Does China or India care if Iran gets nuke as much the US does?

Robert Pape has been giving interviews on Mario Nawfal’s channel, among others.

I also appreciate his perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/@MarioNawfal/search?query=Robert+pap...

This "Strait of Hormuz War" is the "Suez Crisis of 1956" for the US Empire. You know, the one that ended the British Empire.

> To think anyone ever mentioned defending Taiwan from China lol

There are still countries willing to defend democracy out there - Ukraine/Europe/Canada/Japan/S-Korea/Australia.

Just not USA.

Your phrasing implies that someone with real authority tried to think it out, and had realistic plans.

Vs. I see an angry, frustrated C-in-C, who has maybe a 1-move look ahead, playing out his emotions. Hopefully he is too weak to flip the chess board.

Well, Iran is a huge mess, but in terms of strategic lessons, it actually tips the balance closer to "Taiwan, with US help and proper preparation, can deny China control of the strait of Taiwan" (and vice versa, of course). It's clear that asymmetric warfare is good now at denying access to ocean and turning it into no-man's-zone.

In a lot of ways, helping defending Taiwan (a very well-scoped objective, "do not let China land troops") would have been a lot easier than convincing a nation of 90 million to just roll over and give up rather than chucking drones across the gulf every so often.

That’s not the AIPAC way, and they are the ones driving right now. Until Congress is cleared out of these scum bags then nothing will change.

How many hours do you think our current President could stick to that strategy, if it didn't instantly - Poof! Magic! - make everything better?

That's what Trump told everyone during the campaign. Then, after he got elected, well, he changed his mind, I guess.

One can post practically anything to HN it doesnt have to be just purely about technology.

It's about the slow acceptance of what many saw as an entirely predictable and already foreseen outcome before the US dropped the first bomb on Iran :/

Could you make an HN moment out of the climate, belly fat discussions? You could have at least read the article instead of asking about things not mentioned.

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Look at the quality of discussion here. It's all just 'America is dead/dying'. Nothing of note. No talking about the crazy inflation in Iran, the government officials discussions on how they can't afford replacing their naval routes with land routes. The current distress in Iran about raising the subsidized gas prices, and how Iran is using more gas than they are creating/importing. No awareness/comparison/context of understanding of Vietnam and it's much greater impact on the Nation/it's understanding of self/understand of it's ability to project power.

These is zero serious discussion on HN Iran threads, and anyone that posts not in line gets voted dead so just gave up on posting to them yet the people that complain about topics getting flagged dead never once complain when an entire view/side/political thought just get's voted dead instead of discussed nor raise the quality level of the discussion to make it no longer flag worthy.

This thread's content/quality level totally 100% deserves to be flagged.

Well, people don't want to talk politics, but will gladly engage in climate conversations and other random things that are affected by politics, because the one thing where people are chosen to lead on popularity than merit is not interesting while it affects us and is currently causing more deaths than anything else (DOGE defunding, 'eradicated' viruses returning, unauthorised wars).

The front page only has so much space anyways, and they can't flag everything forever.

> Aaaaaand right on cue the flagging brigade promptly flagged this to get it off the front page.

This is why I exclusively use https://hckrnews.com as the "front page"

I agree with you right until the end:

This is closer to the end of the Roman Republic — and strange events such as threats against Greenland and Canada can be interpreted in that context as well.

That is, we’re not seeing the downfall of the US empire but the downfall of the US republic that will eventually retreat to North America and retrench its position — hence moving Canada and Greenland (and Cuba and…) from informal relations with a hegemon to formal vassals of an empire. And emerge as an actual empire, much like Rome before.

While I understand the emotional temptation, using the word “empire” in place of “hegemony” can lead to inaccurate predictions — eg, total US collapse versus pullback for retrenchment and reformation.

> The whole rest of the world has their own agency and is wising up to the fact that the US is limited to financial instruments and 5-13 functional aircraft carriers to project force. Soft power and goodwill is spent and we're just ignorant bullies who elected a rapist twice and can't be trusted

Maybe it's just the American way of passing the torch, this is kind of a gift by reminding the rest of the world about what they can do without us. The "America, defender of democracy" image was an illusion constructed as we emerged from WW2 as the strongest of the Allies, and that of course was due to the unique privilege of deciding when to tip the scales strategically, not when we were forced to.

So much has been built on that American privilege at all levels since then. The most glaringly obvious folly was interpreting this privilege as American Exceptionalism, because as a "leader of the free world" obviously that depends on how the rest of the world feels about it.

Did you miss the 1970s and the impact of Vietnam (that lasted through to the 90s for that generation)? The malaise about American from the 70s through the 80s? The corporate raiders of the 80s and the destruction of so many Americans lives in that period? The rust belt? Many many Americans of older generations losing their pensions because of Wall Street firms bs destruction of companies? The brain drain from the majority of the US into a few metro areas?

These are all things huge parts of the USA has dealt with for generations at this point.

From the PoV of our enemies and rivals, perhaps.

But in the bigger picture? We're still futzing around at amateur hours. The quagmire of the Roman-Persian Wars lasted almost seven hundred years - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Persian_wars