surprise they're benefiting.
They didn't play chess at all, but unlike the USA, they didn't poop on the board and didn't smudge the other players with their drool. We are forgetting now that the belt and road initiative, as well as the wolf warrior diplomacy, had put China on the lowest rankings in global perception. China had to do literally nothing to "play better", and they were smart enough to do so. The USA committing suicide--yeah, what can you do about it?
Let's say the USA does gain control over the Straight of Homuz, wouldn't that be quite an issue for China though? Where would it get it's oil from?
I don't agree with what's going on in Iran, I'm just thinking that regardless of whether or not it's a good idea, if the USA is basically in control of all meaningful oil exports, then it's game over for any significant Chinese military action because, they won't have the oil to run their aircraft carriers etc (they don't have nuclear carriers).
I think I understand their logic, but I might agree with others who say this is going to be an extremely bloody / unpopular war with very little justification for it's existence.
China buys Russian oil via pipeline and tanker, so they’re not entirely dependent on Gulf crude. They also have more levers to pull at the state level to reduce civilian demand on petroleum. Along with current electrification/alternative energy efforts, that could be a significant reduction in demand. Finally, China has operated nuclear subs for decades, and is actually building a nuclear aircraft carrier. China likely does not think it can compete head-to-head with the US in a conventional naval confrontation, and has invested heavily in missile and drone technology, along with other asymmetric capabilities. It would certainly be painful if the US took over the Persian Gulf, but likely not debilitating.
I did find it interesting that in both Venezuela and Iran, Chinese radar and air defense did not hold up so well, but they’re at least getting a lot of real world test data from it.
They're gambling basically, if it works and they do topple the regime, I think it will work for the USA, and if it turns into a prolonged quagmire, then yes, it will probably not be successful and very detrimental. I do sympathize with those who just wanted cheaper eggs.
The US cannot ruin Iran short of the widespread use of nuclear weapons.
Air power has never resulted in regime change. Never. It takes boots on the ground and one just needs to look at a map. Iran is surrounded on 3 sides by mountains and the Gulf on the fourth.
Iran's drones and ballistic missiles are incredibly cheap, well-defended and impossible to meaningfully disrupt. The interceptors used to stop them are running out and increasingly ineffective. I think I read that the ballistic missile strike rate on Israel is now over 50%. What does it take to launch drones or even a ballistic missile? A cheap modification to any truck, basically.
The US cannot forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz because that would put them in close range to Iranian drone and missile strikes that the US doesn't have the weapon systems, interceptors and munitions to defeat. It's suicide.
Any escalation will end up much worse for Iran's neighbors than Iran because Iran is already built for economic isolation and self-reliance, thanks to years of criminal economic sanctions. You want to hit Iranian desalination plants? Well, that'll invite a hit on desalination plants in other Gulf states and that's going to end up much worse for them. Why? Remember those mountains I mentioned? They're covered in snow. Iran has ski resorts. Many people don't realize that. What does that mean? Just like California, they get significant freshwater from snow melt.
A ground invasion of the Iranian mainland has no staging ground. For Kuwait, we used Saudi Arabia. You can't stage across the mountains so you need an amphibious landing, much like D-Day. And it would need to be probably as complex and large. We simply don't have the ships, the soldiers or the logistics for that.
Basically, we have no options. This was unwinnable before we even started. This is why every president since Reagan refused Israel's attempts to start a war with Iran. Until Trump.
I honestly think he'd been fooled into thinking he could do a decapitation strike on Iran like Venezuela and get a friendly regime. That was never going to work. Iran has almost 50 years of hardening and maintaining a regime to resist US interference.
The one thing this administration seeems to care about is gas prices. This is why Iranian exports haven't been blocked. China is still getting oil from Iran. In fact last week the US lifted sanctions on Iranian oil, which was previously being sold below market. In January, Iran was selling oil for $48/barrel. Now they're selling it for >$100.
China has a massive reserve (~1.4 billion barrels) and has suspended exports of refined oil products. Countries friendly to us in the region are in for a world of hurt, most notably the Phillipines and Vietnam (Japan seems to have significant reserves like China, at least for now).
This war of choice on Israel's behalf has alienated and weakened Europe, the Gulf states and Asia. Iran is being smart about all this and allowing non-US oil to traverse the Strait, further putting a wedge between those countries and the US.
The US started it, has no path to victory and doesn't even know what victory is. It's up to Iran when this ends now and they're going to exact a price that will put them significantly ahead of where they were before this started. Ending of sanctions, tolls on ships traversing the Strait and/or reparations.
IMHO it's the biggest geopolitical mistake in US history and it's not even close.
I quite enjoyed the depth of that comment. Good write up.
Regarding countries friendly to the US - watching just how many foreign leaders have been diplomatically blunt or even hostile with the US has been interesting. Even the Australian prime minister, a famously boot-heeled position, has been publicly critical of the US.
Right now in Australia we are paying $3.30 AUD for a litre of diesel. That's over $8.50 USD per gallon.
I read these comments and I almost wonder if it's just parroting of state sponsored stories. I'm personally not in support of what's going on in the middle east at all, but it does sounds like a fear campaign or something. As if Iran is some sort of unconquerable bastion that is untouchable. In my honest opinion, no one except fairly senior intelligence people would really know what's going on.
They have no air force left, no navy, realistically no way to defend any of their infrastructure, yet apparently, there is no way they can be undone?
What do you think the entire freaking world is going to do if their economies start failing because Iran is blocking the straight of Homuz? Will we all just die or will other countries get involved and start making sure it opens? Will the trillions of dollars the gulf states have just sit there idly while Iran ruins their ability to sell oil ? I don't think so. Right now I think Iran has some leverage, there is maybe even some sympathy directed their way, but in my view it's limited. People right now are unhappy about what the US did, and maybe blame them for high oil prices etc, but at some stage, if it's between Iran existing, and peoples ability to eat, I think I know which side people will choose.
I do worry something like this could really be the start of WW3 though because I don't think China will allow Iran to topple, so it's a precarious situation.
Right now, the question seems to be more about whether or not the neighbors are willing to take the hit, and whether or not the world will tolerate the economic devastation, not whether or not the USA can inflict a lot more damage.
The history since 1945 has been the resounding and repeated success of asymmetric warfare. Specifically, the US has not actually won a war since 1945 despite starting or providing material support to many. We've been unable to topple Cuba, a tiny island 90 miles off our coast despite repeatedly trying to 60+ years.
We spent 20 years and $8 trillion on the War on Terror. The Taliban was in charge of Afghanistan before we started. they're in charge now.
Iran is a country of 93 million people in a country 5 times as large as Texas whose entire economy is built to withstand economic pressure who view the US as the Great Satan and who can blame them given all we've done to them since 1953. However unpopular the current regime may be, the US is more unpopular.
The US did not consult any allies (other than Israel, of course) so most of the world is taking a "you broke it, you bought it" stance. Iran is saying if your country doesn't provide material support to the US invasion, your ships can go through, which will further undermine support.
It's interesting that Russian and American militaries are kind of victims to corruption but in different ways.
In Russia, generals basically stole money for tanks they never got built and nobody really found that out until Ukraine. Russia is sort of a paper tiger now.
In the US, the leeches we have are defense contractors who are sucking more than half a trillion dollars a year in weapon systems from the government coffers. We build really expensive things that... don't really work that well. We have anti-missile systems that are a coin toss at working against cheap Iranian missiles, which we're also running out of interceptors for and replacing them will take years. We have no answer for the drone threat that is incrdibly cheap, easy to scale production and almost impossible to disrupt the production and launch of because the Iranians have buried bases and facilities deep underground for obvious reasons.
In Iraq we turned drones into mobilee assassination vehicles (ie Reaper drones with Hellfire missiles) but those drones are $10M+. The "enemy" turned around and basically bought off the shelf commercial drones and turne them into suicide drones for $10-30k each and can produce hundreds if not a thousand or more per month.
You will not find any military planner or general that isn't a snivelling toad to the administration that thought this was a good idea or that there was any path to victory, whatever "victory" means here, which we still don't know.
So my answer to you is... just look at a map. How do we invade? Where? To what end? What happens when they start raining done drones on us that we can't defend against sufficiently? We can't occupy a country this large even if we can take it over. Conservatively we'd need 1-2 million troops for that.
Put it this way: Ukraine is a fifth the size of Iran and has half the population and there was no way Russia, who has access to a much larger army thanks to a draft, could occupy and control Ukraine long term even if they could topple the regime.
To occupy Iran we'd need to accept casualties in the tens of thousands. We haven't seen casualties like that since Vietnam, possibly WW2. This is also a war that hasn't gotten Congressional approval yet. Why do you think that is? I know. Because that resolution might fail then what. This war was historically unpopular for a war before it started. How popular will it be when we have $8 gas and the bodies start rolling home? What do you think will happen in the midterms?
Despite the buffoonery and sheer incompetence of this administration as well as the pack of moronic sycophants around the president, I'm actually surprised it went this far.
Take even more moderate objectives like Kharg Island. Well we have to go through the Strait for get there. We can air drop enough troops to take it but then what? How do we supply it? Waht if Iran starts raining drones down on it? It's only 8 square miles. There's nowhere to hide there. And then what? Iran just blocks ships departing from a US-controlled Kharg and removes more oil from the global market.
Their Navy doesn't matter. Their Air Force doesn't matter. You can if necessary lay mines with fishing boats. But you don't even need to lay mines. You simply have to say you will and insurance premiums go 10x and ship owners refuse to travers the Strait.
The US may still be the 800 pound gorilla in the room but absolutely everybody who isn't Israel hates us thanks to this war as well as the tariffs fiasco. I haven't seen a single realistic achievable and worthwhile military scenario out of this from anyone who knows anything about military planning and logistics. I really do think Trump thought he could do Venezuela 2.0.
> The USA is either going for force a regime change or it's going to ruin Iran. Where will China get oil from then?
A positive story for China might be: a.) building port complexes and other industrial facilities is something China export as construction, engineering and financial services; b.) oil is a global commodity and a rising price everywhere doesn't create a relative disadvantage.
This isn't targeting immigrants or Democrats though, unless they try to only draft Democrats it's going to be them, their sons, their brothers and husbands getting told they have to go die.
For some reason I started getting tinnitus when I am sick with some sort of sinus infection / cold or flu. Usually I don't sleep very well when I'm sick so that might be part of it.
The first time I got sick and it started, I went walking around the neighborhood looking for the source of the noise until I realized I had tinnitus. Sounded like some kind of distant earth works / resonance thing.
What has blown my mind is how surprised people seem to be by all of this, it's like, they never imagined these people were capable of doing this...remember when it was "just jokes..." ?
From what I can tell, The USA is either going for force a regime change or it's going to ruin Iran. Where will China get oil from then? You might say Russia but that's a precarious situation for them to be in.
reply