Geopolitics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46819029

The question of why the U.S. government began a war with Iran is unsettled. The ostensible reasons, blocking Iran from developing nuclear weapons and protecting Iranians’ human rights, are not enough. Iran’s agreement not to build a nuclear arms program was in force...

...a U.S. government that so easily tolerates human rights abuses within the United States and in certain allied nations would seemingly have little zeal to fight Iran on that account, unless there were other inducements.

Strategic considerations as to U.S. economic sustainability and U.S. economic and political power in the world very likely impelled nervous U.S. decision-makers to start a war...

...The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz might not be a strategic “mistake,” but rather a deliberate feature of the conflict...

...The argument is that the blockade of the straits is a deliberate move by Washington to choke off China’s energy “lifeline” and, in doing so, halt its geopolitical rise...

...“Because oil was and is so fundamental to nearly every industry, the ‘petrodollar’ became ubiquitous, and the dollar became the cornerstone of the global economy.” To preserve the petrodollar arrangement and predictability of the dollar’s value becomes a principal objective of this war...

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/44443793

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45217727

When faced with domestic/personal political problems, an easy method to sideline & slowly solve them, is to start or escalate #war.

It shifts the public conversation, changes the legal & political environment /interests, eases expanded military action at home, & creates opportunities to reward & align with certain factions (oligarchs, corporations, #military leaders).

Here are my thoughts and analysis on the subject in the shape of a table.

What do you think?

Took me a while to make this :)

Please share if you think this makes sense!

*Focusing on recent / ongoing conflicts!

🖼️ #CC0 #PublicDomain madeindex.org as always, use as you like friends <3

The Great Recession in Europe, the economic downturn that began in 2008, resulted in job and income loss, which demonstrably contributed to a rise in poor mental health among those affected. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the measures put in place to contain the virus, similarly caused a spike in the prevalence of poor mental health due to job and income insecurity. Moreover, this crisis negatively impacted mental health through other factors, notably social isolation and the deterioration of working conditions in sectors such as care.

Question; these trends must somehow be worldwide anyone has a take on this from their region?

ROBERT A. PAPE is Professor of Political Science and Director of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats. He is the author of Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War.

...

FAR HORIZONS

Horizontal escalation occurs when a state widens the geographic and political scope of a conflict rather than intensifying it vertically in a single theater. It is especially appealing as a strategy for the weaker parties in a military contest. Instead of trying to defeat a stronger adversary head-on, the weaker side multiplies arenas of risk—drawing additional states, economic sectors, and domestic publics into the remit of the conflict. Iran cannot defeat the United States or Israel in a conventional military contest. It does not need to. Its objective is to gain greater political leverage.

The strategy of horizontal escalation follows a recognizable pattern. First, Iran has demonstrated resilience. U.S. decapitation strikes intended to paralyze the Iranian military. By launching large-scale retaliation within hours of losing the supreme leader and many senior commanders, Tehran signaled continuity of command and operational capacity.

Second, Iran has widened the conflict well beyond Iranian territory, effecting what scholars call “multiplication of exposure.” Rather than confining retaliation to just Israel, Iran struck or aimed at targets in at least nine countries, most hosting U.S. forces: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Greece, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The message was unmistakable: those countries that host American forces would face severe consequences and the war that Israel and the United States started will spread.

Decapitation strikes create powerful incentives for horizontal escalation.

Third, Iran has politicized the conflict through its strikes. Iran’s retaliation has resulted in the closure of airports, the burning of commercial property, the killing of foreign workers, and the disruption of energy and insurance markets. Gulf leaders have been forced to reassure foreign investors and tourists. The war has migrated into boardrooms and parliamentary chambers. In the United States, the widening scope of the war has alarmed members of Congress. Numerous actors have now entered the conflict, each pursuing distinct interests, none fully coordinated, and all capable of altering the trajectory of escalation beyond Washington’s control.

The final dimension of Iran’s strategy is time. The longer multiple states feel pressure, the more that politics both within and among regional states can intensify the conflict. Without a version of NATO in the Middle East or a single American general effectively running the military operation for all the countries targeted by Iran, there is a high risk of wires getting crossed. U.S. officials have, for instance, floated the idea of stoking an ethnic rebellion in Kurdish parts of Iran to help target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But that might provoke responses from Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, countries that would not welcome a powerful Kurdish insurgency in the region. The recent downing of three U.S. jets in a friendly-fire incident over Kuwait also illustrates the logistical and coordination problems that bedevil any attempt to fend off Iran’s escalation in the Gulf.

Iran’s foreign ministry reinforced this logic publicly, framing the missile barrages as legitimate responses against all “hostile forces” in the region. The phrasing has widened responsibility for the attack on Iran beyond Israel and the United States to encompass the broader U.S.-aligned order in the Gulf. Although Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has apologized to Gulf neighbors for the attacks, the installation of a new supreme leader aligned closely with the Revolutionary Guard suggests that such gestures are tactical rather than a signal that Tehran intends to abandon its strategy of horizontal escalation. Fundamentally, Iran’s horizontal escalation is a political strategy. It plays directly to the audience that Iran seeks to persuade: the Muslim populations across the region that may not be ideologically aligned with Iran but are generally poorly disposed toward Israel.

...

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/48384457

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/48383631

https://web.archive.org/web/20260304105404/https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=54e1cf706a41af84

They pulled it from a number of recruiting sites but Kagi still had the results in their cache.

It wouldn't be that hard for them to pull off. I'd actually be shocked if they wouldn't put assets in the area for exactly that thing. It would be a hindrance to all the defense firms that are indirectly supporting the US military. It would also be a massive annoyance to both corporate interests and voter interests domestically.

When what brought it about, speaking in a hypothetical future tense, was US involvement that benefits no person or company in the US it would quickly deflate the US's political will or mandate from the people to pursue these wars. The current mandate that they have is that the current party technically controls the military, and so far it hasn't negatively impacted the public. The second that's not true, the American public will be asking questions about how we calculate who to attack. And there will be no answers besides open admission of corruption.

It would be very smart for Iran to do. It may even improve Iran's popularity in the US because people don't really like those data centers. And double smart when no one likes Israel at all in the US right now. How ironic will it be when Iran's PR in the US is better than Israel's, and we are fighting a war that only benefits Israel? It would divide the people from their government even more and knock out a strategic war resource.

But to protect PR, they'd have to somehow do it while minimizing deaths. These buildings have almost no personnel in them. But if there is one guard in the whole building, that will end up being the story. The news in the US that works for the military in times of war knows that US citizens don't give a single fuck about an AWS blade server. But one single AWS guard might be enough to get the American public to actually care about the Iran issue. So that is the risk they have to balance with that kind of an attack.

They don't need intercontinental missiles to do it. They only need rockets more crude than the ones they have given to Hamas or Hezbollah to target something 100 yards in front of them.

In his May 29, 2024 class, Jiang Xueqin explains that an American invasion of Iran would be a catastrophic mistake:

If Trump were to win a second term, he would likely contemplate invading Iran. While an initial invasion would seem successful, American forces would quickly become bogged down in Iran's mountainous terrain.

The American invasion would be similar to Athens' invasion of Sicily in 415 BCE, as described in Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War. Despite its initial successes, the Athenians couldn't re-supply themselves, and their entire expedition was wiped out.

This disastrous defeat turned the war in Sparta's favor, and spelled the downfall of the Athenian empire.

Could the American empire in Iran suffer the same fate as the Athenian empire in Sicily?

Oona Anne Hathaway is an American legal scholar specialized in international law and U.S. foreign relations.

In conclusion:

" The decades of imperfect but transformative peace that the U.N. Charter helped create now faces the same fate. As the United States fails to abide by the underlying principle of the international legal system it once championed, the already ailing system faces total collapse."

https://www.geostrategy.org.uk/research/britains-world-the-strategy-of-security-in-twelve-geopolitical-maps/

It has been a “fucking nightmare”. But sometimes a nation needs a nightmare before it can fully awaken to long-simmering crises.

The US had to come to this point. We couldn’t go on as we were, even under Democratic presidents. For 40 years, a narrow economic elite has been siphoning off ever more wealth and power.

I’m old enough to remember when the US had the largest and fastest-growing middle class in the world. We adhered to the basic bargain that if someone worked hard and played by the rules, they’d do better than their parents, and their children would do even better.

I remember when CEOs took home 20 times the pay of their workers, not 300 times. When members of Congress acted in the interests of their constituents rather than being bribed by campaign donations to do the bidding of big corporations and the super-wealthy. Trump has precipitated a long-overdue reckoning.

That reckoning has revealed the rot.

It has also revealed the suck-up cowardice of so many CEOs, billionaires, Wall Street bankers, media moguls, tech titans, Republican politicians and other so-called “leaders” who have stayed silent or actively sought to curry Trump’s favor.

Note: I think this trend holds true for many recent crises in other countries as well, directly or indirectly. We need to reveal the rot and all do our own reckoning.

Archive: https://archive.ph/iAXca

Highlight: "In East Asia, China will likely move to enforce its own version of the Monroe Doctrine. Beijing will continue to use incremental tactics and economic coercion against neighbors to pressure them to decouple or distance themselves from Washington. In coming years, the extent to which Beijing attempts to eject the United States from its region politically and militarily will likely define the principal arena of U.S.-Chinese strategic rivalry. “Don’t make us choose” has been the mantra of many East Asian countries, including some U.S. treaty allies. But under bipolarity, the luxury of choice is not one afforded to small countries in a superpower’s backyard. Countries will be forced to choose, and choose correctly according to their neighbor, or risk the consequences. The return of bipolarity means it’s time to remember—with regret and trepidation—the nature, intensity, and global reach of superpower competition."

Interesting shortened interview with Gabrielius Landsbergis former Lithuania's Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Basically US has been saying for a while already that they cannot or won't operate in two separate theaters anymore. Europe was slow in its response and unable to solve important internal issues because of discord.

Secondly, the way forward for Europe is to make a winning European Plan of it's own.