Oh geesh. Trump has communicated the exact preference for Iranian regime change. See Venezuela. I think the Trump admin could give the Trum-hating media and chattering class a 500-page detailed plan and they would still write "Trump's plan is ill thought out.".
You really cannot fix TDS without years of needed cognitive behavior therapy.
Any dolt with any modicum of knowledge about the history of Iran over the last 47 years including the American embassy personnel took hostage during the gawdawful Carter years would find the attempted connection between the Bush Iraq war and this joint Israel-US operation to remove the Iran terrorist regime, the same that took all those Americans hostage and has been responsible for millions of dead from its state-sponsored global terrorism, well let's just say that that person is not very smart.
No Brucie, unlike you are read and consume information from your commie insane asylum as well as my side of freedom, liberty and liberalism. Because I live in leftie land and don't have an ideological bubble existence like you, I have had to do the hard work to make sure I am not the one with the mythology of the media in my head masquerading as knowledge. I always assume that I might be wrong and seek information to help be uncover blind spots. Nobody could be as successful as me in my private sector corporate career being someone that always has to be right and defends his perceived brilliance against any challenge. I am always curious and always asking questions to help shore up what I know. My board of directors would have skewered me like they did my liberal predecessor that they fired. He still claims that he is the smartest guy in the room. We are all idiots for firing him with all his academic credentials and clear brilliance.
The problem with your ilk is that you are of the alien human species with that liberal personality disorder of emotional dysregulation... fixated on care/harm - and generally of your own ego... ignoring most other moral considerations. You emote and then use your education credentials to seek rhetoric to defend, obfuscate and deflect from any challenge that might make you feel bad about yourself. And since ego is so tied to being the smartest guy in the room, it is frequently challenged as that is never the case. You have so many blind-spots you are figuratively blind.
Like almost every educated and articulate liberal I know, their gaslit ignorance is so clear to me it is almost hilarious. If they could actually see themselves the as they are, they would certainly be so embarrassed they would stop talking until their cognitive behavior therapy started to kick in.
They can't even get their story straight for the reason we're over there and what they're expecting to accomplish. One day it's to take out their nuclear capability. The next day it's because Iran posed an imminent threat with their existing missile capabilities. Then it's regime change. Then it's not regime change but "the regime has changed". Then it's that they're going after their proxies in the region.
Then Trump casually mentions that it was motivated by revenge against the Ayatollah for Iran trying to assassinate Trump and allegedly trying to interfere in the 2024 election. And then of course we get Marco Rubio's ridiculous assertion that we had to do this because Israel was going to do it anyway with or without our help. They walked that back pretty quickly, but it should hardly shock anyone if Trump were talked into this by Netanyahu.
And don't say the objective is "all of the above" because these are all very different things that have very different operational requirements from a military perspective. Any military person worth their salt will speak to the danger of engaging in hostilities like this with nothing but short-term tactical objectives but no overarching strategy.
You don't like the comparison to Iraq? Here's a much more timely and accurate one: Vladimir Putin attempting to quickly take out Ukrainian leadership and install another one of their pre-2014 puppets. And at least in that case Russia had a history of such proxy rule and cultural ties to the region. Thankfully it turned out that their vaunted military was a decrepit relic from the mid-20th century, as opposed to ours which, at least for the moment, is still top-notch.
But we should all be concerned about the fact that, like Russia, we clearly went in with no Plan-B in the event that we didn't get the magical neocon outcome Trump was obviously anticipating (hence the comparison to Iraq). Of course, no metaphor is perfect and there are always going to be differences to point out. But the differences in this case are hard to spin in Trump's favor: a country of massive size now full of people newly disillusioned about the promise of democracy and the U.S. led world order—or what vestiges of it remain at this point.
And frankly, we've seen what a large strategy document produced by the Trump Administration looks like. Look no further than what charitably passes for our National Security Strategy, which reads as if it were written in crayon by some MAGA social media troll. Wiithout any H.R. McMasters around to gussy it up in the language of respectability, it is an incoherent mess of juvenile talking points and reflects what we all know about this administration—that it's a viper's nest of amateur conflicting interests all trying to push or pull Trump in different directions, which boils down in practice to being the last person to talk to him before something happens.
In the end, you can defend Trump all you want, Frank. The world isn't having it. Trump claims that the world respects us like never before, but he doesn't understand what good "respect" is. There's the warm kind of respect from people who follow you because they believe in you, which we once had (broadly, with certain qualifications). Then there's the "respect" you get from people who despise you and actively seek to unburden themselves from the yoke of their entanglements with you.
Then, of course, there is the patronizing faux-respect Trump gets from world leaders who manipulate him.
If you're confused about the nature of the world's "respect" for us now, look at some international polls (outside of Israel). If it's not apparent to you now, it will be one day. Probably some day soon.
As Tom and Ray Magliozzi might have put it, Trump is "unencumbered by the thought process". Not only he, but his close advisors. What a terrible thing America has visited on the world. What will it take to crawl out of this?
The US is legally bound to the UN charter. IT IS ILLEGAL, under US law, to attempt regime change EXCEPT through the UN.
Where is this mentioned?
How is this enforced inside the USA?
The US, is actually a "rogue state" under this charter! And you think your biggest problem is "the orange one"?
I'm old(ish), have travelled extensively (to every single country in the current disaster, plus about 50 more) and was in Iran just before the US Embassy was stormed. The Iranians, then, were very divided with the 'better-off' supporting the Shah, and the poorer supporting Khomeini. Those 'better-off' migrated elsewhere, especially to the USA where they have consistently advocated regime-change.
So you illegally murder the head of the Iranian regime and expect "regime change"? Are you all mad? Have you no idea? And after incinerating 150 children with a 2nd tomahawk missile?
The level of delusion in the US is why we are here, in this terrible state. Non-entities like Biden, Harris and Trump are promoted to the top of the political class, that is effectively run by the men with the money. Until money is removed from the election process (repeal of Citizens United), you will not have a functioning democracy. The whole process of checks-and-balances has been discarded.
If there's a good reason for assuming that the quality of political candidates would be better if corporations, unions, voluntary associations, and wealthy individuals were barred by law from contributing to political campaigns I don't know what it is.
My point is about taking money out of the system as essentially "the dividing factor". When the will of the people is suborned by systems of persuasion that are dominated by 'spend', then you get exactly what you see in the States: a corruption of real democracy.
When candidates are 'managed' by the largesse of PACs and advertising dollars, then you get what the FEW contributors to those PACS decide. That isn't true of much larger organisations, such as trade unions, voluntary associations etc. It's the concentration of wealth that is the limiting factor. So the States is an oligarchy. Decisions in the House and Senate demonstrably favour the oligarchs (I think an analysis was done a few years ago making this exact point).
In the case nowadays, we find one single PAC funding the MAJORITY of the House and Senate. Can anyone be surprised that the USA overwhelming has policies supporting the intentions of this PAC? That is NOT democracy, and the USA cannot claim to be supporting democracy.
Other countries find different methods: they limit contributions (effectively), they require TV stations to allocate air-time based on current House proportions and so on. Of course, in this digital age, these limitations become less relevant, but I'm sure some form of 'equalisation of the political voice' can be legislated.
There is one, and only one, objective that warrants US military intervention in Iran: preventing any government or faction in that country from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Totally agree. The Dead Sea Scrolls warned us that Iran was within two months of ICBM capabilities and Sleepy Joe and Barrack HUSSEIN Obama totally ignored this PROPHECY.
Why didn't Trump act in North Korea to stop them developing nuclear weapons? That country was still only in the early stages of becoming fully armed during his first term.
North Korea began nuclear weapon development long before Trump took office as POTUS. US intelligence agents deduced from satellite imagery that development of a nuclear weapon was under way in Yongbyon in 1989. North Korea conducted a first nuclear test detonation in October 2006 and successfully conducted four more before the beginning of Trump's first term. In April 2013 the Defense Intelligence Agency reported "with moderate confidence" that NK could make a nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_North_Korea
Trump tried arm-twisting (threatening to destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities with air strikes) followed by face-to-face negotiation with Kim Jung Un in Singapore and North Korea, with initially encouraging results.
I had checked on the timeline before my original posting, and it doesn't appear that by 2016 they hadn't yet developed the capability to get the nuclear weapon inside a ballistic missile. Of course, now they do. The conclusion the hardliners in Iran will draw is that the only way not to be attacked is to develop a nuclear weapon, so there seems a possibility that this will be a real focus for a new regime. The irony of course is that Ali Khamenei, despicable as he was, always argued against making a weapon.
I can see a future where the US forces Iran into a deal not to enrich uranium and to accept inspections. In fact, just like the JCPOA that Trump tore up. So, after billions spent on weapons, thousands of deaths, and disruption to global markets, they may find themselves in the same place as before.
The Iranians were ALREADY prevented by the Fatwa issued by Khamenai. This is the guy the US/Israel killed! You clearly don't understand the importance and reverence that these Fatwas have, from this source (ie the equivalent of the Pope, for Shia Islam).
The only conclusion that ANY country can draw from the US/Israeli action is to arm themselves with nuclear weapons AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.
That ten-year old boy however may be Alex Karp, D&D master of Palantir et al. I do not see regime change as the goal. Rather America is perfecting AI warfare, and Iran offers a perfect sparring partner. Powerful and universally accepted as evil religious lunatics. The moral costs are low the experience gained is enormous. This is a show war for Putin and Xi Jinping. And indeed the data gained in live warfare over the last week has been extremely useful for future militarily engagements.
I agree. Our leaders seem to have ignored that we’ve been ‘at war’ with Iran since the early 1980s; they’ve forgotten all the ‘death to the great satan’ chants and flag-burnings; they’ve relyed, along with Western Europe, on paper treaties of understanding. Until now. Two weeks into the war, the US and Israel have demonstrated incredible military intelligence-and-hardware capabilities. The rest of the world, especially the Arab states, see this; raw power is what they understand. Now they will know they can trust the US if they side with us; they can trust the our weapon and intelligence systems to work better than our enemies. The world had become a more dangerous place with the West’s ‘hope for change’ dream. Hopefully, Trump’s message of ‘peace through power’ will better serve the civilized world.
I think it is not the case that they (those behind, around Trump, since Trump is not understanding this) didn't think it through. I think it is more likely they understood the limitations and possibilities but took a shot anyway on the hope that it would spur more internal (Iran) uprising. Their view was plenty of upside with limited downside. The downside consequences are not as large as many are suggesting.
The argument appears to rest on several unexamined assumptions. First, it assumes that international law constrains actors like Russia, China, and Iran, and that U.S. or Israeli actions are what undermine international law. But those actors have repeatedly ignored such norms when it suits them, independent of Western behavior.
Second, it assumes that following international law is inherently stabilizing. But laws that fail to address clear threats are counterproductive and do not serve human security; they stand in its way.
The idea that preventing proliferation increases it is a fallacy, not just unproven. One is grounded in concrete action, the other in speculation.
The argument presents U.S. and Israeli actions as a break from a rules-based order. But the international system has always involved both rules and power. Politics shapes how international law is interpreted and enforced, often selectively and unevenly, which is why moving away from it can be necessary. The question is how and why states act when rules fall short.
Parents? That term applies to figures of authority whom one will (however grudgingly) respect and obey. We have decapitated the Iranian regime (temporarily), but right now, we are in a country that has committed auto-decapitation by electing an incompetent person as president, surrounded him with useless sycophants, and is flanked by a Congress MIA. There is no one in authority; there is only some one who has power.
Your analysis is impeccable—it captures the heart of the crisis. Yet it seems absurd that the U.S., backed by such analytical wealth, could commit such gross strategic errors. What was sorely missing is what *Charlie Wilson's War* highlights: after investing billions in secret funds to arm the Taliban and drive out the Soviets, the U.S. refused mere millions to build schools, hospitals, and roads.
Not to mention the Marshall Plan's strategic importance in my country, which risked sliding from fascism to communism without it. To stay in this small geographical boot, Cicero said that the written law (*lex*) is an empty shell if it is not rooted in human nature and, above all, in custom (*mos maiorum*).
That said, for Iran I see one more possibility for regime change compared to other countries—perhaps it's just hope speaking. Iran/Persia gave us scholars like Al-Farabi, without whom the West would not be what it is today. When Iranians took to the streets aware of the risks, the rebellion united all ethnic and social groups of that great country.
Don't you think this Persian heritage offers Iran more fertile ground for democratic transition than Iraq or Afghanistan?
In national security strategy as conventionally practiced, assessing and defining the strategic context is a critical step, perhaps a critical first step. Define it wrong and you mess up whatever you do after that, like a doctor who misdiagnoses the disease or ailment. Anyone who has been anywhere close to working on complex national security challenges knows how easy it is to get the strategic context wrong, even in relatively simple or small place and even when you do all you can to get it as right (reality is always more complicated than any representation of it). But this administration strode puff-chested into this powder keg war with Iran caring not a whit about the context, blinded by hubris, impervious, with a cavalier indifference to its many complicated, interlocking, unpredictable parts--starting with just how deeply entrenched and layered Iran's regime is. For this reason alone, it's almost impossible to imagine the war producing a positive result for anyone concerned save, at this point, Russia. Of course that won't stop the liar in chief from declaring victory no matter what happens. And unless they are directly impacted beyond their dear leader's ability to blame fake news, approximately 40% of American voters will believe it.
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Oh geesh. Trump has communicated the exact preference for Iranian regime change. See Venezuela. I think the Trump admin could give the Trum-hating media and chattering class a 500-page detailed plan and they would still write "Trump's plan is ill thought out.".
You really cannot fix TDS without years of needed cognitive behavior therapy.
Yeah, keep making excuses for being conned by your dear leader. At some point you will realize, just like with W Bush, that you have been lied to.
Any dolt with any modicum of knowledge about the history of Iran over the last 47 years including the American embassy personnel took hostage during the gawdawful Carter years would find the attempted connection between the Bush Iraq war and this joint Israel-US operation to remove the Iran terrorist regime, the same that took all those Americans hostage and has been responsible for millions of dead from its state-sponsored global terrorism, well let's just say that that person is not very smart.
Frank, Your cognitive ability has been shaped by completely swallowing over 30 years of malinformation from Fox, et al.
Amusing that his cognitive decline seems to be paralleling that of Dementia Donnie
You are a pant load Brian. You voted for Joe Biden.
You voted for Noem the Dig Killer, the drunken war macho man, and Mr. Cocaine off the toilet seat. I know which of us should be more EMBARRASSED
No Brucie, unlike you are read and consume information from your commie insane asylum as well as my side of freedom, liberty and liberalism. Because I live in leftie land and don't have an ideological bubble existence like you, I have had to do the hard work to make sure I am not the one with the mythology of the media in my head masquerading as knowledge. I always assume that I might be wrong and seek information to help be uncover blind spots. Nobody could be as successful as me in my private sector corporate career being someone that always has to be right and defends his perceived brilliance against any challenge. I am always curious and always asking questions to help shore up what I know. My board of directors would have skewered me like they did my liberal predecessor that they fired. He still claims that he is the smartest guy in the room. We are all idiots for firing him with all his academic credentials and clear brilliance.
The problem with your ilk is that you are of the alien human species with that liberal personality disorder of emotional dysregulation... fixated on care/harm - and generally of your own ego... ignoring most other moral considerations. You emote and then use your education credentials to seek rhetoric to defend, obfuscate and deflect from any challenge that might make you feel bad about yourself. And since ego is so tied to being the smartest guy in the room, it is frequently challenged as that is never the case. You have so many blind-spots you are figuratively blind.
Like almost every educated and articulate liberal I know, their gaslit ignorance is so clear to me it is almost hilarious. If they could actually see themselves the as they are, they would certainly be so embarrassed they would stop talking until their cognitive behavior therapy started to kick in.
So many words. So little intelligence
So few words. So sad that he is not bright enough to write anything valid, interesting or true.
Detailed plan? You've got to be kidding, Frank.
They can't even get their story straight for the reason we're over there and what they're expecting to accomplish. One day it's to take out their nuclear capability. The next day it's because Iran posed an imminent threat with their existing missile capabilities. Then it's regime change. Then it's not regime change but "the regime has changed". Then it's that they're going after their proxies in the region.
Then Trump casually mentions that it was motivated by revenge against the Ayatollah for Iran trying to assassinate Trump and allegedly trying to interfere in the 2024 election. And then of course we get Marco Rubio's ridiculous assertion that we had to do this because Israel was going to do it anyway with or without our help. They walked that back pretty quickly, but it should hardly shock anyone if Trump were talked into this by Netanyahu.
And don't say the objective is "all of the above" because these are all very different things that have very different operational requirements from a military perspective. Any military person worth their salt will speak to the danger of engaging in hostilities like this with nothing but short-term tactical objectives but no overarching strategy.
You don't like the comparison to Iraq? Here's a much more timely and accurate one: Vladimir Putin attempting to quickly take out Ukrainian leadership and install another one of their pre-2014 puppets. And at least in that case Russia had a history of such proxy rule and cultural ties to the region. Thankfully it turned out that their vaunted military was a decrepit relic from the mid-20th century, as opposed to ours which, at least for the moment, is still top-notch.
But we should all be concerned about the fact that, like Russia, we clearly went in with no Plan-B in the event that we didn't get the magical neocon outcome Trump was obviously anticipating (hence the comparison to Iraq). Of course, no metaphor is perfect and there are always going to be differences to point out. But the differences in this case are hard to spin in Trump's favor: a country of massive size now full of people newly disillusioned about the promise of democracy and the U.S. led world order—or what vestiges of it remain at this point.
And frankly, we've seen what a large strategy document produced by the Trump Administration looks like. Look no further than what charitably passes for our National Security Strategy, which reads as if it were written in crayon by some MAGA social media troll. Wiithout any H.R. McMasters around to gussy it up in the language of respectability, it is an incoherent mess of juvenile talking points and reflects what we all know about this administration—that it's a viper's nest of amateur conflicting interests all trying to push or pull Trump in different directions, which boils down in practice to being the last person to talk to him before something happens.
In the end, you can defend Trump all you want, Frank. The world isn't having it. Trump claims that the world respects us like never before, but he doesn't understand what good "respect" is. There's the warm kind of respect from people who follow you because they believe in you, which we once had (broadly, with certain qualifications). Then there's the "respect" you get from people who despise you and actively seek to unburden themselves from the yoke of their entanglements with you.
Then, of course, there is the patronizing faux-respect Trump gets from world leaders who manipulate him.
If you're confused about the nature of the world's "respect" for us now, look at some international polls (outside of Israel). If it's not apparent to you now, it will be one day. Probably some day soon.
As Tom and Ray Magliozzi might have put it, Trump is "unencumbered by the thought process". Not only he, but his close advisors. What a terrible thing America has visited on the world. What will it take to crawl out of this?
Wow. The sheer arrogance.
The US is legally bound to the UN charter. IT IS ILLEGAL, under US law, to attempt regime change EXCEPT through the UN.
Where is this mentioned?
How is this enforced inside the USA?
The US, is actually a "rogue state" under this charter! And you think your biggest problem is "the orange one"?
I'm old(ish), have travelled extensively (to every single country in the current disaster, plus about 50 more) and was in Iran just before the US Embassy was stormed. The Iranians, then, were very divided with the 'better-off' supporting the Shah, and the poorer supporting Khomeini. Those 'better-off' migrated elsewhere, especially to the USA where they have consistently advocated regime-change.
So you illegally murder the head of the Iranian regime and expect "regime change"? Are you all mad? Have you no idea? And after incinerating 150 children with a 2nd tomahawk missile?
The level of delusion in the US is why we are here, in this terrible state. Non-entities like Biden, Harris and Trump are promoted to the top of the political class, that is effectively run by the men with the money. Until money is removed from the election process (repeal of Citizens United), you will not have a functioning democracy. The whole process of checks-and-balances has been discarded.
If there's a good reason for assuming that the quality of political candidates would be better if corporations, unions, voluntary associations, and wealthy individuals were barred by law from contributing to political campaigns I don't know what it is.
My point is about taking money out of the system as essentially "the dividing factor". When the will of the people is suborned by systems of persuasion that are dominated by 'spend', then you get exactly what you see in the States: a corruption of real democracy.
When candidates are 'managed' by the largesse of PACs and advertising dollars, then you get what the FEW contributors to those PACS decide. That isn't true of much larger organisations, such as trade unions, voluntary associations etc. It's the concentration of wealth that is the limiting factor. So the States is an oligarchy. Decisions in the House and Senate demonstrably favour the oligarchs (I think an analysis was done a few years ago making this exact point).
In the case nowadays, we find one single PAC funding the MAJORITY of the House and Senate. Can anyone be surprised that the USA overwhelming has policies supporting the intentions of this PAC? That is NOT democracy, and the USA cannot claim to be supporting democracy.
Other countries find different methods: they limit contributions (effectively), they require TV stations to allocate air-time based on current House proportions and so on. Of course, in this digital age, these limitations become less relevant, but I'm sure some form of 'equalisation of the political voice' can be legislated.
There is one, and only one, objective that warrants US military intervention in Iran: preventing any government or faction in that country from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Totally agree. The Dead Sea Scrolls warned us that Iran was within two months of ICBM capabilities and Sleepy Joe and Barrack HUSSEIN Obama totally ignored this PROPHECY.
Why didn't Trump act in North Korea to stop them developing nuclear weapons? That country was still only in the early stages of becoming fully armed during his first term.
North Korea began nuclear weapon development long before Trump took office as POTUS. US intelligence agents deduced from satellite imagery that development of a nuclear weapon was under way in Yongbyon in 1989. North Korea conducted a first nuclear test detonation in October 2006 and successfully conducted four more before the beginning of Trump's first term. In April 2013 the Defense Intelligence Agency reported "with moderate confidence" that NK could make a nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_North_Korea
https://kls.law.columbia.edu/content/north-koreas-nuclear-program-history
Trump tried arm-twisting (threatening to destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities with air strikes) followed by face-to-face negotiation with Kim Jung Un in Singapore and North Korea, with initially encouraging results.
I had checked on the timeline before my original posting, and it doesn't appear that by 2016 they hadn't yet developed the capability to get the nuclear weapon inside a ballistic missile. Of course, now they do. The conclusion the hardliners in Iran will draw is that the only way not to be attacked is to develop a nuclear weapon, so there seems a possibility that this will be a real focus for a new regime. The irony of course is that Ali Khamenei, despicable as he was, always argued against making a weapon.
I can see a future where the US forces Iran into a deal not to enrich uranium and to accept inspections. In fact, just like the JCPOA that Trump tore up. So, after billions spent on weapons, thousands of deaths, and disruption to global markets, they may find themselves in the same place as before.
The Iranians were ALREADY prevented by the Fatwa issued by Khamenai. This is the guy the US/Israel killed! You clearly don't understand the importance and reverence that these Fatwas have, from this source (ie the equivalent of the Pope, for Shia Islam).
The only conclusion that ANY country can draw from the US/Israeli action is to arm themselves with nuclear weapons AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.
Completely dumb.
That ten-year old boy however may be Alex Karp, D&D master of Palantir et al. I do not see regime change as the goal. Rather America is perfecting AI warfare, and Iran offers a perfect sparring partner. Powerful and universally accepted as evil religious lunatics. The moral costs are low the experience gained is enormous. This is a show war for Putin and Xi Jinping. And indeed the data gained in live warfare over the last week has been extremely useful for future militarily engagements.
I agree. Our leaders seem to have ignored that we’ve been ‘at war’ with Iran since the early 1980s; they’ve forgotten all the ‘death to the great satan’ chants and flag-burnings; they’ve relyed, along with Western Europe, on paper treaties of understanding. Until now. Two weeks into the war, the US and Israel have demonstrated incredible military intelligence-and-hardware capabilities. The rest of the world, especially the Arab states, see this; raw power is what they understand. Now they will know they can trust the US if they side with us; they can trust the our weapon and intelligence systems to work better than our enemies. The world had become a more dangerous place with the West’s ‘hope for change’ dream. Hopefully, Trump’s message of ‘peace through power’ will better serve the civilized world.
I think it is not the case that they (those behind, around Trump, since Trump is not understanding this) didn't think it through. I think it is more likely they understood the limitations and possibilities but took a shot anyway on the hope that it would spur more internal (Iran) uprising. Their view was plenty of upside with limited downside. The downside consequences are not as large as many are suggesting.
Also, this is within the framework of a win including damaging my enemy more than I am damaged.
Too true! Thank you for speaking the truth, plainly and clearly.
The argument appears to rest on several unexamined assumptions. First, it assumes that international law constrains actors like Russia, China, and Iran, and that U.S. or Israeli actions are what undermine international law. But those actors have repeatedly ignored such norms when it suits them, independent of Western behavior.
Second, it assumes that following international law is inherently stabilizing. But laws that fail to address clear threats are counterproductive and do not serve human security; they stand in its way.
The idea that preventing proliferation increases it is a fallacy, not just unproven. One is grounded in concrete action, the other in speculation.
The argument presents U.S. and Israeli actions as a break from a rules-based order. But the international system has always involved both rules and power. Politics shapes how international law is interpreted and enforced, often selectively and unevenly, which is why moving away from it can be necessary. The question is how and why states act when rules fall short.
Parents? That term applies to figures of authority whom one will (however grudgingly) respect and obey. We have decapitated the Iranian regime (temporarily), but right now, we are in a country that has committed auto-decapitation by electing an incompetent person as president, surrounded him with useless sycophants, and is flanked by a Congress MIA. There is no one in authority; there is only some one who has power.
Dear Professor Fukuyama,
Your analysis is impeccable—it captures the heart of the crisis. Yet it seems absurd that the U.S., backed by such analytical wealth, could commit such gross strategic errors. What was sorely missing is what *Charlie Wilson's War* highlights: after investing billions in secret funds to arm the Taliban and drive out the Soviets, the U.S. refused mere millions to build schools, hospitals, and roads.
Not to mention the Marshall Plan's strategic importance in my country, which risked sliding from fascism to communism without it. To stay in this small geographical boot, Cicero said that the written law (*lex*) is an empty shell if it is not rooted in human nature and, above all, in custom (*mos maiorum*).
That said, for Iran I see one more possibility for regime change compared to other countries—perhaps it's just hope speaking. Iran/Persia gave us scholars like Al-Farabi, without whom the West would not be what it is today. When Iranians took to the streets aware of the risks, the rebellion united all ethnic and social groups of that great country.
Don't you think this Persian heritage offers Iran more fertile ground for democratic transition than Iraq or Afghanistan?
In national security strategy as conventionally practiced, assessing and defining the strategic context is a critical step, perhaps a critical first step. Define it wrong and you mess up whatever you do after that, like a doctor who misdiagnoses the disease or ailment. Anyone who has been anywhere close to working on complex national security challenges knows how easy it is to get the strategic context wrong, even in relatively simple or small place and even when you do all you can to get it as right (reality is always more complicated than any representation of it). But this administration strode puff-chested into this powder keg war with Iran caring not a whit about the context, blinded by hubris, impervious, with a cavalier indifference to its many complicated, interlocking, unpredictable parts--starting with just how deeply entrenched and layered Iran's regime is. For this reason alone, it's almost impossible to imagine the war producing a positive result for anyone concerned save, at this point, Russia. Of course that won't stop the liar in chief from declaring victory no matter what happens. And unless they are directly impacted beyond their dear leader's ability to blame fake news, approximately 40% of American voters will believe it.
By the way, who are the "parents" in this case?
Wonderful piece!
I particularly like the image of DJT as out-of-control 12-year-old. Unfortunately, all the adults have left the premises.
Many little boys still have empathy. The fanatical crazies behind Trump may be adults, but…
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