Meaning that the UN expects someone to use a nuke and instead of rallying absolutely everything they can possibly muster to stop it they are merely preparing the documents and protocols to manage the aftermath
This is wild! Ansarullah, Hezbollah, and Iraq on the front lines. Russia and China providing support. 13 US bases destroyed. Western stockpiles depleted. Western carrier groups sent running. The US about to send 10k marines to their early graves. Wunderwaffe planes taken out by shoulder-launched AA.
Plus rumors of mutinous US sailors. Rumors of attacks on US mainland assets. Rumors of revolt in Bahrain. Rumors of dissent in the entity.
Plus successful cyber attacks against the US and the entity.
Al Jazeera reported that Iran officially declaimed it. That's the closest I've seen to useful information. I doubt we'll find out anything about this specific incident. The bigger question will be answered if we see further attacks that are well outside the 2000km range.
A) the US ruling class is scrambling to find a thesis to maintain some form of large scale dominance in the face of inexorable decline in the economy and on the battlefield. I think they may have gotten to the point where they are jumping between theses rapidly at this point. Some of these include a crypto-currency future, a multi-polar regional hegemony model, an AI-driven autonomous weapons platform, AGI/ASI runaway power scaling, technofeudalism, and a return to the robber baron / company town era.
B) They have been actively building the domestic military force for the next showdown with the population. ICE is only the half of it. The various local PDs, combined, are bigger than most national militaries. Then there's the Nat Guard, then there's domestic deployment of paid mercenaries, then there's the domestic deployment of the Banderites and the IDF, and finally the deployment of the US military directly. They have everything they need to quell a resistance.
C) But it looks like they are also seeing a resistance IN the military. The clogged toilets and laundry fires are evidence, but so are the purges and the use of absurd rhetorical filters like claiming Armageddon is the goal and waiting to see who complains so they can purge them. I think they're still seeing a situation where if they try to move too quickly before purging the military fully they'll have a coup on their hands.
They have no intention of having their forces wiped out by a foreign adversary before they can be deployed domestically against a resistance. This conflict with Iran may have shown their limits, but that doesn't mean they won't continue to operate within those limits with wild and reckless abandon.
Well, in a multi-polar world, the US could be content with just dominating half of the globe's industry. Or they could be laying the ground work to eventually destroy the East's energy infrastructure at a later date
This unlocked a new potential US strategy for me. Someone below mentioned that maybe this was to push out one faction of the international bourgeoisie for another. What if it's not that but instead....
What if the realization is that the US built its post-WW2 wealth by being the only industrial economy untouched by the war. This meant that everyone who needed help rebuilding had to go through American physical industrial capacity. It was achieved through total war in Europe, that is to say the destruction of physical industrial capacity across the entire subcontinent.
So what if the idea with Iran is to actually achieve the exact same outcome without the need to fully destroy all the physical industrial capacity? What if the goal is for the US to be the only country who's energy logistics is left standing. It doesn't matter how many factories Europe has if they can't power them. With US energy reserves and access to oil and gas reserves across the entire Western hemisphere, the US could in theory be the only place with enough energy to handle the industrial needs of the North Atlantic alliance and their vassals and subjects.
I know that there are power issues in the USA, but I am also aware of a massive amount of capital that has recently been gathered to develop power projects across the country.
I know that Venezuelan crude is very costly to refine, but a higher cost doesn't matter as much if it means being the only country with a reliable energy platform.
Essentially I am proposing that the US may be engaging in what could be called a logical or economic deindustrialization, like what they did to Latin America over the last few decades, applied to as much of the world as possible, without needing a total war to destroy the physical industrial capacity.
This would be inline with what we speculated was true about the strategy during the Biden administration and the destruction of Nord Stream 2 - raising energy prices on European industry to make them more dependent on the US and applying sanction chains to punish anyone buying Russian energy.
Yes, there are lots of detailed problems with this including rare earths and energy diversity and refinery capacity and lots of other things.
I don't think this analysis is beyond the pale, but it is a hugely risky move.
Skipping past all the questions of viability, I have a question beyond that - if it turns out to be viable and the US starts reindustrializing, does the world decide that the risk is too high and intervene?
I fully agree with your assessment. As is my habit, I take the position of assessing reality as it is, as you did, but then asking about what each outcome would tell us.
So let's say spec ops fails in their mission. Surely that would tell us your assessment is correct. But then, if WE can make that assessment, what does that tell us about the decision making process? Does it mean they had faulty intelligence? Does it mean they were deceived by a particular party (and which party)? Does it mean they did it anyway to achieve some other goal we didn't see or consider? Or does it mean that they decision making process has broken down more thoroughly and more quickly than expected?
Let's say spec ops succeeds in their mission. It's not like any of the physical aspects of your analysis would have been wrong. I mean, maybe all the uranium is in one place, and maybe it is in portable containers so it can be trucked around. But also, what would a success tell us about imperial intelligence capabilities and about intelligence infiltration in Iran? What would it tell us about spec ops capabilities? What would it tell us about how the empire might make further moves?
I'm not asking for answers here. What I want to do is call out your very clear-eyed assessment of the situation and remind us all to pay attention to what happens and remember this assessment so we can use it to better understand what's actually happening and what it means for the future.
Ghouls. Arguing to end mass murder on the basis of gas prices