Something I'm unsure about is what does and doesn't trigger wars.
Russian jets downed a US drone over the black sea in March 2023, I thought for sure there'd be a commensurate US military response. But there didn't appear to be one. Was it because no human was aboard the drone (so no response was justified), from fear or escalation, or something else?
In any case, if a large cargo ship were sunk, would the US or other nations go to war, would they retaliate with a similarly sized response, or would they do nothing (as with the Russian downing of the US drone).
Does anyone have some good resources on this topic? As a layperson I find military responses difficult to predict. (I'm familiar with foundational game theory, but not specific to international relations and security)
It's time to read some Clausewitz. That book outlines the philosophy of how most western states think about war. The short version I would say is that war is a tool of politics, so if there is no political goal, there will be no war, regardless of how bad the supposed Causus Belli is.
Shooting down a drone usually doesn't do it partly because of the political implications: it would be deeply unpopular to put "boots on the ground" over a shot-down drone.
If you spend time with officers in the U.S. military, fewer than you might expect have been assigned Clausewitz in their professional military education or read it on their own (even just the first chapter). Many just know the soundbite, "war is an extension of politics with other means."
> if there is no political goal, there will be no war
In Clausewitz, this is more of a normative statement than a rule about war in reality. One of the things he's trying to caution against is the escalatory dynamic that he views as inherent to purely military logic – that war (in a vacuum, so to speak) will always increase in intensity. But in reality, certain factors can and should ameliorate this inexorable escalation – political goals, "friction," and the "fog of war" are examples. War without the control of a political goal will be ceaselessly increasing destruction to the point of purposelessness. This is one reason why we insist on civilian control of the military, because we do not wish for an independent general staff to be prosecuting a war according solely to war's inner logic.
Seems to me that trigger events for wars are often about finding a justification for a war that people in power were already wanting to start. America doesn't want to go to war with Russia because we know it could be incredibly destructive, given that they have nukes. So, it would probably take a lot to start a war between the US and Russia. They would have to attack or be clearly planning to attack a NATO ally.
It's possible that even if Russia intentionally downed a US jet, it would not immediately trigger a war. The US would likely add more sanctions, but they would probably show incredible restraint as well.
> a war that people in power were already wanting to start
This is synonymous with a political goal. War is politics by other means. The dirty secret under that being most wars democracies engage in are publicly supported, at least at the outset.
That seems like an extremely narrow definition of "reacting," but even then, pretty regularly over many years, actually. In addition to the attacks earlier last month linked in TFA, here's a couple articles showing that this has been an ongoing thing:
This isn't to dispute evidence of US war crimes, to be clear, but claiming the Houthis have just been doing nothing in response does not line up with the overwhelming evidence.
> They would have to attack or be clearly planning to attack a NATO ally.
Somehow I doubt a war would start if a NATO ally would be attacked. Perhaps if invaded but not if attacked. And it’s not the US i don’t trust, it’s continental western europe. It lacks the military and the economy to carry out a war against any country with a bit of power. Continental Western Europe has already proven a lack of will and capacity. Wars in eastern europe are cataclismic events and the only country that can survive and potentially win is the US and the countries in the region if well armed and properly motivated.
Therefore, as soon as a NATO country is attacked, west europe will claim tough luck, pull back and appease. The US won’t want to do it alone - and rightfully so. Putin knows this and is marching on. The cost of invasion for him and Russia is negligible - if anything it’s a net positive, as he now knows what his army lacks and it exposed those in his ranks that need replacement.
The exact thing I was thinking in response to the GP.
Worth noting is that Clausewitz lived in a world where wars were events that were declared between states.
Today a major difference is insurgency/counterinsurgency. And our state likes to wage wars without formal declaration. Not to mention its wars against abstract concepts instead of foreign states.
> Clausewitz lived in a world where wars were events that were declared between states
Sort of. Born 1780, died 1831, the main wars in his life were the Napoleonic Wars.
But he would not have been unfamiliar with the Wars of Religion that convulsed Europe for 150 years following Luther's Protestant Reformation and culminated in the Peace of Westphalia. These we not regular state-on-state wars, but were a series of internationalized civil wars, caused by Protestant and Catholic low-level violence, coups, usurpations, overthrows, assassinations, and other civil conflicts. These low-level conflicts caused by non-state actors who were part of a transnational religious/ideological movement were not unlike the religious/ideological insurgencies we see today.
Clausewitz would also have seen wars of colonization/imperialism and decolonization in the New World. These were also wars of states against irregular non-state combatants. Especially after the Napoleonic Wars, when the Concert of Europe was keeping stability in Europe, the main form of warfare Clausewitz would have been observing would have been wars of colonization/decolonization.
> And our state likes to wage wars without formal declaration. Not to mention its wars against abstract concepts instead of foreign states.
This really well fits what Russian gov does (as someone from there).
I actually think every offensive war is explained by concepts because people don't want to just kill people, they need a higher explanation to risk death and sleep at night after some murdering. It is in the name of religion or unification or against Nazism or against rotting capitalism. Only true defence doesn't need explanation.
> This really well fits what Russian gov does (as someone from there).
ok but I am pretty sure the OP was talking about the US's politically-motivated forever wars on nouns, the "War on Some Drugs" and the "War on Terror But Not The Causes Of Or Allies Hosting Terror".
War being “the continuation of politics by other means” is the most common misreading of Clausewitz out there. This is only one of three aspects of war which he identifies.
The political goal of a war is one part, which the governments are trying to achieve. But once the bullets start flying, there is also the anger, rage, and passions of the people as their relatives come home dead, maimed, or hurt. And finally there is the interplay of chance and luck, which the military leadership has to leverage through skilled command. To Clausewitz, war is a trinity of these things, not “the continuation of politics by other means.”
He does also go into the “cost of the object.” Whereby not every war goal is necessarily worth mobilizing the entire society and fighting an existential fight. And when the cost of achieving the goal exceeds its worth, nations will come to the table and negotiate peace.
Any specific book of his you recommend? "On War" seems to be the one that popped up on a search but wanted to confirm. Sounds like an interesting topic.
>Shooting down a drone usually doesn't do it partly because of the political implications: it would be deeply unpopular to put "boots on the ground" over a shot-down drone.
Supposedly there are political implications for not responding to the shooting down the drone too. How are those taken into account I wander?
It seems that there is a deep believe in the US that if they wouldn’t “provoke” then russia would not attack as it would not have a reason to do it.
While I understand the logic it is still a very serious and dangerous miscalculation because “provocation” happens within russian head independently of the reality.
russia can simply claim it was provoked/attacked by NATO so I really do not understand how “trying not to escalate to avoid provoking” works as deterrence.
From what I observed it doesn’t and only gives green light message to russian aggression and this could be hardly seen as a desirable political goal for US as I understand.
I don't think the downing of that drone increased Russian aggression. Russia doesn't want a war with the US but seems to want to push boundaries as far as possible and win it's war in Ukraine. The US response of giving weapons to Ukraine and putting Russia under sanctions is pretty aggressive, it's about as far as the US can go without actually fighting in Ukraine. It's probably serving the west well politically to ignore Russian probing as much as possible. Russia wants to provoke some kind of instability to wedge between western allies.
America can help Ukraine (I'm not from either place) with their side of the war all they want, imo. If Russia wants to treat gay men like me as second class citizens/animals, along with all of the other atrocities they perpetuate then I fully support whoever is on the other side of that mess.
But yes, Russia seems to use this "poking" tactic quite often, trying to provoke a response.
Well, US could (and should!) send much more weapons than it did so far - a lot of really useful surplus kit still laying around in warehouses all around the US.
Exactly! Ukraine is loosing the best Ukrainians as we speak due to the lack of weapons and it’s heart breaking to say the least. Those people in front like need much more support then they get. It’s a moral obligation of the west among other reasons.
I support Ukraine in this like all civilized people, but we have absolutely no moral obligation to Ukraine whatsoever. When the Iron Curtain fell and pretty much everyone who was behind it ran to NATO for protection from Russia as fast as they could, even countries that don't even share a border with Russia, Ukraine was like "nah, Russia's not that bad, don't wanna take sides between them and NATO, what's the worst that could happen?" Well, they got to find out. It's too late to change your mind once it's too late.
I would argue that quite contrary is true - we do have moral obligation to stop genocide of Ukrainians by Russia.
Your description is also not factually correct considering multiple revolutions in Ukraine that tried to set the course toward NATO and EU but you have to also take into account that Ukraine is also too important for Russia and Ukraine was actively attacked by Russian intelligence services and finally direct war against Ukraine in 2014 to prevent it joining NATO.
We should also take into account deceptive manipulations by the West like the Budapest memorandum that created an impression of false security.
But even regardless of this, not supporting Ukraine would be incredibly dumb move for US that will seriously hurt its geopolitical position. War in Ukraine, multiple coups in Africa, Hamas attack on Israel, now these attacks on ships.
Look to where just cowardly moving out of Afghanistan has taken us.
Another humiliating retreat would be a colossal blow to US.
"Look to where just cowardly moving out of Afghanistan has taken us.
Another humiliating retreat would be a colossal blow to US."
It's not about humiliation at this point. The US actually cannot beat these countries straight up in a shooting war anymore. The combination of post-Cold War deindustrialization, the lack of morale after 2 decades of fruitless wars, and the politicization of the military reducing its appeal to its traditional recruits, especially in the rank-and-file, have shown their fruits in the collapse of American deterrence ability in the 2020s. Russia wouldn't have dared to attack Ukraine in the first place if the US was stronger, and NATO's performance has only been good enough to avoid Russia steamrolling Ukraine, not to significantly retake Russia's gains. Russia can make more artillery shells than NATO combined. Ukraine is even more at risk now that the West's attention has wandered to the Middle East, endangering the aid that's kept them in the war so far.
Some would blame this on the current president, but I think the rot is much broader and deeper. If there is a future of the American military, it will probably consist of Anduril taking it over.
Yes, you are correct, but only partially. Nothing stopped NATO countries to ramp up their military production - defense industry is awaiting for it. Where are the shells promised to Ukraine by EU countries? They are not available because companies can't make them fast enough, no, they are not available because politicians haven't made large enough orders. It is not that Western countries can't ramp up their production. If Russia can, so can they for the fraction of cost for their economies. Unfortunately we have a period of impotent politicians in West instead of period of strong politicians. Hopefully we'll survive.
Well, the companies can't make them fast enough because the political establishment doesn't see maintaining readiness as a priority when money could be spent on other things. Nor did much of the population - I remember it used to be very popular to compare the American military budget unfavorably to the lower budgets of European countries - shouldn't we put that money to social programs? Now though, as much as the American military has fallen, at least it is still legitimately powerful - most European armies these days are Potemkin forces. All of which is to say, I agree with your comment.
>happens within russian head independently of the reality.
Are you talking about the drone or NATO adding Ukraine?
The funny thing about reality is there is none except our own observations. Not to get too philosophical, but Russians "reality in their heads" is exactly what everyone experiences.
Not OP, but I read their words as neither of the options you suggest.
Claiming "I was provoked" as justification means some arbitrary line was crossed. That line will be different for you and me, and as such it's not an objective measure. Ergo, it is disconnected from the objective reality of the situation, and much more connected to the subjective interpretation of the situation.
meme contraexample of course being the gulf of tonkin incident where us warning fire on vietnamese vessels in vietnamese waters being responded to with actual fire was taken as grounds for war, because war was desired
It's worse than that: The US intentionally provoked the incident with sabotage and hit and runs, and then "faked" the second incident (they had bad data, fired on nothing, and then used skewed intelligence reports to back up a false claim of an attack) which was used as the final excuse (the latter was long suspected, but admitted to by McNamara in 2003, and by NSA records declassified in 2005).
Yeah, this is not a counterexample to the Clausewitzian view of war, but an example of it, because the converse of what I said is also true: If there is a political will to war, there will be a causus belli, no matter how weak. In the case of the Vietnam war, it does appear that the US military and the CIA basically manufactured that causus belli. A lot of cold war conflicts had the same sort of thing happen.
Russian-backed forces shot down Netherlands' airliner, murdering over 200 people. There was no response either. Countries don't go to war if they don't see it paying off.
MH17 was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile, killing all 298 p.o.b. with no consequences for Russia.
Russia has flown Bear nuclear-capable bombers over the UK (actually over land), with no consequences [1].
Russia, Iran, and North Korea all trade arms with each other and supply missiles, drones, and ammunition to the Houthi.
Russia invaded Ukraine and deploy weapons from the above "axis" countries.
I don't think a specific individual trigger event exists for a military response. More typically, the West goes to war when energy security is threatened.
> MH17 was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile, killing all 298 p.o.b. with no consequences for Russia
I don’t think this is a good example, given that the act is widely considered to be a mistake. The US shot down IR655, Soviets KL007, Ukrainians S7-1812, Iranians PS752 ... it happens. MH17 is egregious (as was KL007) for a refusal to admit blame, but hardly a casus belli, despite the tragedy.
Eh, we had them refusing access to the investigation and recovery teams for a while. If the shooting of the airliner wasn’t, that would have been one had it persisted (though it let up after a day or so).
Don't forget: Russians enter UK to perform an assassination using a potent nerve agent (with essentially no repercussions). They do this all the time and get away with it. And like a child that doesn't get told off, they'll keep on doing it.
Though I would hope that in a hopefully civilized age such acts and war crimes would be punished prevented from happening again, I would not say there are no consequences of these actions.
Many Dutch citizens have been killed on board of MH17 - and the amount of military support to Ukraine provided by the Dutch has been quite significant.
As for Iran and North Korea - I would say some lines have been crossed there that will play out longer term, but at least it now seems to be, for some peculiar reason, easier for South Korea to ship artillery shells abroad, either directly to Ukraine or to back fill allied stocks so they can ship what they have to Ukraine.
Also I don't think Isreal/Russia relations will recover from what Iran linked terrorists did on October 7. While rather busy right now, Isreal produces some rather advanced weapon systems, one really does not want to be on the receiving end of (see the Karabakh war as an example).
Also after it became apparent Russia was behind the Vrbetice ammunition warehouse explosion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...), which killed 2 Czech citizens, the response was quite significant (on a 10 million citizen country scale):
* almost all Russian diplomats expelled (ending one of the bigger Russian embassies in EU)
* Russia was removed from the lucrative Dukovany nuclear power plant tender
* many Czech companies who still had relations from the soviet times with Russian companies stopped providing support and shipping replacement parts
- 79 MBTS + 105 more to be restored & shipped to Ukraine
- multiple mi-24 helicopter gunships
- 100+ IFVs
- dozens of self propelled guns
- Anti Shahed technicals (!)
- 10000 RPGs, 1.5+ Million Artillery, Tank And Mortar Shells, a small mountain of small arms, a big mountain of small arms ammunition
Some of this was even crowdfuded - a tank, a Tatra based MLRS system, some of the technicals. There is also an ongoing fundraiser to buy a UH-60 Black Hawk (!):
https://www.weaponstoukraine.com/kampane/cestmir
So while in reality evil is often not ended by Gandalf charging in, the same or arguable even worse result for the evildoer is often achieved over a longer time with less glorious, messy but still effective means.
Neighboring countries like Slovakia or Hungary could also state similar historical stuff (I lived through it myself) yet look at their current governments. Hungarians also had 1956 yet look at Orban
Hungary is currently hugely dependent on Russian natgas, so they're completely at Putin's mercy. Putin could have have them freeze to death at a snap of his fingers, which I'm sure was pointed out to Orban during a private audience.
Well, the Czech Republic used to get most of its natural gas from Russia as well, even very recently - mainly due to how the old eastern block pipeline network was laid out.
But it has since the switched to regasiffied LNG & rented a couple LNG terminals for it. Other European countries did the same successfully. Why Hungary can't do that as well ?
Seems more like some direct blackmail against Orban and his people to me.
I believe that Hungary is doing that as well (a quick googling reveals a bunch of projects under development and construction). However, untying themselves from Russia might take a couple of years at least.
I was frankly surprised how quickly & well it went it went for the Czech Republic & other countries. But indeed its not as easy for every country, for various reasons (that might or might not include corruption :P).
It’s not clear that Russia intended to down the drone. They were certainly harassing it, but they didn’t attack it.
As I recall, from watching the video and reading news reports, Russian fighters were flying extremely close to the drone, harassing it, and dumping fuel on it, etc. One of them got too close and collided with it while doing this.
It’s not like they attacked the drone with weapons. They presumably easily could have.
No one died. The downing may not have been intentional. Why escalate?
Like all things - wars are a combination of rational self-interest, emotions and random chance.
The action itself matters less than the consequence. The typical example is that USA gets away with shit other countries can't because nobody wants to invade usa.
My understanding is that in this particular situation - yemen is a humanitarian disaster after their civil war. Any country that invades is going to be seen as responsible for fixing that mess, and nobody wants responsibility for that.
I think the other factor is that israel is not a popular country in most of the middle east. Even if these ship attacks screw over most of the countries in that region (probably hurting egypt more than anyone else) many of the regimes in the middle east dont have a super solid grip on power and are afraid to do anything that might be seen as helping Israel (even if really they are mostly helping themselves) lest it leads to popular discontent locally. Countries further away are less keen to get involved because middle east is a continual powder-keg that nobody really wants to get sucked into.
[Im definitely not an expert on this, just one uninformed opinion]
> Like all things - wars are a combination of rational self-interest, emotions and random chance.
You’ve just hit on Clausewitz’s “wonderous yet paradoxical trinity,” which usually gets misquoted as “war is the continuation of politics by other means.”
They are very much "seen" as being responsible-- it's the reason they have 50x more news coverage of this conflict while thousands of muslims are right now dying allover africa and asia. They'll go to the grave without a peep from the international press or righteous online types.
> read it more as ‘actually holding them responsible’
What about recent events suggests Israel isn’t held, and does not hold itself, responsible for Gaza’s affairs? The principal complaint is that they’re holding themselves too responsible.
On the contrary that type of complaining and soft diplomacy does have a real effect. Israel's isolation on the world stage informs a lot of the decisions israel makes currently and has made in the past that lead to the present day.
Its not a "do this or else" sort of thing, but it definitely has had a major effect on regional politics.
Arguably one of the main causes of the current war is israel-saudi normalisation. So you could say that this yelling is so important to some factions that arab countries backing away from it triggered a major war.
Intentionally downing drones has typically not been causus belli. Iran downed a US stealth drone intentionally and seemed to have made it out with essentially no consequences.
Other than the US getting called out in front of Russia and China in front of the UN Security Council:
On 9 December 2011, Iran lodged a formal complaint to the United Nations Security Council over the UAV violating its airspace.
Iran's U.N. ambassador stated in the letter that "My government emphasizes that this blatant and unprovoked air violation by the United States government is tantamount to an act of hostility against the Islamic Republic of Iran in clear contravention of international law, in particular, the basic tenets of the United Nations Charter."
An act of war does not obligate country going to war. And an act of war is not required to start a war. Basically, wars start when in nation’s interest and can spin a reason.
One issue with cargo ships being attacked is that it is only act of war against the flag nation. The three big flag nations have no navies. I wonder if we’ll see more ships registered in countries with navies.
The other complication is that the attackers are Houti rebels. The US doesn’t want to get involved in that conflict cause they have held off Yemen government and Saudi Arabia for years.
I'm thinking that if the same thing happened in the days of the British Empire, there would be a lot of high velocity response on the way from the fine battleships of of her/his majesty battleships.
Sure, showing that you can shoot most of the missiles down or ignoring the other party might actually be the right thing in the end. But it still seems wrong when someone just starts shooting on ships on one of the main global shipping lanes. Others might might get an idea & start doing the same for whatever reason. :P
No one is going to look at this and think, "wow the US is no longer willing or able to defend naval shipping." In fact the commencement of the operation is pretty clear indication that they are doing exactly that.
The Houthis in this case are closer to kids throwing rocks at cars than a viable military force. Bringing the SWAT team to rain terror on the whole neighborhood is, as you say, likely not the best course of action.
>The Times reports: “Britain’s military is preparing to launch a wave of air strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthis…Under the plans the UK would join with the US and possibly another European country”
It depends; somewhat on the strategic situation, but also the public response. Few would consider a downed drone worth killing over (and those that would tend to be hair-on-fire types). But if something becomes a media circus, public opinion can shift rapidly. Consider for example the absurd freakout over Chinese spy balloons earlier this year - it was a convenient stick to beat the incumbent administration with during a slow news period, so it became The Most Important thing for a week.
The US War in Iraq was not due to misinformation. Misinformation may have sold it to the public, but to give the people responsible for that war a pass, as if they were just mislead, is .. well it's just covering for their actions.
> Something I'm unsure about is what does and doesn't trigger wars.
According to Clausewitz, "war is the continuation of politics through other means." A state goes to war when it believes it can achieve a political objective through force that is infeasible through diplomacy, deterrence, soft power, intimidation, etc.
The US and Russia fighting directly would be quite dangerous due to the nuclear capabilities of each, so whatever political objectives America might wish to achieve through a hot war would be (quickly) overshadowed. Thus the US has revived its Cold War stance of supporting Russia's enemies without direct involvement.
Arguably the US and Russia were already in a war (albeit fairly cold) when the drone was hit. They were in the process of maneuvering and prepare the information space.
After the drone strike, civilian support for conflict with Russia increased, and America used that increased support to put increased pressure on Russia in various places.
I read a lot of professional international relations material (but I'm not an expert in any way). IME what may differ the most between 'popular' takes on IR and professional ones is the response to incidents.
Arguably the #1 priority of professional IR is to prevent wars (with occasional exceptions, such as Russia or Hamas recently, but even they want to control when, where, and how). Wars can and do happen whether you want them or not; if you want to prevent them, good will - even on both sides - is not nearly sufficient. You need to understand the mechanisms and operate them effectively. It's not about game theory, but a very human, emotional mechanism:
The fundamental mechanism is politics. The most fundamental theory of warfare, courtesy of Carl von Clausewitz, is that it is "The continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means ...", the other means being violence. Warfare is politics, carried out through violence rather than through elections, negotiation, etc.
Another mechanism is the cycle of escalation. You'll see non-experts say, when threatened or attacked, 'we should strike back harder!': It's emotionally satisfying, it feels safer - anger helps people feel safe in danger, and attacking feels powerful; also it sells well politically for those reasons - the politician looks 'tough' and won't be called 'weak'. And here's that fundamental mechanism, politics: Experts know that a common cause of unwanted warefare is the cycle of escalation. Both sides 'strike back harder' - the other side responds just like you do - and the political machine revs higher and hotter, and, well, war is politcs - at a certain point, you can't stop the war. One diplomat I read said, 'the job of diplomacy is to prevent a B-level problem from turning into an A-level problem'.
IR professionals need to find ways to respond - to deter and at the same time for their leaders to succeed in that political machine - without escalating. For example, years ago North Korea did something threatening regarding their nuclear weapons program. I wondered how the US would respond. The US flew a nuclear-capable (but not nuclear armed) bomber from the US, over South Korea, and back to the US. There was no threat to NK from one bomber, but the message was clear - we can reach you from the US (so destroying SK will not protect you), we have vast capabilities you don't and can't stop, we also have nukes, we have a very close relationship with SK, and we are very serious.
Another mechanism that causes warfare is a lack of flexibility, a lack of options. Popular takes on IR love to urge that a 'line in the sand' or 'redline' should be drawn - another tough, angry way to feel powerful and safe. You don't see professionals say it however. For an example of why, remember early in the Syrian civil war when Assad was dropping chemical weapons on their own population. The US publicly announced a 'redline', saying use of chemical weapons would result in (I forget what). Then Assad did it anyway. Now the US was caught - they had backed themselves in to a corner with their redline, taking away their own options. Assad chose their moment to embarass the US, and in the end, the US effectively backed down and lost credibility.
If you have no options, then the other side pulls the strings; they can force you to act when, where, and how they want - and you can assume they will chose the worst possible situation for you. You'll hear professionals say that leaders want options - lots of options. That's why. If you fight or do anything, you want to do at the time, place, and with the means of your own choosing - another phrase you'll hear.
Finally, know that these very sensitive, complex mechanims tend to produce unintended consequences, and there are no take-backs. IR professionals craft responses very carefully and try to anticipate all contingencies, and then hold their breath. If your single bomb accidentally ignites the natural gas distribution network and blows up half the city, nothing will undo that. Even if they don't want to, the enemy will be compelled - by that political mechanism - to respond as if you intentionally burned down the city and killed tens of thousands of civilians, and now you have a possible war and an enemy for generations.
Hope that helps. I wish HN had some professionals in that field to chime in here.
> Another mechanism that causes warfare is a lack of flexibility, a lack of options. Popular takes on IR love to urge that a 'line in the sand' or 'redline' should be drawn - another tough, angry way to feel powerful and safe. You don't see professionals say it however.
One of the two biggest global superpowers, the PRC, bombastically announces a dozen or so redlines per year.
Yes, it's troubling. Also, nationalism might be the leading political mechanism that results in warfare; many blamed it for WWII. China was, at least for years, fanning its flames. It makes me wonder what they are up to, or who is making decisions.
Other countries world-wide, especially right-wing movements in them, have also been fanning nationalist flames. We know well what the outcome often is.
Why do you say that? To me, it just seems like more neo-reactionary rhetoric. It couldn't be that democracy, international institutions (such as the UN), etc. have changed the world - that we built a better world. That would be a threat to reactionaryism.
Those institutions, including the UN and the rules-based international order, were built by the people who fought WWI and WWII, specifically to prevent future war. We can say that they got the outcome they aimed at, an historic acheivement. We live at the most peaceful time in history, including for non-nuclear states.
They built that - at the end of WWII when many despaired of humanity - and we have the institutions, playbook, everything. Why would we throw that away? Why aren't we building on that for the next generation, just like they did? We almost can't be stopped if we choose to do it; only if we inexplicably quit. Who would want us to do that?
> Why aren't we building on that for the next generation, just like they did?
What actions do you consider productive contributions to peace and preventing war? What aren't we doing, that was done before. What does quitting look like?
> it just seems like more neo-reactionary rhetoric. It couldn't be that democracy, international institutions (such as the UN), etc. have changed the world - that we built a better world.
Maybe you are right and it is the institutions that changed the world, but I find it odd that you attribute causality to actions following the war, and not the war itself.
What if the rebalancing of national power and massive loss of life is what actually lead to peace, and all this discussion of institutions is just noise and fluff.
> What if the rebalancing of national power and massive loss of life is what actually lead to peace, and all this discussion of institutions is just noise and fluff.
I think it would be delusional the think that war never results in peace. History is full of countless violent conflicts, revolutions, separations that were followed by relative peace. Of course that doesn't mean that going to war is a good thing.
>we have the institutions, playbook, everything. Why would we throw that away? Why aren't we building on that for the next generation, just like they did? We almost can't be stopped if we choose to do it; only if we inexplicably quit. Who would want us to do that?
It seems like you think there are clear and obvious solutions to conflict. Im asking what those are? Do you think they are working? why or why not?
What is the obvious playbook solution for resolving Ukraine or Gaza conflicts that we threw away instead of following?
> Why do you say that? To me, it just seems like more neo-reactionary rhetoric. It couldn't be that democracy, international institutions (such as the UN), etc. have changed the world - that we built a better world. That would be a threat to reactionaryism.
Because it’s the significant thing that has changed.
We’ve always had political institutions, and it’s clear how useful those have historically been at preventing war.
What we haven’t had is the ability to destroy entire countries (and likely the world) at the press of a button.
It’s not that I consider it desirable that that is the main reason, but I do consider it likely.
An extreme example of this is WW1. Its somewhat reductionist to ascribe the cause to "The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand", but there's a very clear path from that to the outbreak of war.
Yes, tensions were high, yes the countries were all predicting a war, and yes all were rearming at a furious rate, but ultimately one event was the trigger, and its hard to see how war could have been averted by that point.
So the assassination might not have been the outright cause, but it was certainly the spark struck on a very big pile of very dry tinder.
At the moment in the middle east there seems to be a strong desire by lots of actors not to get sucked in to what us now 3 major conflicts in the region. Lets hope that holds.
> it's hard to see how war could have been averted by that point
when you read the day-by-day activity leading up to the war, you see plenty of missed opportunities. Czar Nicholas, especially, could have NOT mobilized. Wilhelm could have told Austria NOT to declare on Serbia. And Wilhelm could have said to his generals, "You know what? We're not attacking Belgium" in which case England stays out. At least for a while.
Of course they were weak people who'd allowed themselves to be put in that position, so in that sense they perceived no choices.
> Of course they were weak people who'd allowed themselves to be put in that position, so in that sense they perceived no choices.
What is the basis for saying it's weakness? The point is, it might have been politically impossible for them to do otherwise.
As an extreme example, after Pearl Harbor could FDR have said, 'we're going to let Japan get away with it'? No, he'd be impeached and removed from office, and someone else would have taken the US into the war. Politics is the ultimate power, not Nicholas, not Wilhelm.
Political power is often intangible, so it's easy to deny it from the sideline, but there's no doubt about its force.
Yes, j guess that's my point. Certainly individuals "could" have said or done anything. But politically, either personally or nationally, the outcomes were going in one direction.
Russia has an alliance with Serbia. Not mobilising would have had significant international repercussions.
Perhaps Germany could have removed the blank-cheque support for Austria. That may have de-escalated things, but may have left Germany unaligned, and thus vulnerable.
Occasionally a domino doesn't fall, but all too often, if you set them up right, they do what they do best.
> Russia has an alliance with Serbia. Not mobilising would have had significant international repercussions
Russia was in no state to fight a war. They lost a war to a second tier global power and not so long and barely survived a major revolution (which was hardly over). Negotiating with Austria/Germany and forcing Serbia to give up the people responsible for the assassination would’ve been the only reasonable choice.
Instead the tsar being the incompetent idiot (understatement that man was truly special…) that he was decided to sacrifice his entire family and million of Russians (not that he cared) and destroy the Russian state itself.
Same might be said about the kaiser Wilhelm, but:
1. Germany actually stood a chance
2. Wasn’t on the brink of a complete political/social collapse like Russia at the time
Except nobody attacked or even threatened Russia and Germany so it’s not really comparable to Pearl Harbor at all.
There was really nothing or almost nothing to gain and everything to lose for all the aides involved in WW1. So I’d say it was stupidity rather than weakness. Relatively to its scale it was probably the most pointless war in human history.
The things it achieved, end of monarchy in Central/Eastern Europe and the eventual collapse of global European empires are not something the people who started it ever wanted.
I think it's very easy to sit at a computer in 2023 and type that, dismissing all the forces involved as 'stupidity' (including and especially, the politics). We learn nothing about the reality of such things and doom ourselves to ignorance and then actual stupidity.
> Another mechanism that causes warfare is a lack of flexibility, a lack of options.
That is very true but my conclusion is the opposite. US diplomacy did everything to not create options for Russia. Everything the US did deepened the impression that the invasion would be a walk in the part for Russia and US will do nothing. Russia had just one option left - to attack.
If US had rapidly moved a division into Ukraine for joint exercises when Russia started to threaten at the end of 2021 then it would have created options for Russia.
Look, the situation was not like don't go down this alley, it's dangerous, it was like you are surrounded by Russian crooks who want to kill you, only a miracle could save you.
It was clear in December 2021 that Russia WILL attack Ukraine - multiple countries started preparations based on this. Preparations that ended up being crucial for Ukrainian survival but US (or NATO) decisive action could have averted the war as it was also clear that Russia is not willing to fight with US or NATO - this could have been the saving miracle.
The Russian plan was a Blitzkrieg to overtake Ukraine in weeks and then threaten US and NATO with nuclear war when they plan to react.
This plan would have fallen apart when they should have attacked US or NATO forces to begin with.
Like I told, Russia had only one option left at the end of 2021 - attack Ukraine. There was no go home option on the table because they had talked themselves out of it. Now if option to attack Ukraine would have switched to attack US and NATO then most likely they would have reconsidered the go home option more seriously and chosen that instead.
Read the journals and think tank publications - people get intimidated by the idea, but it's actually not difficult, especially after you become accustomed to it. If you read HN, these publications fit right in, in terms of complexity.
As with every field, you will discover a different plane of existence for knowledge, like people from an arid continent discovering another with far richer, deeper, more productive soil, with more vivid and interesting flora. You can't even describe it to people who haven't been there, who have never left their arid land (most of the Internet) and can't imagine a better world; they don't understand. (An example is going from newspaper science journalism to reading the journals Nature and Science.) It's sad - one of the great boons of the Internet is that now, all that wonderful knowledge is at humanity's fingertips, and instead they stay in their arid world (with floods of mis/disinformation added to it).
The general rule (with anything) is that the greater the latency, the better the information: Continuously updated (eg social media, cable news) publications aren't as rich in knowledge (or as accurate) as daily ones, which aren't as good as weekly, ..., which aren't as good as books. Don't get caught up in the daily cycle; get ahead of it - far ahead of it - by first reading the 'high-latency' publications and fitting in low-latency where you can.
---- Journals
* A good place to start is Foreign Affairs, written for professionals and what I'll call the serious public, and written by leading experts and practitioners, from US presidents and cabinet secretaries to leading diplomats to academic experts. Published quarterly.
* Another good one is Political Science Quarterly, with serious papers written by political scientists for the public. It has much more than IR, but that material is also fantastic. Stop reading everything else and pick up PSQ.
* You can find lists of the leading academic IR journals by impact. Just like in the natural sciences, there are journals where the big discoveries are published, specialised ones, etc. Look them up and see what fits your interests.
* The most valuable use of time, IME, is to read the book reviews in the journals: You learn about the leading books and ideas in IR, and from the expert reviewer you get another point of view, context, and they will talk about yet more perspectives. Also, what experts say in passing, the knowledge they've internatlized, can be the most valuable to the amatuer.
---- Think tanks
Anyone can call themselves a 'think tank', so you need to be careful. Some have tremendous expertise and seriously pursue creating and disseminating valuable knowledge. Some are the pet project of someone with some cash to spend. Some are holding tanks for experts whose party is out of power - they rotate between political office and think tanks, depending on who wins the election. Some are created to cynically provide intellectual cover for political and ideological groups - conclusions are predetermined by political leaders, the 'think tank' just finds ways to give it intellectual legitimacy (Heritage comes to mind). Many are bought and paid for by donors, including foreign powers (e.g. the Saudis), or by relationships with a particular government.
Material from good think tanks can be invaluable, making the analysis you read in even the best newspapers (even the NYT, etc.) obsolete. For the 'intellectual cover' ones, you can see their effectiveness when their talking points are repeated in newspaper op-eds, and then by your friends and neighbors (and HN commenters), and then become common 'wisdom'.
IIRC the University of Pennsylvania publishes a guide to think tanks, which might be a good starting point. Among the leading think tanks in IR are Brookings, CSIS, Chatham House (UK), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Washington Institute (for the Mideast - biased, but great info).
Finally, be sure to find think tanks in other countries, for completely different perspectives. Australia, for example, is English-speaking, has sophisticated IR, but is so geopolitically far from other English-speaking countries (almost all in NATO) that you can get a very different and eye-opening perspective, especially about China.
---- Daily analysis
Foreign Policy, which seems to cater to the Washington diplomatic community, can be pretty good. But again, beware the low-latency trap - it's not nearly as rich in knowledge as the journals and think tanks, IMHO.
There's also Defense One and Breaking Defense, which aim at professionals and the industry. Beyond newsy items, they have essays from leading experts, and analysis on a different level than even the NYT, etc. The defense industry is enormous, and my impression is that you can much more easily find material aimed at it than the tiny diplomatic 'industry'. But miltiary is just a means of IR, and there is much overlap - including in trying to prevent warfare.
Thank you - really - for such an in-depth reply. I was aware of Foreign Affairs, but I didn't know of any of the other publications you mentioned. This is invaluable.
This book explains when wars serve national policy. For example, authoritarian states who failed to handle the Pandemic would also strongly suggest a tragedy must unfold to retain power.
"The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" ( 2011, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith )
These vehicles do typically not "belong" to a traditional nation state. They are typically operating from (= registered in) some tax haven (Bahamas, Caymans, etc). This particular ship, I don't know.
It can be argued that the owner in this case is Danish (the Maersk Company has it's HQ in Denmark), but then again they are a publicly traded company and as such the ownership has multiple nationalities.
The military responses are difficult to predict because most of the time the headlining events only provide casus belli for plans that are already in motion but kept secret for strategic reasons. They're the sparks that politicians use to justify their actions abroad and at home because few people want to die for unrighteous causes but they're a sideshow to the planning and logistics that goes on to prepare for war. Predicting when war begins requires being in tune with the internal realpolitik of both sides which is unrealistic for most people.
Game theory is useless if you don't understand the interests of all the relevant players in a polity and even in an authoritarian regime like Russia or Saudi Arabia there are a LOT of them.
> Game theory is useless if you don't understand the interests of all the relevant players in a polity and even in an authoritarian regime like Russia or Saudi Arabia there are a LOT of them.
Game theory can be applied to infer interests when behavior and context are known as well as to predict behavior when interests and context are known (it can also be used to infer hidden elements of context when interests and behavior are known.)
So, no, its not strictly useless when interests are unknown.
Its no more ivory tower wishful thinking for the other applications than for predicting behavior; they are all idealized in that one never has certain knowledge in any of everything relevant in any of the dimensions.
> they are all idealized in that one never has certain knowledge in any of everything relevant in any of the dimensions.
Which is why it's particularly useless for geopolitics. It's literally the furthest you can get from "idealized" anything - far more so than plain sociology, economics, or psychology. It's the global sum of all of the most unpredictable traits of humanity. It's one of the messiest human pursuits and always has been.
It's a nice "cows are spherical" approximation to write papers about but game theory really ain't that great at predicting basic human behavior either. Except like with evolutionary biology you can always come up with a "just-so" game theoretic story that sounds right but has no real predictive ability.
similar to math, just because you dont know all the variable to solve an equation, doesnt mean it is useless. It is a tool to study the interactions and possible solutions, inferring some and ruling out others.
Just because cows aren't spherical doesn't mean it is useful to act as though the world is devoid of physics, random and inscrutable.
We're not talking about an extra variable here or there, we're talking about the equivalent to string theory which is famously intractable. It's an n-body problem where n = ?????? and you don't know any of the boundary conditions.
It's not random and inscrutable, but it sure isn't conducive to naive academic analyses like game theory. Just because you can model something simple, doesn't mean you can predict something as complicated as reality. The science of biology, sociology, psychology, and economics have proven that over and over again - geopolitics is all of those combined and more.
maybe there is a disconnect on what we call prediction. There is more than enough information to predict if China would be in favor or against US building a military base in Taiwan. There isn't enough information to predict what Xi Jinping will have for breakfast.
There's definitely a disconnect because if that's the best example of a game theoretic prediction, I stand by my statement that game theory is useless in geopolitics.
What would China's first concrete move be after it's final final warning [1]? Which faction in the party would have most influence over Xi Jinping in such an event and how much influence do they have over the military? How much would China be willing to compromise it's status as a trading partner with the West if push comes to shove? Those would be useful predictions that can be acted on.
China's final warning meme is actually very illustrative. The context is PRC was both warning and doing - actively attempting to shoot down TW / US based U2s despite having limited capabilities. The chefs kiss that this is an USSR meme is that PRC end up shooting down more U2s using modified soviet hardware than USSR herself. Even more so when consider PRC issued final warning to USSR that ended up in border skirmishes. PRC's actual final warning is "don't say we didn't warn you" has been predictative of PRC kinetic action with near certainty. USSR/India border skirmishes. Korean war against UN. PRC also has directly supported North Vietnam against the French, and threatened UK when they hinted at granting HK independence under Thatcher. That's every NPT nuclear state over territorial/security issues less important than TW. It doesn't always lead to immediate action, but has consistently been prelude to it.
Your reasoning seems to assume the U.S. has near-infinite power to wage war. Rather, right now the U.S. is stretched thin in Middle Eastern waters. They can't move their ships far from where they have them already without major strategic sacrifices.
That drone was most likely downed because of plain incompetence by the Russian pilot. In such a case there's no point in "rewarding" the Russian propagandists with a similar response.
What would a military response look like? I am not an expert in this area, but it seems to me if it got really bad, the US might send commandos to coordinate air strikes.
The proxy was in Yemen has been going on for almost 10 years. US just doesn’t want to be a direct part of that mess and the Saudis don’t want to damage their rapprochement with Iran.
I’m not sure though if a Saudi-Iran-Russia axis would be in anyone’s interest. So maybe bombing the Houthis and trying to drag SA back into the war wouldn’t be the worst idea ever (if everyone just ignores the civilian suffering which is generally quite easy).
Because events never cause wars. Countries want war and then they wait for an inciting event to go in.
The US wants a war with Russia without putting boots on the ground. Ukraine was a convieinient excuse.
9/11 triggered a war with random middle eastern countries that the US wanted to invade anyway.
If Cuba downed a large cargo ship, then the US will have annexed it before midnight. If China downs one in South China sea, the US might keep it quiet because neither country wants a violent escalation into war just yet.
War is premeditated. The inciting event is just the excuse.
> The US wants a war with Russia without putting boots on the ground. Ukraine was a convieinient excuse
If that was true, the us wouldn’t be still dragging their feet two years into the war on arming the Ukrainians with air and long range strike capabilities. It took long enough for Bradley’s and artillery to be delivered.
>The US wants a war with Russia without putting boots on the ground. Ukraine was a convieinient excuse.
This is a complete fiction. The defense apparatus was in the process of shifting its focus from the middle east to China when this broke out. It is making the preparations for a pacific war much harder.
Sibling commenters saying US did not want to provoke a war with Russia are being biased imo. US drew a line in the sand, or kept pushing on the issue for Ukraine to NOT promise it would never join NATO. These are facts. Whether that justifies Russia invading parts of Ukraine is the debatable part.
Hint, when you hear the mainstream media constantly repeating a slogan or phrase nearly unanimously, there's probably something that language is hiding. I'm thinking about how all media called the war "unprovoked". Well, that isn't entirely true, and is some US propaganda/face-saving measure.
> Whether that justifies Russia invading parts of Ukraine is the debatable part
No it isn’t? When America invaded Vietnam to keep it from going communist, that didn’t make Ho Chi Minh and his backers war mongerers. And it didn’t mean that we were provoked. We went to war to achieve the political objective of containing communism. We were the aggressors.
With Ukraine, Russia’s political objectives were unclear. The stated ones, about NATO expansion, have backfired. But just because Moscow was stupid doesn’t also mean it was absolutely the aggressor.
>The stated ones, about NATO expansion, have backfired. But just because Moscow was stupid doesn’t also mean it was absolutely the aggressor.
I dont think you can stake this claim without understanding the objectives, the resolution of the war, and especially exploring the counterfactual from the Russian perspective.
It is easy to sit and the west and imagine that Russia regrets its actions deep down, but as bad as this outcome is, I think you have to ask if there are even worse outcomes that were considered from inaction.
This is a separate question from those about morality or aggressors, but one of realpolitik incentives.
Conversely, you can ask the same questions about the US failed wars in Vietnam and the middle east. Obviously many or most objectives were not met, but were enough met to better the counterfactual?
> It is easy to sit and the west and imagine that Russia regrets its actions deep down, but as bad as this outcome is, I think you have to ask if there are worse outcomes that were considered even worse from inaction.
I agree. Russia does not regret anything. Russia was carrying out genocide in Chechenya in late 1990s and early 2000s while the west was giving them free money in the form of development aid. The invasion of Georgia didn't see any reprecussions either, nor did the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 see any meaningful response.
If the west retreats, then this once again validates their strategy of expanding Russia with regional wars, and they will attack Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland next.
The western fear of escalation is escalating the wars, because it lowers the risk for Russia.
The us doesn't want war with Russia. The US wants Russia to engage in the international world order peacefully. The US didn't invade Russia. Ukraine literally begs the US for help. Ukraine had a popular uprising against their pro Russia government because the people wanted to join the EU.
I had a more charitable reading of GP's comment: supposing, hypothetically, the US wanted a proxy war against Russia, it didn't have to "trick" Russia. This is a perfectly valid rebuttal to GP's parent imo, especially because GP's GP never suggested US "tricked" anything.
> If China downs one in South China sea, the US might keep it quiet because neither country wants a violent escalation into war just yet.
>> just yet
No, sorry. Neither country wants a war. Full stop. I despise this tendentious reading of normal tension between two major world powers as a claim that war's going to break out. It's dangerous fear-mongering.
If the US was actually trying for moderate appeasement, it would have advocated for a militarily neutral Ukraine, and independence referendums in eastern Ukraine.
Total appeasement would have been taking an isolationist position, ignoring the situation entirely, and not being dragged into the war.
It is indisputable that the US didn't choose either of those options because it has incentives and interests that favor the current war over those outcomes. Reasonable people can discuss and debate what exactly those interests are (geoploticial, moral, economic, ect), and if they agree.
> If the US was actually trying for moderate appeasement, it would have advocated for a militarily neutral Ukraine, and independence referendums in eastern Ukraine.
Why?
There was no genuine independence movement in eastern Ukraine. It was a Russian military operation right from the start, led by their security services. Russians have a long history of establishing such fake countries on the territory of other countries through special operations, and then invade to "support" them. And then those happy "liberated" people hold another referendum at gunpoint and choose to join Russia. And Russia gladly annexes those territories, exterminates local population and replaces with Russians.
Ignoring the increasing hostility from Russia since mid-1990s and downplaying Eastern European security concerns was already appeasement. Russia invaded Georgia and half a year later Clinton was offering Russians a symbolic restart button like a lapdog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset
It was an open invitation to continue down the path and invade Ukraine in 2014, as was Obama's refusal to provide lethal aid, and Biden's declaration that he would not put boots on the ground in Ukraine. Each step decreased uncertainties and risks for Russians.
IF that is the case, than an credible election should be a landslide. It would demonstrate commitment to democratic self determination, which I think should be a global baseline.
I have never been to Ukraine, so dont claim a any definitive knowledge of what people do an don't want.
However, I do have immigrant friends from eastern Ukraine with family there with many grievances against the central government, so I believe the real situation is at least complex.
Eastern Ukraine had no independence movement before Russians invaded and created an illusion that one existed, to fool western observers into believing that it was some kind of "complex" local conflict and not a clear-cut foreign invasion.
After the invasion, under foreign occupation, referendums are illegitimate. How do you expect people to vote when any sign of loyalty to Ukraine can get you and your family imprisoned or executed? Voting doesn't matter anyway, because the military admin will falsify results according to their needs.
Not to mention that Russians in Ukraine don't have any legitimate claim to sovereignty in the first place. International law does not recognize the right of a random group of people to declare sovereignty. Otherwise Koreatowns and latino neighbourhoods in every US city would declare sovereignty and stop paying taxes to US authorities.
I agree that vates would not make sense in the current state post conflict and invasion.
Im talking about what what could have been an US position pre-invasion. Alternatively, the US could advocate for return to Ukraine followed by a vote, or UN adminstration pending a vote.
>Not to mention that Russians in Ukraine don't have any legitimate claim to sovereignty in the first place. International law does not recognize the right of a random group of people to declare sovereignty. Otherwise Koreatowns and latino neighbourhoods in every US city would declare sovereignty and stop paying taxes to US authorities.
What about Ukrainians in Ukraine, do they have a right to sovereignty? Americans in US cities?
I think all legitimate resident citizens have a natural right to self determination. After all, they aren't serfs or slaves. I agree there are some practical limitations on the minimum size, given the current state of government and technology.
Seeing how Putin cannot be appeased, his war with Ukraine is a pretty convenient outcome for the US. Ukraine, with some limited help from NATO countries, is doing a huge bleeding of Russian military potential. This, for a mere cost of a couple dozens of billions, seriously knocks back US's main rival in the Europe regions. As long as US wants to have any influence in Europe at all, this was is very advantageous for them.
Not enough, hence a lot of DoD logistics is now done on civilian shipping via Maritime Partners program. Including Maersk who was dropping DoD contracts in September, the few ships on contract by DoD in region was refusing to go a couple weeks ago even with US escorts. The big revelation is Houthis has demonstrated US Transportation Command / US military's sealift ability is being challenged by small time Iranian proxy, so good luck on an IndoPac campaign against PRC. At least in terms of optics, feasibility of US DoD maritime logistics especially in protracted war looks to be in atrocious state. Regardless, the problem isn't really how many ships US owns, irrespective of flag - US can buy all the ships if they have to. Issue is US doesn't maintain enough dedicated personel for bulk of military transport (primarily due to working conditions despite being paid well), so they rely on civilian shipping, and it's start to look like civilian shipping increasingly uncertain of US ability to protect in SLOC choke points against TBF not particularly modern weapons.
> The big revelation is Houthis has demonstrated US Transportation Command / US military's sealift ability is being challenged by small time Iranian proxy, so good luck on an IndoPac campaign against PRC.
This is pretty common takeaway from martime analysts. 90% of US transport command missions are run by commercial operators. Maersk contracted DoD vessels refused to transit red sea pre Prosperity Guardian when they already had USN escorts is pretty big red flag on US ability to rely on civilian shipping (and air) for protracted conflict. And right now a lot of rear logistics has been outsourced to civilian sector, frequently international crew, whose interests are not always aligned with US DoD. And since they're civilian, and frequently not American, US can't leverage/pressure them to go into active war zones. Some of civilian shipping is run by US agencies, but again civilian with retention issues. They might get drafted but overall there's large margin of uncertainty on current model of US sealift if Houthis can disrupt so much.
> Maersk contracted DoD vessels refused to transit red sea pre Prosperity Guardian when they already had USN escorts is pretty big red flag on US ability to rely on civilian shipping (and air) for protracted conflict.
A protracted conflict would involve significantly more pressure from the US government to comply. There's nothing so critical right now they need to make a big fuss with Maersk. If we go to war with someone like China, shipping's not going to get to opt out of transits of the Red Sea. That's what stuff like the Defense Production Act are for.
US has dramatically less ability to pressure NON-US crew on NON-US vessels to go on even more suicidal mission in peer war. That's what large segments of the outsourced 90% sealift is coming from. Non-Americans whom US gov have little pressure and can't draft to do military logistics missions during a war. Defense Production Act doesn't apply to them - and with respect to purely DoD/domestic sealift, the issue is US currently lacks significant amount of American hulls and American sailors to fulfill DoD logistics. Both of which has multi year lead time.
The other 10% that's firmly under US control is military sealift command, which is around 130 ships. The concern isn't shipping not going through red sea in protracted PRC scenario - it's if 90% of US DoD logistics capacity won't go to Japan, Korea, Philippines, even Guam etc. Like how DoD contracted Maersk ships initially weren't going up the red sea to presumably supply US interests in region. And now that another Maersk ship got hit, they're doing another 48 hour pause to reevaluate. US needs all the logistics to operate smoothly in a peer war. Not be uncertain whether 90% of military sealift will evaporate because private interest doesn't align with US foreign policy. Even worse considering alterantive is waiting a few years for Defense Production Act to buy/build new ships and train new sailors.
The US isn't protecting its own ships, in particular. They are protecting international trade, on which they are highly dependant (like almost everyone but North Korea).
What makes you say that? At least, a significant amount of world trade passes through there, and the US is dependent on economies of its trading partners and of the world in general.
If you mean, not many countries ship directly to the US via the Suez Canal, I can imagine that. Europeans sail west across the Atlantic, East Asians sail east across the Pacific. India, perhaps, might go west through the Canal, but I don't know that the US imports much material goods from India (lots of services, of course).
What makes me say that is the fact that none of the top US trading partners are in that region. Almost all of our overseas trade is on Atlantic and Pacific routes, very little through the Suez Canal.
There aren't rules. Casus Belli will be manufactured if war is desired and if not then these acts are ignored and the respectable media will dutifully keep it suppressed.
Right now the US security apparatus is trying its damnedest to maintain the illusion of invincibility by avoiding serious humiliation. Civilian leadership has prioritized ideological orientation over lethality for at least two decades. This is good if you're scared of a coup that would kick out all the ideologues who've made their long march through the institutions since Wilson, but a disaster if you want to win an armed conflict.
That said civilian leadership behaves like a mafia that protects good-fellas and keeps the competent out of leadership shows in how The State Department has miscalculated and mismanaged delicate situations with disappointing consistency from Benghazi to Venezuela to the completely laughable strategy of trying to overcome the Russian Federation with social shaming and loss of access to financial institutions as if Vladimir Putin was some naughty YouTuber they could cancel for an off-color joke.
The Federal Reserve can't print artillery shells. Ukraine has made it clear that combined arms doctrine and NATO weapon systems 10× the cost of their competitors' is a paper tiger. Empires have a shelf life.
Completely disregarding which president is in office, I always thought the paradoxical way to minimise war is to ensure you have a credible threat of retaliation. That means if you are attacked, you must fight back, otherwise your credibility falls and you become more of a target, thus emboldening adversaries and increasing violence.
The problem with this sort of logic is that it becomes incredibly easy to bait states into disproportionate responses that end up as strategic failures - either due to bad PR or deploying force against decoy attacks and leaving holes in places that matter.
There are a lot of ways to prevent wars. That’s just one.
- Promises not to go to war
- Reduction of armaments
- Machinery for the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations
- Economic penalties against aggressors
War doctrine is a very complicated subject, as is even the definition of war in modernity.
What causes a nation to declare war is unclear and difficult to reliably determine, but there is often a period or circumstances of instability or a immoral act that precipitates them.
The US appears to be going into a period of isolation and the world without global shipping protection is going to look radically different.
Judging by the declaration of war against Ukraine by Russia, it appears an underappreciated aspect of the equation is equal measures of senility and insanity.
There are many other powers that a nation might have other than nuclear ability, and having nukes does not actually grant any of those other powers. North Korea, for example, may have nuclear weapons, but they have little diplomatic power, little economic power, little ability to project power, etc. The word "superpower" is typically used to describe a country that dominates many different types of these powers.
As far as we know North Korea doesn’t have the capability to hit any target in the world (like US, UK, France and Russia) or enough nukes to blow up half of the world. So hardly comparable
That might be a necessary condition, but definitely not a sufficient one to be considered a superpower. Simple thought experiment, "completely erasing" the US as you suggest would render the Earth unpleasant to live on, for a while, for all inhabitants.
yes, that's why they remain a superpower. If you have the ability to make life on earth extremely unpleasant for all of humanity, that's super power status. Even just having nuclear weapons isn't enough for that- you need large numbers of fusion bombs -- which Russia has, and the US has, and no one else does.
No, this is just not correct. Being a superpower requires, at a minimum, being able to win a conventional war with a state lacking nuclear weapons. The reason for that is that nuclear weapons cannot actually be used in practice. They can only serve as a deterrent to not be attacked.
They seems to have some highly suicidal tendencies and really don’t mind massive casualties these days (e.g. 5x more Russian died in Ukraine in just 2 years than during the entire 10 year long Soviet war in Afghanistan).
So one has to double whether they live in the same reality as most people in the west which makes them pretty scary and unpredictable
> the approach of just overwhelming Ukraine with relentless numbers could be effective
Is unclear at this moment. It only matters how much of this 34M/150M people are in an accurate age/sex to fight. Putin wouldn't survive a move to force massively women to enlist in the army, and Russia had yet a demographics problem. One million of youngsters exiled and are unavailable to became hamburgers.
Also Russia is trying to kill anybody in that 35M of people but Ukraine mostly fight only the Russian soldiers. I bet that each Ukrainian soldier had killed yet more than five Russian soldiers at the current meatwave ratio.
You can read this the other way. Russia is so inferior to the US that something like the downing of a drone does not necessitate a response. If it's clear that you can and will act when and where you want, then responding to the bellicose actions of a lesser advisary is ... beneath you.
Once again we see "blowback" in action. Here's the cycle:
1. A major power backs a side in an internal struggle for their own end. If necessary, a conflict is manufactured by propping up rebels, a coup, etc;
2. The other side, which tends to be the internally popular side, resists. Because of that popular support, they can survive, thrive and grow;
3. Insurgencies are incredibly effective. Counter-insurgencies are incredibly difficult. The insurgents are fighting for their lives. The boots on the ground for the major power backed forces don't tend to want to be there;
4. Reactionary forces are seen by the besieged populace as emancipatory forces;
5. When the resolve of the major power breaks or there is simply a policy shift, the unpopular government crumbles and is replaced by those reactionary forces. Classic example: the fundamentalist Iranian revolution of 1979. Go and look at what Iran was like before the 1953 coup.
6. Those former insurgents become a regional thorn in the side for that major power for decades to come;
7. The major power, unwilling to commit militarily, responds with economic sanctions. This does little more than starve people and kill people due to lack of medicine. But th eregime survives. It can even be strengthened as the citizens blame the major power for their plight.
The Saudis committed genocide in Yemen. For years. And the world ignored it. They used US-supplied weapons to do it. At any time, the US could've ended Saudi atrocities in Yemen with a phone call.
And now the Houthi rebels have become battle-hardened guerillas and insurgents, capable of projecting force into the vital shipping lanes of the Red Sea. Drones have become incredibly cheap, to the point that a ragtag group will tie up a US carrier group who will try to enforce security, much like they have done with, say, Somali pirates.
The US carrier group may even adequately suppress the Houthis but this is attrition and Houthi investment is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost to the US.
The last two decades saw a massive change in drone use by the military. It was always just a matter of time before that military technology filtered down to insurgents and it's going to have a massive effect.
We saw this in Afghanistan in the 1970s when US-supplied Stinger missiles completely changed the battlefield as they rendered Soviet gunships ineffective at an incredibly low cost.
This isn't a statement supporting the Houthis (or even denoucning them). It's simply an analysis of the pattern that has played out many times, particularly since WW2.
> And now the Houthi rebels have become battle-hardened guerillas and insurgents, capable of projecting force into the vital shipping lanes of the Red Sea.
Their ability to attack the red sea has nothing to do with being "battle-hardened". They can only do so because Iran decides to supply them with missiles.
Regardless where they get their weapons, Ansar Allah is a battle-hardened, professional fighting force. They have fought the powerful Saudi military to a stalemate. Not a group we should be underestimating.
We were promised a victory many times thanks to the overwhelming power and sophistication western weapons repeatedly. Not "hold off Russia for 2-3 years, not fight to a standstill". Victory and a return to 1991 borders after first severing the land bridge to Crimea. It was a very specific prediction.
To say that they havent lived up to their promise is an understatement given how abysmally they performed in the summer offensive. Vehicles failed especially badly, but the whole ensemble failed categorically for all the world to see.
I dont see how this can be spun as a stalemate or a win and I dont see the demo winning western arms manufacturers any new customers. It also looks like previously intimidated US opponents like the Houthis and Venezuela are also suddenly a lot less intimidated.
If you can find an article from may 2023 that accurately predicts that ukraine could end the offensive with less land than it started off with Id like to see it.
There's more doom and gloom now of course. The failure is hard to ignore.
> an article from may 2023 that accurately predicts that ukraine could end the offensive with less land than it started off with
Everyone I read made predictions conditional on aid, specifically, long-range strike capability and air defence.
Here is Phillips O’Brien on 28 May: “Ukraine has had to fight this war under a series of great handicaps. Its aid has been often technologically limited and always politically limited by NATO countries, primarily the US, with the goal of preventing Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil. By compelling Ukraine to fight almost exclusively on its own soil, Russia has been handled a major asymetric advantage…Ukraine has has to fight this war with one hand tied behind its back while Russia has been given a major advantage in not having to use many resources to defend its own border with Ukraine.”
Which makes sense. That is the operating variable. We didn’t provide that aid in time. So Ukraine mostly held ground. (Breaching the Dnipr and pushing Russia so far back from Sevastopol that its blockade enforcement is now poorer than the Houthis’ should not be understated.)
If you’re seriously following this issue, stay clear of Yahoo! News and ad-funded sources. They’re mostly mouthpieces for influencing domestic aid deliberations. At any given time, you can find sources confidently predicting imminent success and imminent defeat.
>Everyone I read made predictions conditional on aid
Ok and once the aid numbers were published how many of them predicted that Ukraine would end the offensive with less land than it started?
>If you’re seriously following this issue, stay clear of Yahoo! News and ad-funded sources. They’re mostly mouthpieces
Im obviously talking about what the mouthpieces said - what the average person on hacker news will have read and believed.
My sources nailed it. They made fairly specific predictions, most of which came true with a smallish margin of error. They've been predicting a Ukrainian collapse some time between mid 2024 - beginning of 2025 for the last several months.
> We were promised a victory many times thanks to the overwhelming power and sophistication western weapons repeatedly.
You will always be promised victory. I’ve yet to find the first general that preaches defeat.
Anyhow, for the fact that they have to do with a mishmash of whatever they can scrounge up from the allied nations and then use equipment they’re unfamiliar with and barely trained in, I’m kind of happy with the results?
Of course it’s a far cry from a win, but that was always kind of unreasonable to expect.
This things take time. If Churchill would have been rushed to "have a victory in two years in WWII or we'll quit", everybody in Europe would be a nazi today.
This just isn't true. In 2014 the motivation and training of Ukraine's forces was so poor that when encountering the enemy, absent any orders, most would lay down their weapons and join the other side. The majority of the Navy defected. Some western training was received from 2014 to 2020, but the most effective fighters were volunteers who had trained themselves and fought the Enemy completely outside the control of Ukraine's armed forces.
This is like WWII. Hitler also seemed winning at first. He even took the capital. Eventually thanks to allies though Hitler was defeated. In the end USSR lost twice as many millions of its people so in terms of human cost the win was dubious.
The difference is that right now Putler already lost 2x+ as many people as Zelensky, and could not manage to capture the capital. Which was promised how many times? I vaguely remember at first it was "take Kyiv in 3 days", but it's been so long I am forgetting ;)
More than 2x. The people that quit Russia should be included in this count. They are unavailable as soldiers, and having seen the video carnage from the other side and the meat wave tactics will not return voluntarily. For army purposes they are not much different than wounded soldiers lying in an hospital.
Ukraine lost millions of people also, but some of the people that quit Ukraine returned later to fight. At some point both countries will just pivot to start recruiting volunteers overseas.
One side is raising conscription from 40-43. One side is asking women to register for conscription. One side is saying that they need to conscript half a million citizens to replenish losses.
The other side as yet has only called up reservists and recruited volunteers.
Which side would you say is which based upon the losses you have counted?
> One side is raising conscription from 40-43. One side is asking women to register for conscription. One side is saying that they need to conscript half a million citizens to replenish losses.
You can say I'm wrong, fake news and Ukraine suffered more losses. If we pretend it's true, mobilising the entire country makes Ukraine look even more like USSR in WWII. Gotta fend off fascist invaders at any cost. Which thanks to Allies sending a crapton of supplies USSR did. Let's see history repeat itself.
In WW2 the Nazis were trying to exterminate the slavs. In this war Putin is attracting condemnation for handing out passports. This changes the dynamic and the stakes. The two arent really comparable.
It isnt a racism inspired genocide like Israel is committing in Gaza.
> In this war Putin is attracting condemnation for handing out passports.
If you think the condemnation is for handing out passports, you've been well-brainwashed. The war started by Russia against Ukraine has been going for a long time already. Shelling, murder, displacement, all that stuff. They didn't get far in 10 years but they and the militia they financed sure created a lot of hurt. Don't worry, I was like you blissfully unaware but it's never too late to wake up.
Sure, I personally know people from east of Ukraine who moved to Russia. You know why? Because their fucking homes were being bombed.
> It isnt a racism inspired genocide
Sure, it's not a genocide. Hamas will tell you the same, we are not trying to genocide all Jews, it's just Israel oppressing us, yadda yadda. But in reality everyone knows that the moment Israel stops defending there's no Israel but the moment Hamas is disarmed there's peace. It's similar in case of Ukraine and Russia and it should tell you everything you need to know.
> like Israel is committing in Gaza.
It would actually have a lot in common with Hamas terrorism if Hamas controlled a bigger territory with more resources. Fun fact, Russia in fact did/does supply Hamas with arms.
There was some stats released by one side which admitting like a 1:20 disadvantage in artillery shells fired. It should roughly translate to the ratio of losses too ...
The situation is ... strange to say the least. Because no one seems the understand what is happening and those who do pretend not to.
> The US carrier group may even adequately suppress the Houthis but this is attrition and Houthi investment is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost to the US.
Between this, Ukraine, and the decades-long misadventures in the Middle East, the US is learning how to handle the next generation of conflicts. (As is everyone else that is paying attention.)
The future looks increasingly more drone dependent. Explosives tied to cheap and plentiful delivery systems. Startups like Anduril are going to take over.
Submarine drones, jet-powered drones, assassin drones. Signals intelligence and radio algorithms...
Ukraine is a cautionary tale in that as much as military technology can change, that conflict is being decided by trenches, minefields, artillery, fixed fortifications, the inability of either side to cross a river and manpower attrition.
At this point, it's basically a World War One conflict, mainly because neither side has air superiority.
Russia's strategy now seems to be to wait out the Western will to provide material aid to Ukraine, at which point it will have gained territory, a vital land bridge to Crimea and a Black Sea port.
In this potential outcome, Ukraine is likely to swing far right, politically, and Russia will face their own draining insurgencies in former Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine is a really cautionary tale to always have nuclear weapons and never give them up. Russia would never have tried this if Ukraine still had the capability to demolish a city with a button press
Look at how cautious the rest of the world is in helping Ukraine.
Ukraine had some parts of the nuclear weapon system, but it didn’t have the system as a whole. There’s all kinds of very specialised plants and tech the country has to develop and maintain, and USSR made a point to distribute all industries (not only nuclear or even military) and supply chains among the republics. To be able to demolish a city in 2023, Ukraine would have not only not given the weapons away, but also invest tens (or hundreds) of billions of dollars over the years, developing some components completely from scratch.
Until quite recently (and there is still a massive and extremely hard road ahead) Ukraine was basically a failed state and/or a Russian puppet. So I doubt Russia would’ve had to worry about something like that at all.
Ukraine had a functioning public health and transportation systems, universities that attracted students from other countries, a music industry that had outcompeted Russia in its own language, and tech sector with senior dev salaries routinely going up to $60-100k - and that’s just the things I have had first hand experience with. For all it’s problems, it definitely wasn’t a failed state.
For some people living there it wasn’t. On average however it was, there is no way around it extreme corrupt/poverty, GDP per capita on the same level as 3rd world countries.
It started off more or less on the same level as the Baltics, Bulgaria, Romania and not that far from Poland. But economically it permanently remained in the 90s. Unfortunately it's an extremely poor country by European (both Eastern and Western) standards
> dev salaries routinely going up to $60-100k - and that’s just the things I have had first hand experience with
IIRC those developers paid(pay?) approximately no taxes which would partially explain the below subsistence level retirement pensions?
> Unfortunately it's an extremely poor country by European (both Eastern and Western) standards
Yes. Which is still pretty far from "failed state". Somali, Afghanistan and Venezuela are failed states. A lot of countries around the world are just poor. But in case of countries like Argentina or Ukraine, you have to keep in mind that they can at the same time be very cheap — and thus offer a much higher standard of living to their citizens that you would imagine just by looking at dollar figures.
> IIRC those developers paid(pay?) approximately no taxes which would partially explain the below subsistence level retirement pensions?
It also explains suspiciously low official GDP stats in Russia, Ukraine and other countries in the region. A lot of economic activity is completely invisible to the government and, therefore, statistics.
They dedicated massive amounts of resources to this over very long periods of time. This wouldn’t be possible at all even in somewhat less restrictive authoritarian states let alone somewhat democratic ones like Ukraine.
There is no way any government in Ukraine during economic turmoil of the 90s that decided to spend billions on developing nukes would’ve stayed in power.
So I still don’t see how is that in anyway relevant?
Yes, it's trench war. No, drones nowadays pay huge role in combat - fpv drones take out majority of fighting vehicles, terrorize and kill humans in trenches by dropping grenades, by striking inside of covers, other drones put mines, etc. It became a big problem for both sides so that most of supply and forces rotation is done at night. But there are also fpv drones with night vision. Drones became a pillar equal to artillery due to their cost and effectivness - single fpv costs $800-$1500, one artillery shot costs more. Plus drones have higher success rate.
The tactics are an artifact of the players attempting to avoid a broader-scale conflict. Moreover, direct conflict between two nuclear-armed states isn't something we've ever done before. Nobody wants to go down that road.
If the US and/or NATO were directly involved, it wouldn't look anything like trench warfare, and we wouldn't be using 30+ year old military tech. We really want to avoid this, though.
In theory, considering the state Russia’s military is in at this stage of the war, NATO could just steamroll the entire country just like US/UK did in Iraq. If they wanted to AND there were no nukes.
Of course the current balance of power and military doctrines etc. wouldn’t really exist without nukes
You have to understand the US position and the assistance the US provided first and then this question makes less sense. We ran their airborne refueling ops used in many of the strikes for years for a start.
No opinion of this being good or bad is made with this comment
America didn’t want the war in Yemen. We’re trying to pivot to Asia. We can’t tell Riyadh what to do because they still influence oil prices and have been cozying up to China.
The US props up the Saudi regime with economic and military aid. Of course, it does this for its own foreign policy reasons. But basically the Saudi regime cannot survive without US support. The US protects the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. That's why the US could've ended the war with Yemen with a phone call.
All it takes is the threat of ending sanctions on Iran (which should end anyway). Same with Venezuela.
This isn't the 1970s. The US is now a net oil exporter [1] and the largest single oil-producing country by far [2].
That is a strange statement given the significant us participation in the war.
Let me guess - You also don’t consider the current government “Yemen” but rather a rebel group fighting the true government of Yemen that just happens to control only uninhabitable mountains.
> given the significant us participation in the war
We supported the KSA. We didn’t like the war, broadly, though we also didn’t oppose it.
> don’t consider the current government “Yemen”
No, the Houthis govern Yemen. The problem is they don’t control either it nor the militias firing rockets. That makes them less relevant to the present problem. (Put another way, threatening or negotiating with the Houthis doesn’t solve the problem.)
How much longer can this go on? It seems like there are so many parties whose economic interests all align that this would just be dealt with swiftly and decisively. Am I just naive? Is there no reasonably straightforward way to stop the Houthis? Wouldn't much of Europe, Saudi Arabia and others be very interested in ending this as quickly as possible?
Ever since Houthi's with shit tier commodity Iranian hardware started successfully hitting Saudi Refineries (extrapolate to all oil/lng infra in region), they are effectively in position to hold 1/3 of global energy supplies hostage. Hitting a few ships in Bab el-Mandeb that can be redirected around Africa at +2-5% cost to global shipping/inflation is best of bad situation. In the mean time, USN stuck with trading interceptors that cost 100x more than what they're hitting. Which is somewhat sustainble in terms of pure costs, but Houthis tying up 1-2 carriers (when normally only 3-4 are deployed) while running already aging US DDG hulls / sailors ragged on prolonged deployments is more than a little concerning.
From what I understand, and I could be very wrong, the fear is that directly attacking the Houthis will be seen as an escalation by Iran. The west doesn't want to get mired in yet another war in the Middle East, so instead they've adopted a defensive posture around their shipping lanes with Prosperity Guardian. This is also why Saudi Arabia's own navy vessels are conspicuously absent from the operation, despite the Houthis being a geographically prominent thorn in their side.
> fear is that directly attacking the Houthis will be seen as an escalation by Iran
It would, but that’s not really a constraint. Iran is in no position to risk direct strikes on its territory. It’s more simply that nobody wants to get bogged down in Yemen. So there is an element of hoping someone else will start bombing or Tehran getting their proxies under control.
Yes, and it was a disaster. The Houthis could aim their missiles at Saudi oil infrastructure again. Much simpler to let America handle both finding a solution and taking the fire.
Those are the same conflict though. The saudis are fighting the Houthi’s in the Yemeni civil war. The same group that’s attacking the ships in the Red Sea.
An "easy" response against the houthis would not be particularly effective -- lob a bunch of cruise missiles at them, which would be more annoying than anything else. An "effective" response would be the full shock-and-awe treatment -- wiping out their air defense, followed by a massive bombing campaign that destroys their ability to fight. Then -- what next? Yemen's in the middle of a civil war as it is... does the US then have a responsibility to stabilize it to prevent a humanitarian crisis? And then how does Iran react? Do we have to get into war with Iran, too? And then presumably hezbollah would launch a war against Israel.
If there is anything the wars in Afghanistan, against Isis and especially against Ukraine has thought me, it is that the answer to that question is always a lot longer than we like.
"The Singapore-flagged, Denmark-owned/operated container ship requested assistance, and the USS GRAVELY (DDG 107) and USS LABOON (DDG 58) have responded to the ship."
Why does a Danish owned and operated container ship fly under the Singapore flag?
That was our bribe to the rest of the "first world" to stand with us as cannon fodder against the USSR (the second world) during the Cold War. Now that it is over, the US public has slowly but persistently pushed back on continuing that arrangement.
We don't really need trade anywhere near as much as our trading partners overseas so. So we've scaled our fleet down.
:I strongly suspect I'm about to learn I'm wrong about part of the above:
Because US protecting global shipping is overexaggeration.
US protects US flagged shipping - non US flagged vessels got hit without US intervention during tanker wars for years without US lifting finger. MENA oil exporters had to reflag under US flag (pay US taxes/protection fees) to be eligible for defense. US didn't step up to end tanker wars until bunch of US sailers killed with USS Stark was hit.
Prosperity Guardian is happening right now because Maersk and other civilian shippers that DoD depends on sealift was threatening not to transit through area. Including the ones being paid and contracted by DoD, carrying military hardware. Likely for Israel. Including DoD Maersk ships, who basically "threatened" DoD that no Maersk ships would transit Red Sea unless US protects all Maersk shipping. US is pressured to protect shipping right now because they've offloaded so much sealift to multinational civilian sector, that is now undermining US DoD logistics to leverage US to protect all shipping, not just US flagged shipping.
PLANavy has assets in region, busy gathering USN antiship interception data. Entire reason they have Djibouti base for antipiracy deployment is because they know US can't be relied on for protecting shipping. There was UN taskforce for antipiracy in Africa not because US couldn't protect against a few Somali fishing boats but because USN doesn't do global shipping protection by default. Regardless PRC has little incentive to engage, Houthi has been largely discriminary, leaving PRC shipping alone. Unless it spills into broad regional war, PRC gets to quadruple dip. They get data on US antishipping performance. Lost cargo = more purhcases fron PRC factories. Lost ships = more work for PRC ship yards. More redirected maritime traffic around Africa = more work for PRC ship yards since you need more ships for same demand. Meanwhile, PRC shippers gets to go through red sea, on shorter/faster route, and charge premium. All by just not doing anything, because it's profitable, and they get to do nothing and profit because they're not mired in MENA shit show unlike US.
Not true. FON protects non-US flagged ships; most ships aren’t U.S. flagged.
> non US flagged vessels got hit without US intervention during tanker wars for years
America doesn’t protect all ships all the time. Sure. We’re selective about which FON issues we exert influence over. But when we get there, we protect everyone.
> because Maersk and other civilian shippers that DoD depends on sealift was threatening not to transit through area
Source? Bab el-Mandeb is a strait America has invested a lot into for geostrategic reasons.
> reason they have Djibouti base for antipiracy deployment is because they know US can't be relied on for protecting shipping
As they should. This is geopolitics. America shouldn’t be doing this for free. That said, and as you acknowledge, China is doing jack shit other than collecting intelligence on U.S. assets.
> Houthi has been largely discriminary, leaving PRC shipping alone
“Largely” does heavy lifting. It isn’t simple to discriminate shipping, as the Houthis’ non-Israeli targets have shown. In addition, China gets badly hurt if the conflict escalates and both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb are closed.
Broadly agree that China is winning by America continuing to protect her for free.
Historically true. Entire US protects global shipping narrative, that got popular post Zeihan, ignore the fact that US explicitly did not protect non US flagged vessels during tanker wars for years - the last large scale SLOC disruption. And when US "got there" they didn't protect everyone, Kuwaiti vessels had to reflag as US to get protection. US protected everyone in the sense that Stark getting hit triggered Operation Earnest Will that eventually led to cease fire with Iran to end tanker wars. But US was fine with years of SLOC disruption until US lost sailors.
>Source
Sal Mercogliano of What's Going on in Shipping covered it around early/mid december. Source is his sources. But martime twitter in general, folks tracking Maersk DoD ships with apparent USN escorts were wondering why they weren't transitting red sea / hovering Gulf of Oman. They had explicit protection outside of prosperity guardian but didn't move until after. Sal sources said Maersk was trying to leverage US to protect all Maersk shipping, not just US flagged/part of DoD program.
>America shouldn’t be doing this for free...
This presuppose US is some benevolent provider of global security, or PRC is free riding. When reality is they both have postures calibrated for their own interest. There's every reason PRC should do African anti piracy that effects her since US can't be depended on. And every reason not to do anything in Red Sea when it doesn't effect her as much as it undermines US. They would be stupid to help US/west when they could be just collecting intel which for PRC interest is doing plenty. If US really wants PRC to do more, they should encourage PRC to open more naval bases abroad and burden share. But that's stupid. US benefits from adversaries not having global basing and optics of being global martime security provider even from countries that would rather not be "protected" by US.
>"Largely" does heavy lifting
Not really, PRC shipping hasn't had pause unlike Maersk or western shippers. COSCO announced they planned to detour but continued Red Sea operations like normal. So far no indication PRC shipping has been disrupted. Hangzhou (Singapore flagged) was previously docked in Israel's Mediterranean port. Whatever Houthi/Iran targetting is discriminating enough for PRC to ride things out. But yes regional war would flip script. Even India/Pak navy war cooperating after recent tanker hit off India. In the mean time, current instability is not explicitly "good" for PRC, but it's much worse for US/west. Until something changes, there's no reason to cooperate. Hangzhou still got hit despite a carrier group there to settle things down, Maersk is halting red sea transit again despite explicit US protection. It's early days, but right now PRC is position to sit back, gather data, and watch US bleed expensive interceptors (which is an easy to replace economic problem), and wear down hulls and crew on extended deployment (which is a harder to replace political problem).
> ignore the fact that US explicitly did not protect non US flagged vessels during tanker wars for years
Granted. And as I mentioned were lazy deployers. But to a greater tendency than any historic great power, once we intervene, we haven’t tended to discriminate.
> Sal Mercogliano of What's Going on in Shipping
Thank you! Will watch.
> presuppose US is some benevolent provider of global security
No. It hypothesises that we are entering into a trade that is no longer at advantageous terms.
> Houthi/Iran targetting is discriminating enough for PRC to ride things out
True. I wager they’ve been lucky, but that’s neither here nor there. Maybe I should retract and propose the greatest beneficiary is the KSA, not PRC.
> Don't we protect in exchange for them trading in USD?
No. Freedom of navigation evolved separately from Bretton Woods and dollarisation. We’ve never tied the two. And from the start, we’ve defended even our adversaries’ rights.
Initially, that was the Bretton Woods agreement. The US at the end of WWII had 2/3 of the world's gold reserves, and it was part of the system set up to help the World's economy recover.
As a result of choices made by Eisenhower, and subsequent administrations, the US began to spend more than it should have, slowly making a fiction of the price of gold being fixed at $35/ounce.
Eventually, after shenanigans by de Gaulle of France, Nixon was forced to close the "gold window" at which nations could convert dollars back to gold reserves. This resulted in the Nixon Shock, and eventually the prime interest rate reached 20% in April of 1980.
Then Nixon made a deal Nixon made with the Saudis, the creation of the Petrodollar. The Saudis would only sell their oil for dollars, then spend those dollars in the US for goods and services, recycling them.
Without the Petrodollar, it possible the dollar would have crashed to zero.
Ignore people like dash2 who say that the US would be "much, much poorer without it"; they're like the Canadians and their American sympathizers who, when the Trump administration in 2017 threatened to impose tariffs, came up with all sorts of clever schemes to stop this by threatening/lobbying Congressmen from the US states most dependent on trade across the 49th parallel. The problem is that the US state most dependent on Canadian trade, Michigan, depends on its as much as the Canadian province that is the next to least dependent on US trade, PEI. <https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8q9h8i/canadaus_tra...>
> Ignore people like dash2 who say that the US would be "much, much poorer without it"
On what planet is losing a quarter of one’s GDP not “much, much poorer”? That’s the GDP of 33 U.S. states and territories [1], through Indiana. It’s more than the GDP of Germany, the world’s third-largest economy [2].
Did you even bother to look at the figures for the rest of the world? During the Great Depression, even if one got a salary cut, that was far better off than losing the job. If the US is "much, much poorer", every other country (developed or not) has been evicted and moving in with the parents if lucky; homeless and on the streets if not.
>America might be less fucked than everyone else. But it would still get fucked.
Again, if one has a job—albeit with hours cut—and a place to live and everyone else doesn't, who is better off?
>Great analogy. You’re talking about economic catastrophe on par with the Great Depression, which involved a 29% reduction in GDP.
The Depression has a unique place in US history because it hit the US harder and earlier than the rest of the world. Europe did not really see the effects until an important bank collapsed in 1931. The crisis hit Germany hard, contributing to Hitler taking power, but it was more the shock of the abrupt end of the 1920s' sharp recovery after the stabilization of the Rentenmark and thus the postwar economy. The UK was hit, but meaningfully milder than the US, and it did not see the "second depression" that the US did in the late 1930s. France was barely affected.
Without worldwide trade today, while things won't be great in the US, the rest of the world (including Europe) is a half step from Mad Max.
> if one has a job—albeit with hours cut—and a place to live and everyone else doesn't, who is better off?
You’re both fucked. This is like asking if a massive asteroid hit the other side of the Earth, the people on the other side are not “much, much poorer.” That’s plainly idiotic.
> Depression has a unique place in US history because it hit the US harder and earlier than the rest of the world
It was also a massive and unprecedented drawdown. People first and foremost measure their lives relative to their recent past. Not how folks halfway around the world are doing.
It’s unique because we survived it. Most socieities fail amidst a protracted 25%+ drawdown.
>You’re both fucked. This is like asking if a massive asteroid hit the other side of the Earth, the people on the other side are not “much, much poorer.” That’s plainly idiotic.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
>It was also a massive and unprecedented drawdown. People first and foremost measure their lives relative to their recent past. Not how folks halfway around the world are doing.
I said what I said not because Americans during the Depression saw their economy as worse off than that of other countries; rather, that the Depression holds a place in US history and culture that it does not in most other countries.
More to the point, I was addressing those who in 2017 and today immediately respond to any talk of the US raising tariffs, or reducing its military commitments abroad, with how the US will suffer the most economically (often with invokings of the "petrodollar" nonsense) when this is in no way, shape, or form true. It's a fundamentally incorrect and, often, dishonest response.
> was addressing those who in 2017 and today immediately respond to any talk of the US raising tariffs, or reducing its military commitments abroad, with how the US will suffer the most economically (often with invokings of the "petrodollar" nonsense)
Sure. I agree with you here. But that’s not how your original comment reads. It contests that we’d get poorer in a Smoot-Hawley scenario, not that we’d be relatively richer in a drastically-poorer world.
That's being disingenuous. In my first comment I link to two sources that both show that the US GDP would go down, not up, in a world without international trade. If you can't use context to understand that I was and am saying that the US would be hurt less than all other countries (and thus would be more prosperous *relative to the rest of the world*, as opposed to being poorer relative to the rest of the world), that's your onus, not mine.
If these shipping companies are going to take advantage of taxpayer-funded militaries, they could at least pay taxes themselves, instead of hiding behind convenience flags. Either this or waiting the Singapore navy to rescue them.
I'm really confused as to why no where in the article do they mention the intent of attacking the ships. As if the houthis in yemen are attacking ships because they like it or just because they "hate developed societies".
Their declared reason is to put pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid to Gaza at once. They target ships that have Israeli links or heading to Israeli ports. It can be seen as a form of treating Israel the way it's treating Gaza (as in Gaza is blockaded, so the houthis are trying to create a sea blockade from their region of control)
> confused as to why no where in the article do they mention the intent of attacking the ships
This appears to be a maritime news service. Why rockets are flying isn’t practically relevant. You’ll see similar parsimoniousness in aviation reporting around war zones (and humanitarian reports around natural disasters).
There is almost always a market for concise commercial communications.
> target ships that have Israeli links or heading to Israeli ports
Ships in international waters have been targeted for not responding to hails. There is also no evidence anyone is coordinating the various militias that have fire control.
Looking the other way is looking the other way. Everybody does that with what they're entrusted with, or doesn't.
And when a software build fails because of some very minor thing everything depends on, and someone quips "for want of a nail..." would you then say they "compared shitlib version 0.53 with a physical nail made out of iron for a horse shoe"? What's more, things that are the exact same are the only things that cannot be compared. You can compared an apple to an orange, or another apple, but not itself. It amazes me how often people in the internet draw this card.
No, why would it be. But a hypothetical citizen of a nation supporting Israel in their current undertaking not caring that a terrorist attack was committed with the stated intent of creating pressure to stop an on-going genocide, as if it has nothing to do with them, is looking the other way. An article leaving out that context is too. Given that what actually happened was "a flash and no injuries" -- so, nothing -- it seems outright weird to not include that.
If I’m sailing a ship, I want the information that lets me do my job. Not shoehorned political agendas. Given a choice between publications, I’ll choose the concise one.
The same reason why when civilians in Gaza die it’s because a rocket explodes in a refugee camp or something. Damn rockets why do they do that?
Unfortunately, propaganda is part of the war and I can’t really blame them for trying. You can be sure that the other side of the conflict is also not impartial.
If the reasons about killing each other were openly discussed in a logical way without the emotional overload, People wouldn’t bother to kill each other. That’s something undesirable in the context of war.
I also think this is not necessarily bad, because when you start thinking in cold blooded strategic way you may find out that exterminating certain people is beneficial for you. Therefore, you should do it.
That level of thinking can be beneficial when you’re in the higher ranks, but a society shouldn’t be willing to destroy another society for material or political gains. You can see that among Russians, and how they think about conquering Ukraine and Europe. Scary stuff, it might lead to a war where one of the nations gets decimated.
> If the reasons about killing each other were openly discussed in a logical way without the emotional overload, People wouldn’t bother to kill each other. That’s something undesirable in the context of war.
That's incredibly wrong. People are killing each other over disagreements, either about land, or about values, or about feeling of safety, etc. Everyone basically understands everyone else's position on most things - they just honestly want different things and are sometimes willing to use violence to get it.
That's true when you are directly going to gain something. People dying and killing on the front lines - the practitioners of taking lives - are not the same people who were going to gain something. That's why they need the "greater cause" to do it, even when they are directly paid mercenaries they still are called hero of this liberator of that and not just murderers or contract killers.
If you're referring to the current Israel-Gaza conflict - this is basically not true.
Israeli soldiers are fighting because they think that, if they don't, their friends and families will be killed. They might be right or wrong - but that's why they are fighting.
That one is a particularly complex conflict that didn't start on 7th of October and I'm sure they have more complex thoughts that include the illegal settlements and their religious rights to take that land and their political positions on these issues. They are conscripts, so I would imagine there's a range of positions when they are killing thousand of women and children alongside with combatants. I don't believe the premise that Israeli soldiers were concerned for the lives of their loved ones and killed that many civilians and ar OK with it.
Unarmed women and children are not that dangerous, they must have range of thoughts when killing those. Some regret, some glee, some disgust, some joy I would imagine. I wouldn't put the relief of saving their own in the top 10 though.
As for the Palestinian side of things, I'm sure its not simple too. Some would do it for revenge, some would do it for some ideological BS, some would do it for religious reasons. The terror attack they initiated on the 7th of October has quite a bit of footage and its very clear that they did not intend to survive the action. They were obviously doing it for "greater good", so to speak, without an expectation to personally gain anything by killing civilian Israelis.
> They are conscripts, so I would imagine there's a range of positions when they are killing thousand of women and children alongside with combatants.
Firstly, the majority of the IDF isn't active-duty conscripts, they're reservists. They're still conscripts, and they still have to serve, but it's not exactly difficult to not serve if you choose not to. Not sure this impacts anything else you say, but I thought it's worth mentioning.
> I don't believe the premise that Israeli soldiers were concerned for the lives of their loved ones and killed that many civilians and ar OK with it.
Almost all IDF soldiers are incredibly regretful that any civilians have to be killed. This is true of most armies most of the time, btw, not specifically Israeli soldiers.
But they are absolutely fighting for the fate of their homeland. They might be wrong - but most Israelis believe that Hamas cannot be allowed to continue, because they have promised, multiple times, that they will repeat the October 7th attack again and again. They are literally an hour's drive from many people's homes. Two hours and they can reach the majority of Israel.
Almost every Israeli knows someone, either directly or via one other person, that was killed or taken hostage. Without trying to hard, I can think of about 5 people I know who lost a loved one.
In that way, this isn't similar to something like Iraq or Afghanistan, where for the most part, American soldiers were fighting a real, but vague, threat, which posed almost no immediate danger to anyone they knew.
> Unarmed women and children are not that dangerous, they must have range of thoughts when killing those. Some regret, some glee, some disgust, some joy I would imagine. I wouldn't put the relief of saving their own in the top 10 though.
Unarmed women and children are not targeted intentionally. There's great regret that anyone is killed, and probably majority happiness that the person targeted is killed, usually someone who is directly responsible for deaths.
There's also a lot of mistakes, because it's war, and because Hamas tries hard to cause these mistakes to happen. It's sad, unfortunate, and I doubt anyone feels "glee" or "joy" that civilians ever are killed. I'm sure there's a few psycopaths like in any large group of people, but the IDF tries to weed these people out.
Half of the people they kill are women and children. That’s lots of regret they will have to go through the upcoming years. They won't be known as the "good guys", even if the Prime minister tries to frame this as a fight between good and evil most of the world isn't buying it.
> Half of the people they kill are women and children. That’s lots of regret they will have to go through the upcoming years.
Yes, it is. I think almost all of those deaths are on Hamas, they brought this on their own citizens that they are effectively keeping hostage. But that doesn't make me regret it any less.
> They won't be known as the "good guys", even if the Prime minister tries to frame this as a fight between good and evil most of the world isn't buying it.
Israelis haven't been seen as the "good guys" at any point in my life, really, most people in the world have either been indifferent to Israel or hated us.
(For the record, I don't see many Americans being treated as evil in the same way, despite having caused far, far more casualties than Israel has ever done in the last 20 years.)
It doesn't work like that, you can't transfer the blame of a mass murder to another mass murderer. Anyway, I would suggest you to research the anti-American movements all over the world and you will see that Americans(the state) are actually treated as evil by many people who are affected by the American atrocities or sympathetic with those affected. Americans lost most of their credibility even in UK and Europe.
It's really a sad situation because there's a lot to admire about Israel and its people. They were able to build a progressive and prosperous society in a desert but unfortunately turned into genocidal oppressors. Hamas being Hamas doesn't make this right. Unless Israel manage to exterminate every single Palestinian, they will end up with people that remember what Israel did to them. You should be able to draw conclusions from your experience of a single attack that took lives of thousands Israeli and extrapolate to what those people are going through over the years and this latest fight and think about what will want to do to you and what they think about you.
> Anyway, I would suggest you to research the anti-American movements all over the world and you will see that Americans(the state) are actually treated as evil by many people who are affected by the American atrocities or sympathetic with those affected. Americans lost most of their credibility even in UK and Europe.
I'm well aware. And for sure much of the Muslim world hates the US as much as Israel ("Big Satan to Israel's Little Satan").
That said, mass demonstrations against Israel started on October 7th, before any Israeli response, and while invaders were still within Israel. In Western countries. Can you imagine anything like that happening on September 11th?
> It's really a sad situation because there's a lot to admire about Israel and its people. They were able to build a progressive and prosperous society in a desert but unfortunately turned into genocidal oppressors.
I think it's a sad situation because so many people are dying. This would've been just as sad if Israel hadn't done much.
The said, I highly disagree with your characterization of Israel as "genocidal". That's just not true. There is no intention to cause a genocide against the Palestinians.
> You should be able to draw conclusions from your experience of a single attack that took lives of thousands Israeli and extrapolate to what those people are going through over the years and this latest fight and think about what will want to do to you and what they think about you.
I think it is incredibly sad to think that Palestinians cannot find a way to live in peace, or that Israelis can't. Somehow Germany and Japan suffered far worse in WW2 but this didn't cause an endless cycle of violence against the Allies. Why can't the same be true here?
As for what I want to do to "them" - if you mean Hamas, I'd want to take apart the organization. If we can capture every single member of Hamas, I'd be all for it. If not, we need to kill as many of them as we have to to stop the organization.
If we could do that without a single innocent Gazan dying, we should. No war can be conducted in this way though, and Hamas is making that even harder to do by embedding themselves in civilian areas. I sure as hell don't want any "revenge" that comes at the cost of innocent Gazans, and neither do most people.
Btw, you call this a "single attack". It wasn't, it was an invasion that lasted two days, and a bombing campaign that is ongoing for three months. Including the daily worry of other countries joining and attacking Israel.
> Anyway, %50 women and children causality rate on top of illegal occupation and other atrocities wouldn't convince anyone about it being a "collateral damage".
Gaza isn't occupied any longer, or at least, not in the traditional sense. Israel left Gaza in 2005.
As for the casualty rate - just look at the casualty rate in e.g. the Iraq war. Every civilian death is tragic, but war really does involve a lot of collateral damage - all the more so when groups like Hamas purposefully try to get civilians killed.
> How would you feel if Hamas claimed that all the civilians were a collateral damage? After all they documented the extermination of Israeli soldiers and if there are documented intentional killings of the civilians they can just say it was some bad Apples among them.
I would say they are lying, because there are many videos, uploaded by them!, of them targetting civilians. And not just killing them, brutalizing them and massacring them.
Btw, killing soldiers is also illegal if they are not in a position to fight you. Invading a base and capturing it is a legitimate military tactic. Executing all soldiers in it even if they have no weapons or have surrendered is a war crime.
> I'm sure we can also find some videos of Israeli people saying really bad things about exterminating all the Palestinians. IIRC, there were officials calling to drop an Atomic bomb on Palestine and kill them all and other officials calling for mass extermination. Don't you have a far right government?
Yes, some Israeli say bad things, especially in a time of war. And some fringe members of our government have said horrible things and are rightfully condemned. If the government acted the way some members of the government would want it to act - I'd be completely against it and would consider it immoral.
Luckily for both sides, these are fringe views (though not fringe enough).
> Can you put yourself in the shoes of your opponent? Hamas are horrible but Israeli are no better unfortunately
I can put myself in the shoes of my opponent. But comparing Hamas to the IDF is just wrong. The IDF doesn't target civilians, and would definitely never brutally massacre, rape and torture civilians.
> It's fascinating that you can claim with straight face to be the good guys with over %50 civilian kill rate in the prison you created. Very unfortunate, another blow for the ideals of the "civilised world". Once again a well educated, technologically advanced nation conducting unspeakable horrors and claim that they are victims and are the good ones.
I don't think we're the "good guys" - and I think that's a really simplistic way of thinking about things. I think Israel has a lot to answer for by not advancing peace for the last 15 years, for example.
But I also think that given what happened on October 7th, Israel didn't have any choice but to do what it's doing, and doesn't have any chance now - the only way to get safety for Israel and eventually a peace in place is by destroying Hamas.
You just can't live next to a government that loudly proclaims it is intent on killing your citizens, and carries this out!
> Hamas or any Islamic terrorism with political or religious goals is horrible enough and you are asking us to accept more killing with a bit different political and religious goals.
Israel's goals in this war are to destroy Hamas to make us safe. Period. That's the goal and it's a completely legitimate goal, much as Ukraine is fighting off Russia for legitimate reasons.
I think you're putting in a lot of energy to try to reason with someone who isn't going to be reasoned with, and really it's just not reasonable to expect to resolve one of the world's most complex conflicts in a 20+-message deep HN thread.
I'm just writing this because I'd want someone to write something similar to me if I was locked into a thread like this.
Yes, you're right of course. It's just... the whole "someone is wrong on the internet" thing and this being a personal issue.
Happy new years! We celebrated by being bombed with rockets, no siren where I am but we heard them being shot down outside our window. That was fun. And of course, for Gazan civilians the new year is so much worse right now, so many displaced people barely getting by.
War is just terrible. I wish humanity would grow up and stop all this violence.
Please don't do that on HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are. Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully. This topic raises a lot of strong feelings in everyone. If your feelings prevent you from commenting within the site guidelines, please wait to comment until that's no longer the case.
This is important for preserving the community here, and it's important for another reason as well: to the extent that what you're arguing for is true, by posting aggressively and abusively you end up discrediting the truth that you're arguing for. That's not only not in your interest—it hurts everyone. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. We've had to ask you this more than once before, so it's clear that this problem is not limited to this topic.
It's a fair point and I don't object with this comment being flagged but please notice that the parent one is calling me unreasonable when I try to be polite and provide thorough reasoning about my position on the issue.
Is that O.K. really? They don't even address me when talking about me, that's why I felt the need to reply with a bit of a sarcasm and emotional tone. I also provided a document by the United Nations to keep this grounded. I don't know how this is less substantive than the parent comment talking about me in a sneering manner.
Do you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38827758? "Isn't going to be reasoned with" is maybe not the best wording; "isn't likely to be persuaded" might be a better way to put that. But I don't think it was really a personal attack. I can see how it could feel that way in the context of an intense conflict like this one, but from an outside perspective I think it's a stretch to say that the comment "is calling me unreasonable". Moreover the intention was clearly trying to dampen the flamewar, which is a good thing.
Here's a point I've often tried to communicate in situations like this, which I'll repeat here in case it's helpful—but please understand that I'm not talking about you personally; as far as I can tell we all have this bias...
There's a common pattern where people underestimate the provocation in their own comments by (say) 10x and overestimate the provocation in the other person's comments by another 10x. Put those together and you get a 100x distortion in self/other perception. That's a lot of distortion. It's basically "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear". In my experience it's helpful to remember this and try to consciously correct for the distortion. Even if you bend over backwards to do that, you probably won't compensate for the entire 100x but you'll at least be less likely to misgauge the impact of your posts and thereby produce unintentional negative effects. Not that any of this is easy, but it's something we should all be aware of and working on.
"You can receive $100 but someone in the world dies at random"
I mentioned the above scenario to my wife and she said she thinks the majority of people would take the $100.
I don't know if she's right but I think in any country a large percentage of the population is apathetic about people they don't know (especially foreigners) and can be easily prodded to support genocide.
> I mentioned the above scenario to my wife and she said she thinks the majority of people would take the $100
I would of course decline, both on general morality grounds and also because I saw the episode "Button, Button" from the '80s revival of "The Twilight Zone".
Summary: a couple in a low-rent apartment who are having serious financial trouble receive a delivery of a locked box with a button on top. That night a man arrives and gives the wife the key to the box, and tells them that if she presses the button someone she does not know will die, and she will receive $200 000. The man leaves.
The couple debate whether or not the offer is real or just some weird joke, and weather or not press the button. They unlock the box and lock inside and find that it is empty. The button is not connected to any machinery or electronics, and they toss the box in the trash but later the wife retrieves it.
The next day the husband sees the wife just staring at the button. He tells her to push it just to get it off her mind. She does so.
The next day the man from the first day returns, hands them $200 000 cash, and takes the box. He tells them that the box will be reprogrammed and offered to some other person with the same conditions, and tells the wife that the person it will be offered to will be someone the wife does not know.
I wouldn't - 100 dollars is not worth a death on my conscience. (I do not live in a rich country and 100 dollars is not a trivial amount for me.)
Perhaps if the choice were more drastic: you can get a life saving treatment for free, but someone else dies at random, then my choice would be different.
I think most people wouldn't support genocide and they are not apathetic and that's why propaganda is needed in first place. When at war, belligerents systematically dehumanise their opponents so that their population or allies wouldn't oppose killings of human beings for gains.
Ukrainians call Russians "meat" and Russians portray Ukrainians as less than humans or Nazis. Russians will also not name Ukrainians but call them just "opponents" and they wouldn't kill them but neutralise them so that people can easily think in terms of reaching an objective in war and not in terms of loss of human life.
On Twitter, popular accounts would Tweet things like "name 10 Israeli and 10 Palestinian inventions" to dehumanise Palestinians by showing that Israeli lives are more valuable than Palestinian ones and if you support the "civilised world" you should support those who are contributing to it(unlike the "subhumans who don't").
In Turkey, Turks used to believe that Kurds have tails like monkeys(not a popular belief anymore but it was up until 10 years ago), therefore they are less than human.
It's just something its always done. War isn't fair or brave or dignifying endeavour. It's actually quite disgusting.
I think its in the consciousness of everyone and its partly responsible for the ant-establishment movements all over the western world. Awful lot of people feel cheated and dirty and don't want to have anything with the people responsible for it. Part of the anti-establishment argument(left or right) is about distancing themselves from that kind of wars and the military industrial complex.
> I can’t really blame them for trying. You can be sure that the other side of the conflict is also not impartial.
Oh, I can for the both of us, and I do. Everyone is responsible for what they do, or tacitly consent to. War is not something that just "is" like rain or snow, it's specific actions of people specific people.
And when you say "other side of the conflict" does that include the 1+ million of children, or are they just not relevant at all here? Because as Bill Hicks said, a war is when two armies fight. This is genocide, reducing Gaza to rubble, taking smug selfies in homes and mosques all along the way.
Yes, Hamas is no better. That is, if they had the means, they wouldn't be. But Hamas is Hamas; not Gaza, not the West Bank. And Hamas isn't using police force in Western Democracies to prohibit demonstrations, it doesn't have vast media support to both silence discussion of what is going on and smear those who still have a conscience.
> Between 8 December 2023 and 7 February 2024, the entire population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.2 million people) is classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country.
We don't even hear about this. The little facts that are brought up are all all couched between bringing up Hamas 50 times. No, we're expected to be content, admiring and grateful even, when Israel stops bombing little kids in a barrel -- and that the genocide will, predictably, continue without bombs via the inflicted wounds will barely get a mention, just like nobody really cared the last few decades.
But there was a "flash" and no injuries on board of some ship, oh noes.
Someone put it very well on this site 4 years ago:
> And it is not a state of things, it is a process. It is going on now, it inches a bit further every day and every year.
> You say you don't have an opinion, but in fact you repeat exactly the things that those who don't want this process to stop would like to hear from you: that the question has two sides, that it's impossible to say who's right or wrong, that there are many opinions. It's a form of denialism (let's hear the other side, some say this but some say that, etc.).
But even more importantly IMO, even assuming "both sides are exactly equal" -- and they're not -- then my primary concern would still be what I am responsible for, and what the corporations and governments I am directly or indirectly supporting are doing. Hamas is on the polar opposite of that, they don't brag about sharing my values or any of the sort. You might even say it's more or less expected for islamist terrorists to behave like islamist terrorists. Doesn't make it okay, it's something I stand against; but getting upset at it is a weird sort of performance IMO. However, a nation that pink-washes genocide says "hi fellow human rights enjoyer" to me and gives me all that horse crap about even knowing what a nation recognizing human rights would look like, much less being one, they need to either a.) stop what they're doing b.) or be told in no uncertain terms they are deluding themselves.
The world is full of murderers and genocidal racist assholes. It's the actually having one hand in my pocket and the other oscillating between rubbing my shoulder and covering my mouth that makes this something I am obliged to respond to, and have to respond to mercilessly. I felt the exact same way about the war of aggression in Iraq. To use me in that way for something I would never do, something so abominable, is not something I stand for or forgive.
I don't want to go into the "who's to blame because" arguments since to do this you need to pick a cut-off date and you can pick an arbitrary cut-off date to pick a side. Pick the 7th of October 2023 as a cut-off for the past and Israel is blameless until they massacre the civilians later on.
You also need to pick definitions, and you can pick definitions anyway you like. Define civilians in a certain way and you are blameless. Both Hamas and Isreal overdo this, one claim is that they didn't kill civilians at the party because those served in the IDF for example.
I find this a useless exercise and an attempt to justify killing people for political or material gains. I don't like it, I don't accept any justification and I don't take sides on institutionalised or makeshift extermination of humans.
> I don't want to go into the "who's to blame because" arguments since to do this you need to pick a cut-off date
No, why would you have to? As I said:
> Everyone is responsible for what they do
There is no giant blob called "war" and you now weigh the responsibility of one of two "sides" for that blob. That is precisely my point. The crimes of Hamas do not take one iota away from the crimes of Israel, and vice versa. They each commit them against innocents.
Our opinion as "judges" or "referees" is not so relevant as what we are directly or indirectly responsible for, and what we aren't. Hamas has nothing to do with me, the US and Israel use me, so I need to speak out in clear terms or be responsible.
It's not a complex situation where both sides are kinda bad and we just can't figure out who gets the blame and who gets to get away scot-free. Israel is committing genocide. Hamas is a terrorist organization, that didn't change, and people who support it should be cut off. The same with the right-wing extremists in the Israeli government and those supporting the genocide committed by them. It's just a principle, applied to all comers without respecting the person. As it should be.
You state these things like they are objective facts that have been proven.
I suspect that most of the pro-israel side would be against israel comitting genocide (of course there are probably some extremists out there, but one hopes they are a small minority). The difference of opinion is not about whether genocide is wrong, but whether that is what Israel is doing.
And hey, with the recent south africa case at the icj, we might get lots of international law experts weighing in, so it might all become more clear.
Genocide is already defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
There is a big difference between saying genocide is wrong, and saying that anyone dying during a war is wrong. Of course every death is a tragedy, but my expectation is that israel (like any country) follows international law. I don't expect them to be absolute pacifists.
Replace "dying" by "murdered". Einstein called killing under the cloak of war murder anyway, and that wasn't even talking about bombing one of the most densely populated areas with over 1M minors in it. If you need more arguments to stand up, you will never stand up. The White Rose also talked about cloaking cowardice under the cloak of wisdom. It's not a tragedy, it's a crime, it has perpetrators and supporters who are mighty insolent and hoping to get away with it.
There is a certain philosophical sense that all war is murder. But international law does have definitions for these terms, and murder can be both a war crime or a crime against humanity depending on the circumstance. However there are requirements to meet. Someone being killed during a war does not neccesarily mean its murder. It could be, but it depends on the circumstances. Even if it is not murder, it might be a different war crime, but it would also depend on the circumstances. It is also possible for the death to be totally legal under international law.
This is not that different than ordinary laws in normal civil society. Sometimes a death is murder. Sometimes it is a lesser charge like manslaughter. Other times it isn't a crime at all (for example if the person was killed in self-defense). What type of crime it is depends on the facts at hand.
Similarly, carpet bombing a densely populated area would be an obvious war crime. However, targeted bombing (which is what israel claims to be doing), maybe - maybe not. It depends on things like how good the targeting is, what is the expected collateral damage, what is the expected military benefit.
Justice happens when everyone is held to the same standard of whatever the law is at the time the offense was comitted and evidence is used to demonstrate that the perpetrator's actions met the elements of the crime. Yes, those types of requirements are hard sometimes, but that is what separates justice from vengence.
And in the same thread here, an Israeli tells me that unfortunately there is no other way than reduce Gaza to rubble. But it's also laser-precise targetting killings.
Enough.
Pretending it couldn't be known was disproven by those who called it out, any further playing for time I will not take part in. Let's examine the evidence when people are on fucking trial where they belong.
> I suspect that most of the pro-israel side would be against israel comitting genocide
What is that "pro-Israel" side? Was the White Rose "pro-German" or "anti-German"? That whole framing is broken from the get go.
And after you take issue with me calling it genocide, you counter with what you "suspect"? Come on. One of the five acts constituting genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention is "imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group". And we have Israeli pundits openly talking about making Gaza "unlivable", we have IDF blowing up civilian infrastructure after posing for selfies in it, e.g. https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17317722618482647... , Netanyahu is on record invoking Amalek... what more do you want? 70% of the homes in Gaza destroyed or damaged, and so on.
> of course there are probably some extremists out there, but one hopes they are a small minority
That is what Albert Einstein warned about a long, long time ago. This is what Yeshayahu Leibowitz meant when he referred to "Judeo-Nazis". If you use some vague "hope" to not face what is there, right now, you ensure something even more horrible in the future.
I just mean random people on the internet siding with the state of israel.
> One of the five acts constituting genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention is "imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group".
Yes i agree that is part of the definition.
While i find a lot of the statements you mentioned concerning, for it to be genocide i would think they would have to come from people participating in the conflict or those who command them (since intent is required for genocide). I don't think statements by people not in charge of Israeli war planning count for much when trying to establish the intent behind the israeli war machine.
The amalek statement of course came from someone in command. The actual statement is at https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/statement-by-pm-netan... . I agree its concerning, but i'm not sure in context it is really a smoking gun. It seems like it could be interpreted as meaning remember the existential threat hamas poses. There have been other statements by people in charge saying that the enemy is hamas not palestine.
> what more do you want?
Generally the bar would be proof that the intent of the military operation is to destroy the ethnic group. Showing intent is difficult, but that is generally what the crime of genocide requires.
To quote wikipedia:
>"The specific intent element defines the purpose of committing the acts: "to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such". The specific intent is a core factor distinguishing genocide from other international crimes, such as war crimes or crimes against humanity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#Intent
> The world is full of murderers and genocidal racist assholes
The problem with your approach is that if a country actually implemented it the first neighboring country that fell under the control of a genocidal racist asshole would just have to hold a "take you daughter to work" day in their military and on that day invade your country.
Look, you obviously care a lot about this topic, but I think you're really wrong on your facts. For the record, I'm Israeli, so take what I say with your appropriate level of skepticism - but I'm going to at least try to get across what I think you're wrong about. I hope you approach what I say with an open mind, though many people tend not to (in any discussion of anything, not just about this).
> And when you say "other side of the conflict" does that include the 1+ million of children, or are they just not relevant at all here?
They're incredibly relevant as human beings. They're far less relevant in the context of what the discussion is - they're not out there making propaganda, or fighting Israelis, or whatever. They are, simply, civilians of a country that's currently at war.
And to be clear, any death is tragic - far more so when it's civilians that only want to live peacefully.
> Because as Bill Hicks said, a war is when two armies fight. This is genocide, reducing Gaza to rubble, taking smug selfies in homes and mosques all along the way.
First, this is two armies. I don't agree this is genocide, but let's put that aside for a minute - this really really is two armies. They're mismatched, Israel obviously is stronger - but the day to day fighting that is happening now (as opposed to the initial bombing) is militants with weapons attacking soldiers, and soldier attacking militants, mostly. It's a ground operation between a state military and a quasi-governmental insurgent force.
Just look at the videos put out every single day from Hamas themselves, showing their militants attacking the IDF. If you want a good non-Israeli source for this, you can watch Preston Steward on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PrestonStewart.
> We don't even hear about this [referring to classifying Gaza as food insecure]. The little facts that are brought up are all all couched between bringing up Hamas 50 times. No, we're expected to be content, admiring and grateful even, when Israel stops bombing little kids in a barrel -- and that the genocide will, predictably, continue without bombs via the inflicted wounds will barely get a mention, just like nobody really cared the last few decades.
Firstly, Hamas is brought up 50 times because they are the government, as well as one of the active participants in the war.
Secondly, this is not a genocide, by any definition of that word (I normally go by the official UN definition here). Israel is not trying to kill all of the Gazans - the reason civilians die is because this is war. And it's horrible, and regrettable, and every civilian death is a tragedy - but it just isn't proof of genocide.
Third, you imply that this genocide has been going on for the last few decades - which even further underlines my point that this is not a genocide. There have been several tragic genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries - and in all of them, the populations decreased, because that is the point.
Israel has the means to kill far more people, if it wanted to - it just doesn't.
If you have another definition of genocide that you're thinking of here, or some reason I'm wrong - please tell me what it is, so we can at least know we're talking about the same thing.
--
I don't think you're wrong about most of your last two paragraphs - of course you (assuming you're from the US) have more control over Israel (via US government policy) than over Hamas, and of course you have moral complicity in whatever Israel does.
But, I think you're getting something wrong here:
> However, a nation that pink-washes genocide says "hi fellow human rights enjoyer" to me and gives me all that horse crap about even knowing what a nation recognizing human rights would look like, much less being one, they need to either a.) stop what they're doing b.) or be told in no uncertain terms they are deluding themselves.
The thing is, this isn't about a nation "pink washing" or claiming they are fellow human rights enjoyer. First, it is a nation that really is closer in values to the US - which implies a lot of things, some of them making Israel's position harder (e.g. the fact that Israel has free press, as opposed to Gaza, means that far more Israelis are openly critical of Israel - there's a reason you don't hear more Gazan voices speaking out against Hamas!)
But more importantly, Israel isn't just a nation - it's full of people, who do share your values. I personally share Western values. So do most Israelis.
We are not saying "we share your values, so let us do a genocide". We're saying "we share your values, and we know more about what's happening than you do - our lived experience is much richer about this - therefore you should trust us more than you do".
I would never condone a genocide, and for the record I am highly critical of a lot of Israel's actions. But a genocide is just not happening, nor anythign clsoe to it.
What is happening is a war that Israel never wanted, but that most Israelis feel must be fought, because there is just no alternative that anyone has offered.
So I'll leave you with this question - what would you do in Israel's shoes? How would you guarantee that an invading force intent on killing as many of your citizens as possible, isn't able to do this again? Or would you just accept that your friends and family dying is OK?
I'm looking for a a realistic answer btw of what to do on October 7th, not how you would've changed Israeli policy in the past. Like I said - I'm also highly critical of Israeli policy for the last fifteen years at least - but I still agree this war is necessary (regrettably).
> That isn't war. IDF soldiers filming themselves rifling through the underwear in a private home talking about how Arab women are sluts because they dare to have nice panties, isn't war.
IDF soldiers should never do those things, and the IDF has multiple times said as much - and disciplined soldiers who did similar. (I don't know of this specific case, I think, but I've seen other very terrible displays - which most Israelis condemn and which are against the IDF's code.)
> And I am not criticizing Israel. I am criticizing Israeli Nazis, which happen to be in power. If you equate the two, that is your thing.
Thank you for saying so.
That said, let's be clear - I hate the current Israeli government and am one of the many people who have protested them for the last year. I wouldn't call them Nazis, that's going too far - but some of them are almost as bad, and a few have the rhetoric of Nazis, no question.
That said, the IDF isn't the Israeli government. The majority of soldiers are basically regular Israelis put into a terrible situation that they never wanted to be in. And the majority of the country, while hating the current government, supports this war.
> So, how do we ensure the IDF doesn't murder more journalists and civilians? Level Israel? I mean, how else could you be 100.00% sure, right?
I never said let's be 100% sure. I asked a question. A real question that all Israelis are asking. If Mexico had invaded the US and killed a thousand citizens, it would be completely legitimate to ask how the US would make sure this didn't happen again. If this was followed by Mexico continuing to shoot rockets at the US for 3 months, while promising to invade again, I think it would be legitimate to ask what the US should do.
You haven't said what you think should be done in this situation, and I'm still curious. And no, I don't need 100% certainty that Hamas doesn't do this again, but given what they say, I am 100% certain that it will happen again if Israel does nothing.
> Just take these for starters, and spare me all that hand wringing about being forced into smugly destroying civilian infrastructure. It doesn't even pass the smell test.
You've clearly made up your mind. I'd only say that your amount of certainty does not seem related to what any experts on the matter say about the type of operation that is underway. It is very similar in many ways to other operations carried out by e.g. the US against ISIS (though has some other complications).
If you're starting out from the assumption that of course the IDF wants to destroy civilian buildings, OK, nothing I can do to change your mind. But there are reasons for most bombings, and they're usually clear and explainable. The fact that you don't even entertain this idea is... well, not a good way to approach things.
> But seriously, it's not that I "care" so much about the topic, I simply know to much for it being worth your time to even try this on me.
Tr "try" this on you? I have to live this. I'm the one who lives knowing that people all around the world are convinced my country is committing genocide, despite it being wrong (you never answered anything of what I said about this, btw). I'm the one who lived through a week of not knowing if a multi-front war is about to start, which could endanger my life. I'm the who spent months explaining to my kids why they have to run daily to bomb shelters as we were being bombed.
And no one I've talked to has yet given me a good answer for what we should be doing instead
> If Mexico had invaded the US and killed a thousand citizens, it would be completely legitimate to ask how the US would make sure this didn't happen again.
> I wouldn't call them Nazis, that's going too far - but some of them are almost as bad, and a few have the rhetoric of Nazis, no question.
I would also call Hamas or other religious fanatics who murder "Nazis" in that sense. It's a very sloppy, but also deliberate use of the word. The question to me aren't the nuances, the differences, but the similarities.
> If Mexico had invaded the US and killed a thousand citizens, it would be completely legitimate to ask how the US would make sure this didn't happen again.
Not by committing an even bigger atrocity. Because if 1000 Israelis warrant murdering 10000 Palestinians, that means that in turn warrants murdering 100000 Israelis, then 1 million Palestinians, then all of Israel, then random pogroms against Muslims all over the world, then against Jews, until we're out of people to murder to prevent murder.
And "Gaza" didn't invade Israel. Hamas terrorists did.
How about looking into how one of the most hawkishly watched, tiniest strip of border in the whole world could be nilly-willy breached like that? I don't mean this as victim blaming, but you always first look at the things you do control.
> I am 100% certain that it will happen again if Israel does nothing.
And reducing Gaza to rubble and creating a unfathomable humanitarian crisis is going to lessen resentment? Good plan. How about dismantling the settlements? But can't give in to terrorists, can you, and do the thing you should have been doing in the first place if you had any decency. That's impossible to ask of Israelis. Instead, we just ask people in Gaza to die, quietly. Because "they started it" and "we are having our hand forced every step of the way".
> If you're starting out from the assumption that of course the IDF wants to destroy civilian buildings, OK, nothing I can do to change your mind.
I started with no assumption either way. That's what I have seen, in enough permutations.
> It is very similar in many ways to other operations carried out by e.g. the US against ISIS
Blowing up a supreme court building after posing for selfies in it? Nah.
> I have to live this. I'm the one who lives knowing that people all around the world are convinced my country is committing genocide
Have to live what? An expansionist policy rather than respecting international law? No, that's a choice. I mean not your personal choice, but since you keep talking about $country this and $country that... Israel didn't have to go down this path, and it doesn't have to continue down it.
> Not by committing an even bigger atrocity. Because if 1000 Israelis warrant murdering 10000 Palestinians [...]
Let me be very clear, killing 1000 Israelis doesn't "warrant" killing a single Palestinian. Revenge killing is not moral, period. If Hamas were to surrender, there'd be no legitimate reason to kill anyone, neither civilian nor militant.
The valid reason to wage war is to prevent someone from killing you. In this case, Hamas has killed invaded, killed civilians, shot rockets, and promised to do it again. It is a valid reason to go to war with them. It is not a valid reason to ever target civilians - but that doesn't mean that civilians won't tragically be killed.
> And "Gaza" didn't invade Israel. Hamas terrorists did.
Hamas is the government of Gaza. It is Hamas that has embedded themselves into the civilian population in such a way as to prevent separating them.
Again, you keep not answering my question - what do you think Israel should do? Should it just not try to defeat Hamas? Should it do it differently (and in that case, what can Israel do instead?)
> And reducing Gaza to rubble and creating a unfathomable humanitarian crisis is going to lessen resentment? Good plan. How about dismantling the settlements? But can't give in to terrorists, can you, and do the thing you should have been doing in the first place if you had any decency. That's impossible to ask of Israelis. Instead, we just ask people in Gaza to die, quietly. Because "they started it" and "we are having our hand forced every step of the way".
I'm not sure why you keep suggesting that all of Israel is some morally corrupt block or something. I hate the settlements and think that it's a huge moral failure on the part of Israel that it hasn't dismantled them already. Many if not most Israelis oppose the settlements (usually).
Many also feel that the settlements are the only defense against what happened near Gaza happening everywhere else that borders the West Bank. I don't think they're right, but it's hard to blame them given what happened.
As for reducing Gaza to rubble - I wish there was another way. But I think that given Hamas's stated goals, the only chance for security and the only chance for peace is for Hamas to be out of the picture. I don't see how that can be achieved otherwise. Israel isn't all-powerful, and it's predictably acting just like every other western country given this type of urban warfare. (You seemed to argue against this, but just look at the damage caused in e.g. Mosul.)
> How about looking into how one of the most hawkishly watched, tiniest strip of border in the whole world could be nilly-willy breached like that? I don't mean this as victim blaming, but you always first look at the things you do control.
Believe me, Israel is intensely interested in this question. And by all current measures, our current government is incredibly unpopular for this reason (among many others).
> It is Hamas that has embedded themselves into the civilian population in such a way as to prevent separating them.
Bullshit. And that you just endlessly repeat these tropes after I showed you the IDF blowing up a supreme court with no fighters in it, grinning, after I showed you talk about making Gaza unlivable in order to move there, I must conclude you're either really traumatized and caught up in this and can't think straight or aren't arguing in good faith. Either way this is my last reply to you. You are wrong, you have been warned, make the best of it.
> Many also feel that the settlements are the only defense against what happened near Gaza happening everywhere else that borders the West Bank. I don't think they're right, but it's hard to blame them given what happened.
No, it's very easy to blame them, wtf are you on about.
> As for reducing Gaza to rubble - I wish there was another way.
There is: don't do it. Prosecute the people responsible for this.
I have nothing more to say to you that I haven't already said.
Just one more thing:
> (You seemed to argue against this, but just look at the damage caused in e.g. Mosul.)
You mean the fighting that took place after the war of aggression on Iraq?
The US or NATO or the EU aren't the standard. International law and Geneva conventions are. Your feelings don't matter nearly as much as the lives of the innocent victims that are piling up right now.
Or maybe, as a bit of your own medicine: If you find it hard to blame Nazis and to take up the fight, then step aside. Or be counted among them and treated accordingly, if you make a separation impossible.
Please don't do that on HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are. Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully. This topic raises a lot of strong feelings in everyone. If your feelings prevent you from commenting within the site guidelines, please wait to comment until that's no longer the case.
This is important for preserving the community here, and it's important for another reason as well: to the extent that what you're arguing for is true, by posting aggressively and abusively you end up discrediting the truth that you're arguing for. That's not only not in your interest—it hurts everyone. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. We've had to ask you this at least once before, so this problem is not limited to this topic.
For you it seems to be all about having a nice site. For me it's about having a nice world in which people can enjoy intellectual curiosity without being monstrously guilty for it.
> Between 8 December 2023 and 7 February 2024, the entire population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.2 million people) is classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country.
Given how dedicated large sectors of the US tech industry are to silencing discussion, I can only say, I'll think about it. I might prefer to take my leave from this site than participating in it, to preserve something more valuable, more fundamental, while you explore this local optimum of discussion within a framework of normalizing genocide and sophistry with generous helpings of plausible deniability.
I appreciate you saying "seems" because that's not how I feel.
I hear what you say and trust that you sincerely feel strongly about this, but it's not ok to channel that into posting abusively. Moreover, since we've had to ask you this before, in an unrelated context, this isn't just about the current topic.
Commenters often assume that feeling strongly about being right (as they see it) on an important topic means that it's ok to let loose on others—because after all, they're right (as they see it), it's an important topic, and they feel strongly. Actually the opposite is the case, and as I tried to point out, you discredit your own views by behaving this way.
I know it isn't easy but it is possible to make your substantive points without name-calling, personal attack, or flamewar.
Man, you do have a thick skin, I'll give you that. How could I have been snarkier? Yet you breeze right past that to comment something generous and constructive. That's not something I am any good at, but I do respect it greatly.
Okay, I'll try. That is, name-calling and personal attack I can do without, that's obviously more than fair.
I'm just not entirely sure what the "flame war" thing is about, what I do to start or prolong them in your mind. When someone says something I consider incorrect, I refute it. Yeah, I added a lot of extra here I guess, but even without that, long comments with a bunch of quotes and links tend to be my thing. FWIW, they tend to be a LOT longer first draft, if you can believe that. As much snark or passion may have remained in some, it's not that I'm not trying at all. If that (long comments and not letting someone have the last word unless I agree or we're going in circles) is considered "flamewar" I can't help it and must plead guilty and unrepentant and be removed. No hard feelings, either.
But I honestly I don't understand why "too much activity" becomes a problem for you, even on day old threads -- or if it even does, I don't really grok you in that regard. But that's been my impression, as if you think it takes away from discussion of other topics?
During times like these, just like, say, when Appelbaum got cancelled, I do kind of get this thing that Brecht described, where you feel you can't discuss innocent topics while this elephant is in the room. At least not endlessly. Unless it's right in my ball park, something else I deeply care about or know a lot about, I pass, I'm not going to read up and learn on something new and then form a comment based on that, as I otherwise might. Just not in the mood. What I'm trying to say is, if I didn't post these comments (minus the personal attacks, but let's call them activist or political and maybe a bit too long) I would post none, I wouldn't post on other subjects instead.
But I don't post in random threads and try to make them about the chip on my shoulder, either. That's the best I can do, really.
And we don't even have notifications, so when people keep posting in week old threads back and forth, it's because they're both manually checking to see if the other replied. In other words, it's between consenting adults, and as long as it's really just disagreement and splitting hairs and all that, and not abusive, is that really a problem?
Again, other points taken, please don't take this as a long-winded way of say "yes, but" to name-calling and getting personal. It's just your usage of "flamewar" that is hazy to me. To me, flaming someone is name-calling and getting personal, but not a lengthy or "endless" debate as such.
The tricky things in society, the ones that matter deeply to people or which they literally need to live, just aren't like programming anecdotes and all that, where people can have different experiences and no friction. Of course you're right in that this means one should take extra care to not add friction, and I'll renew my efforts for that. But I don't think friction as such is always bad. Too much of it is, but having zero is also a red flag IMO.
Look, a lot of this thread was with me and I have some of my own thoughts on your comments, and why they're hard to deal with and/or flamebaight.
But I don't want to impose my thoughts on you - so if you want me to give you my POV, please let me know. Totally optional - no offense intended by offering, and no offense if you don't want me to write anything.
> And we don't even have notifications, so when people keep posting in week old threads back and forth, it's because they're both manually checking to see if the other replied.
One minor technical point - I use a 3rd-party thing that gives me notifications to replies on my threads, which is probably true of some of the people you are talking with. So FYI that your statement isn't always true (and also FYI that this exists, if you're interested).
I'll try to come back later and respond more, but one quick point: lengthy discussions aren't necessarily flamewars! I'm talking about posts that break the site guidelines with things like aggressive indignation or provocation or denunciatory rhetoric, especially on divisive topics. You can certainly have a long discussion without doing any of that.
Re "long comments with a bunch of quotes and links", there's nothing wrong with that in principle but sometimes people arrive with pre-existing talking points and whatnot and that's not curious conversation—it feels like being recited to tediously. I'd try to avoid that. But if you're relating to what the other person is saying, remaining respectful, and not just copy-pasting, there's no reason that can't be curious conversation, and it certainly doesn't need to be flamewar.
Ok I think I made my main points after all so I might not need to come back later :)
Edit: But you can't post stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38849625 - that's just too aggressive, and "what part of X don't you understand" is both a swipe and a flamewar trope!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38849701 is also borderline by HN standards, I'm afraid - but would probably be ok without the last sentence. Your comments will be better (for HN) and also more persuasive if you don't use overwrought rhetoric like that.
> Edit: But you can't post stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38849625 - that's just too aggressive, and "what part of X don't you understand" is both a swipe and a flamewar trope!
When someone turns what I wrote, that one sentence, into "it seems like you're excusing killing Jews", that's fine? So you saw that, and have no poblem with it? Well, wow.
I honestly do not understand how that sentence could be more concise and clear. If someone reads something as fantastic as me "excusing killing Jews" into that, I have to ask, what in the world gave them that idea.
If I said "I'm under the impression you kept your comment short because you wanted to go back to kicking homeless people", and said that in a very polite way as I just quoted it, would you say "oh, that's a misunderstanding"??
Of course that's not fine, and no I didn't see it. We don't come close to reading everything, and I often don't look at the threads in linear order.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, this by no means implies that the mods secretly agree with it. I understand the temptation everyone has to leap to that conclusion, but overwhelmingly the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Still, users here need to follow the rules regardless of what other users do, and that applies to you the same as to me and anyone else. Changing the focus to someone else's misbehavior doesn't help. Everyone always feels like the other person started it and/or did worse, so that's just a recipe for a downward spiral.
What we need you (i.e. everyone) to do instead is absorb HN's guidelines, take them to heart, and then make your substantive points within that intended spirit, whether other people are doing this or not. If you're willing to do that, you can continue to post here and make your points. But we need you to stop breaking the site guidelines, which you've unfortunately been continuing to do. (And yes, I know other users are breaking the site guidelines too. If I could change that, I would.)
Thanks. I really just needed that acknowledgement to restore a sense of fairness, because I did assume if a response is called out, the context would at least be looked at. I am fine with adhering the guidelines though it's not always fair, or even when the other kids started it, etc. -- but using flags against a comment that is a reply to me, in a debate type situation, is just not something I can bring myself to do. Even in debates I am involved in maybe. Knowing that I if I called it out, I'd get a fair hearing, as I just did, is really all I needed.
I don't understand people who say this, I really don't.
If I were to say "the US is capable of nuking Iraq and killing most of their civilians", that would just be a true statement of the capabilities of the US. That they chose not to do so during the Iraq war is proof of something about the US's intentions.
It's proof of the value that the US places on human lives, despite it sometimes costing the US dearly.
Of course I think nuking Iraq would've been unconscionable, for many reasons. For the same reasons that the US chose not to do it, obviously. But pointing that out is just plain old logic.
Acting otherwise doesn't add anything to the conversation.
The US not nuking Iraq in a war of aggression is proof that "the US" places a high value on human life? It would have started WW3 and there would have been no more US. Even the worst sociopath in the world wouldn't have done it just for that reason. It's still a war of aggression, with hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered.
> If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk about the day after will be different.
To say "we could have murdered more" and think one can be in any sort related or even adjacent to the tradition of enlightenment and human rights at the same time is preposterous.
so then what is the intent?
is it group punishment of israeli civilians ? and also Palestinian civilians who will find it even harder to find affordable food?
The website has a clear purpose: News on maritime shipping. It doesn't report on geopolitics. You might think that screaming propaganda at anything that doesn't read the way you want it to makes you look smart, but it really does quite the opposite.
> Between 8 December 2023 and 7 February 2024, the entire population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.2 million people) is classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country
That's showing one instance of Hamas stealing food. And you just go "so obviously, the whole situation is their fault case closed who cares". You're not even trying to hide it.
> Maybe you just try so hard to side with terrorists?
Nope, I condemn the terrorism and the genocide based on the same principles. You think Netanyahu and his gang of right-wing extremists aren't hurting Israelis? Heh. They favor expansionism and racism over security and peace. And they don't get to hide behind Hamas, just like Hamas doesn't get to hide behind them.
> "If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk is about the day after will be different. They want to leave, they have been living in the ghetto for 75 years and are in need"
"Fighting terrorism", good one. You're rather using both terrorism and the Holocaust to engage in more of the same, on behalf of religious fanatics not one bit better than islamists.
The border to Egypt refuses any cargo. All goods have to be brought in through Israel. There two issues there - that doesn't make the effective blockade from Israel's side a non-issue.
Why are you equating Palestinian population to Hamas? And omitting that not supplying the population is effectively equivalent to killing a portion of it? The situation is not as simple as you're trying to reduce it to.
It is pretty obvious that if given the option, Israel would drive every last Palestinian out of the Gaza strip just to be sure that Hamas can't send rockets ever again. Once Palestinians have left, they will never be allowed to go back. You end up with millions of stateless people.
Also you pulled the last sentence out of your ass, talking as if Israel doesn't border the Gaza strip, because the city itself technically has no border with Israel.
Just a reminder that Gaza faces the Mediterranean Sea too, but Israel does not allow any ship to go there. It doesn't allow them to create a port. Israel is effectively controlling what gets in and out of Gaza. Israel does surround Gaza, and for the part it doesn't "surround it" (Egypt), it has agreements with the Egyptian government on what goes in and out.
> They have a border with Egypt. Why won't Egypt let them leave?
"Leave" as in "ethnically cleanse themselves, never to return"? So what's all this song and dance about pretending to not be on board with genocide about?
> There was never a blockade because Israel never surrounded Gaza.
> Israel maintained the blockade was necessary to weaken Hamas, an armed, Iranian-backed group committed to Israel’s destruction.
> But critics say the blockade constituted collective punishment against Gaza’s more than 1.5 million people in its ultimately failed effort to shake Hamas’ hold on the territory. An American diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks last year quoted Israeli diplomats as saying they wanted to “keep Gaza’s economy on the brink of collapse.”
[..]
> Similar to the calculation of the calorie needs, Israel also used baffling secret guidelines to differentiate between humanitarian necessities and nonessential luxuries. The result was that military bureaucrats enforcing the blockade allowed frozen salmon and low-fat yogurt into the Hamas-ruled territory, but not cilantro or instant coffee.
There never was a blockade. There is no genocide. Just keep handwaving and it will all go away.
> "Leave" as in "ethnically cleanse themselves, never to return"? So what's all this song and dance about pretending to not be on board with genocide about?
Ethic cleansing is about mass relocating people, while genocide is about mass murdering them. They are two different phenomena.
> acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
When they all live in refugees in other countries, they are destroyed as a national group. With this level of hair splitting you might as well say it's not genocide as long as even one member of the group survives, why not go there, too.
> Ethnic cleansing has been described as part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide, where the perpetrator's goal is the destruction of the targeted group. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer whereas genocide is the attempt to destroy part or all of a particular ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. While ethnic cleansing and genocide may share the same goal and the acts which are used to perpetrate both crimes may often resemble each other, ethnic cleansing is intended to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, while genocide is intended to destroy a group.
Whereas, by your understanding, ethnic cleansing and genocide are the same thing. Why would we need the term "ethnic cleansing" then?
How is displaying a national group elsewhere not destroying it as a national group? That's why I say genocide. And at best you could say they don't care if the Palestinians live or die as long as they go away, by bombs, starvation or fleeing, and then can take the land.
> "If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk is about the day after will be different. They want to leave, they have been living in the ghetto for 75 years and are in need"
Admitting Gaza is a ghetto and the desire to ethnically cleanse it in one fell swoop.
> Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal believes that Israeli forces are completing three genocidal acts, including, “killing, causing serious bodily harm, and measures calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.” He points to the mass levels of destruction and total siege of basic necessities—like water, food, fuel, and medical supplies—as evidence.
So, at the very least, some of the people literally studying genocide are agreeing it is genocide. And many people who deny it is have political motivations. So fuck their nuance. If people can commit genocide or rub shoulders with people who do, they'll survive being called genocidal. It's not about their feelings or the face they think they can save, it's about the people who are getting murdered and driven away by colonialists.
> his sort of bombastic rhetoric hurts the pro-Palestinian cause.
First off, that dichomoty of "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine" something I reject. I stand for international law and against Nazis. I know you find that "bombastic", too, but I prefer the company I'm in.
> Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal believes that Israeli forces are completing three genocidal acts, including, “killing, causing serious bodily harm, and measures calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.” He points to the mass levels of destruction and total siege of basic necessities—like water, food, fuel, and medical supplies—as evidence.
If a director of genocide studies says there is a case to be made, there is a case to be made. I can try to make the case, if you want, until dang steps in to curtail a flamewar between two people who aren't even mad at each other and who nobody else reads ^^
But more importantly, what practical difference do you see?
I say our neighbour is murdering his daughter, right now. All sorts of people come from the brushwork to call me a neighbour-hater, berate me in all sorts of ways, seek nuance, blah di blah. Turns out, he didn't murder his daughter, he was "just" raping her and cutting her legs off while people made excuses to do fuck all. And then they feel vindicated even! See? False alarm. It wasn't crime A that is beyond that pale, it was crime B that is beyond that pale!
Hannah Arendt explained how totalitarianism can only by fully understood by obduction, and how people who can't get mobilized by what is already known, wouldn't be mobilized by the full picture either.
Don't criticize me for doing imperfectly what you are not doing at all and expect anything but a tired groan. Put people on trial and then the judges can and should be nuanced. Until then, nope.
Gaza and Israel are at war, because Gaza attacked Israel. In wars, countries don't normally allow aid in to the state you are fighting. The fact that Israel allow anything in at all shows the extent to which they are fighting with kid gloves. In any other place or any other period of history all goods heading into Gaza would be seized, and the entire territory would be put under siege until they either surrendered completely, or died of starvation/thirst.
After all, Hamas need to eat. If nothing gets into Gaza then Hamas must stop fighting.
IIRC when China developed the first one, it was a game-changer in the western Pacific. Until then, US carriers and other ships could safely go where they wanted, including within range of Taiwan in case of a war. The US Navy had sufficient defenses against 'cruise' anti-ship missiles (that fly parallel to the ground, like planes).
But ballistic missiles are much harder to intercept (and I think have much greater range) and China was able to put the carriers, then the core of US naval power, at risk. Submarines also help, and the US is now shifting away from dependence on its carriers.
I'm surprised the Houthis have them, or even Iran. I thought it was still only a capability of a few countries.
If I understand correctly, China has a much harder problem than the Houthis. Knowing where a carrier is that is 200 miles behind Taiwan, so 300 miles off the coast of China, knowing the location accurately enough to give targeting information to a missile... that's a hard problem.
Knowing where a ship is in a straight that's 30 miles wide? That's a lot easier.
So I suspect that the Houthis can't do what the Chinese can.
as opposed to meaning "parabolic", ballistic means they don't have propulsion after the launch phase, they are in free-fall under the influence of gravity, but like a person in a parachute, they're still able to steer within the envelope of hurtling to the earth
The Houthis possess both true ASBMs and land attack ballistic missiles which have been shot at and hit ships in the past few weeks. The second can only ever work if the ship is totally stationary but these were identified as ASBMs by U.S. Central command which can presumably tell the difference based on whether or not the missiles actually maneuver to hit moving targets. The US navy shot a few more down immediately afterwards.
This may sound silly, but until this comment I, a non-gun-user, always vaguely thought that the AR in AR-15 stood for Assault Rifle. Apparently it's ArmaLite Rifle. Huh.
A division of Fairchild Aircraft, which explains how they got all those contracts with the USAF. Sadly, their connections inside the Army were not nearly as strong, resulting in the well known political/procurement issues they had turning the AR-15 into the M16.
War is a huge escalation - usually when two countries see no other avenue than to fight it out.
Most wars are fought over borders. Land ownership is 0 sum game. Especially land blessed with natural resources. (Middle East is great example of oil wars)
In the 90s imperialism was popular - if you had the manpower and weapons, you’d take land from the weak.
Russia is playing land grab card against Ukraine.
Hamas is playing the land grab card against Israel. Although Israel being backed by US will inflict a lot more damage.
Africa is full of border conflicts for centuries. We don’t hear much about it since it’s a poor continent.
The US has the world’s largest military and a big part of what they do is to ensure their allies have their borders intact (NATO, Australia, Japan, S Korea etc).
So sinking some ships is likely gonna be met with some bombs on their military production facilities where missiles are made (if they figure it out).
For the world’s largest military, US holds much restraint not invading other countries borders, and helping democratic countries keep their borders intact.
If US unleashed colonialism card, we could be much larger than British empire. However the bitter lesson is that conquering is easy, maintaining power is way harder.
Seems China is holding restraint invading Taiwan until they see a clear win with a blitz, or another peaceful avenue.
> "Hamas is playing the land grab card against Israel".
What do you mean by that? Comparing Russia with Hamas seems like a massive distortion of reality, not sure you meant to do that.
Israel is occupying internationally recognized Palestinian lands of West Bank and a blockade on Gaza. Just yesterday the Israeli foreign minister suggested sending Israeli settlers into Gaza illegally and drive Palestinians out for good. Hamas is a terrorist organization, who kills civilians, but let's not pretend that the IDF is any better.
And the US is a colonial power of the 20th and 21st century. It just hasn't done it the same way as the Europeans of 17,18th,19th century, mostly because there are different tools available now: culture export, dependence on oil, dollar as reserve currency, global free trade, and the rise of corporations.
Noan Chomsky says the issue of Palestine is resistance against colonialism. [1] [2]
The linchpin of this tactical situation in the Red Sea is the presence of the Iranian spy ship MV Behshad (the one that replaced the Saviz). It is giving precise targeting information of commercial ships to the Houthis to launch land-based missiles and drones. Without this ship, the Houthis would be shooting wildly into the ocean with the granularity of open-source maritime surveillance networks like marinetraffic.com.
> The USS Gravely and USS Laboon responded to the incident, with the USS Gravely successfully shooting down two anti-ship ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen.
Surely this is a defensive measure against the next incident, rather than a response to this one?
2 hours after the missiles were fired the ship was attacked again by four small boats and attempted to board. US helicopters responding were fired upon and killed 3/4 of the boats and crews. (Reported after article written)
Generally, I've found @TankerTrackers on twitter is good.
"The ship did call on Israel's Haifa port in October and several other ports after that in Egypt, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Saudi Arabia, China, and others, based on shipping data. "
It might be less about it carrying anything specific and more about who owns it or where its headed. This is part of an effort by the houthis to put pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid in (their declared reason at least)).
Most of the ships they target are either own fully or partially by Israeli companies, or are headed to Israeli ports
It doesn’t matter that some ships weren’t nominally owned by Israel but in reality owned by shell corporations in turn owned by Israel-supporting billionaires.
Do you have a fact source or just vague associations? The statement at question is "Most of the ships they target are either own fully or partially by Israeli companies, or are headed to Israeli ports"
From source Wikipedia, this is not true. Only 3 of 17 have Israeli ownership or ports of call. Do you have a source for Israeli ownership or ports of call for 6 more ships?
Also, your stated class of "owned by Israel-supporting billionaires" is moving the goalposts. That is not the announced Houthi criteria.
The “goalposts” are defined by the Houthis and unless you think they’re careless or have ulterior motives compared to their stated aim of stopping the Israeli genocide of Palestine, then there must be other reasons they have. For one I’ve heard they take action if a ship doesn’t respond to their hails.
My facts were from various Twitter posts - I don't have them on hand but you can search fairly easily. It's pretty clear that wikipedia data doesn't cover this level of detail - but using game theory - it's pretty reasonable that the Houthis have a political goal and being random or scattershot in their attacks would dilute that goal.
Swan Atlantic has Israeli connections as well from the Wikipedia list. Clearly this list is being updated as info unfolds. Also the lack of a link on the Wikipedia page does not mean there is no link, and just as you missed Swan Atlantic (and I didn't even go through the full list), there can be other ships with Israeli connections that you didn't catch (or entries that were updated since the time you checked)
Do you have a single fact source that differs from the Wikipedia list?
As far as I can tell Swan Atlantic is owned by a Norwegian company without Israeli ties and had no Israeli ports of call. That means the observed Houthi behavior is still 14/17 (82%) not-Israeli-related.
The Houthi behavior is significantly different from Houthi claims of motivation.
A German submarine sank the USS Reuben James in late October 1941. The US did not declare war for that incident. In fact Germany declared war on the US after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Wow, that's a pretty awful website. You navigate to it and you get three popups. One of which is modal and blocks out the entire site. It manages to piss you off before you can even read the headline.
I’m fairly concerned this Red Sea thing can turn into what sets off inflation for real. These routes were major efficiency factors to the economy. If we lose them, there’s nothing but added cost coming for us all, and at the worst time for consumer confidence in central banks ability to manage the situation.
Can we just keep our shit together? It’s been a rough decade and it’s only 3 years into the 2020s…
Blowing up your own ammnition by accident and blaming the Spanish?
ADDENDUM: Clarification for those up|down voting like a yo-yo:
On February 15, 1898, the American battleship Maine exploded while sitting in the Havana harbor, killing two officers and 250 enlisted men.
Fourteen of the injured later died, bringing the death toll to 266.
A naval board of inquiry concluded that the blast was caused by a mine placed outside the ship.
Release of the board’s report led many to accuse Spain of sabotage, helping to build public support for war.
Subsequent studies, including one published in 1976 and later reissued in 1995, determined that the ship was destroyed from the inside, when burning coal in a bunker triggered an explosion in an adjacent space that contained ammunition.
Game-theoretically the US wouldn't want to drop support for Israel in response to attacks on shipping-- that would just result more in attacks on shipping by any country in the world that wants to force the US to do something. If the US wanted to drop Israel, they would only do so after a years-long bombing campaign that terrorized and depopulated Yemen, to make it clear that the US cannot be blackmailed into dropping allies.
And yes, obviously, the US would do this entirely with conventional weapons. They've got eighty years of experience in crushing the third world under their boot with regular TNT bombs, after all, with no need for nukes.
You said this to a few people, and you’re not wrong but i also don’t care? This should be an issue we can resolve without really getting into the politics of their belief systems. Secure shipping channels, it’s been the MO of modern economies for a hundred years or more at least.
You're underestimating how staggeringly cheap ocean freight is. A 40ft container can be shipped from China to NYC for under $3000; it's a very small portion of the retail cost of most goods.
Even if cargo vessels all have to travel around the cape of good hope for a year or two, this increases the cost by a small percentage and is not going to kick off major inflation.
My point is it’s not cheaper it’s more expensive, at precisely the wrong time. Sure shipping costs might be a small fraction of the costs of goods…but…unless it’s <= 2% that ain’t helping inflation so let’s do something about it.
TLDR: it’s more than 2%, the average value of a shipping container is 50k, it costs 3k to mover. This is an issue, let’s resolve it.
FYI: You misread your link, it quotes the average value of a Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit as 55K, so 109K for an FEU which costs 3K to ship.
Furthermore, these numbers are wholesale values; a reasonable rule of thumb is to double that for retail prices. That puts the cost of sea freight at about 1.3% of retail using your numbers. Even a doubling would be dwarfed by other factors driving inflation.
> “The Yemeni position is clear,” Abdullah Ben Amer, a high-ranking Houthi official in a department that is part of the group’s defense ministry, told The New York Times. The Houthi escalation in the Red Sea will stop, he said, when “the Israeli war on the people of Gaza stops.”
What a novel geopolitical theory reaching across Arabian peninsula. I suppose that once the US deposed someone in conflict with the Iranians, they could spend money on groups like the Houthis.
Because we're talking about real life, what exactly do you mean, and what does it matter?
The concept is almost never true - and a strong signal of subjectibe bias - and also not useful for international relations or for any conflict. They are acting according to their interests, using the means they have.
I can see how the slogans of the Houthis make them a less than sympathetic set of missileers. For example, it might be awkward for a person supportive of the Palestinian cause to be in goal alignment with a well funded group stating uncloseted hatred of Jews.
No more awkward than supporters of Israel having to cope with Israeli ministers suggesting nuking Gaza, or having to deal with the ACLU defending Nazis in court.
Every cause, even (sometimes especially) the righteous ones, has shitty people attached to it.
That’s not the same thing at all. Hamas and the like have an official, publicly available creed which explicitly calls for the extermination of Jews. You sure you want to put that on the same level as one minister suggesting something stupid? By that logic, you absolutely must put all of congress in one group because trump suggested something similar.
I for one was unfamiliar with the Houthi org’s credo and was rather shocked how antisemitic it sounds.
People here don’t quote the Facebook motto often, to be sure, but “move fast and break things” is quoted often as is the old Google one “don’t be evil.”
It doesn’t make sense that quoting the mission statement isn’t helpful information when there isn’t much about the Houthis posted here.
This is gonna seem sort of like an off-topic comment but once we have free, unlimited, clean energy that can’t be weaponized into things like dirty bombs, a lot of these wars will simply disappear. Yes, this is a pie in the sky dream probably another 250 years away at minimum, but think about it: Don’t have carrots? Build a greenhouse and turn the lights on all day/night. Don’t have water? Condense it from the air or desalinate it.
Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine are not really about power or oil or gas. They're about land*, and no quantity of solar panels and wind turbines will fix that.
The people born in Palestine or Ukraine don't want to build a new country in the ocean using limitless energy. They want to stay in their homes. The same is true for most people, I'd wager.
Wouldn't justice be a cause for wars too? Even if energy was limitless or extremely cheap, this wouldn't mean people will stop being mean right? Something else will become too valuable and greed and other human traits will cause injustices and people will still fight to enforce/overthrow the injustice no?
> free, unlimited, clean energy that can’t be weaponized into things like dirty bombs
even in this nuclear free fantasy world, medical and industrial sources will still be around and far easier to steal than fission fuel ever was. we've had the tech to make (virtually) free unlimited energy for 70 years and there is no good reason why it hasn't become ubiquitous
Wars aren't a means to achieve resources, but to destroy them and waste them. In the long term, that is.
> War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
-- George Orwell
And with many conflicts, I'd say it's about one class of war mongers and war profiteers distributed onto both sides, and one class of average people -- and the average person doesn't want war period, they have to be coaxed into it with great effort -- distributed onto both sides. Then the lunatics on each side use the lunatics on the other side as a reason to tighten their grip over their own population, and for sending their "own" people off to become murderers and/or die. Then they build statues for themselves.
Yeah, that's a simplification, and snarky. But it sure is closer to the truth than the narrative of countries struggling as against each other, where the politicians, generals, grunts and civilians of one nation are on one side, and the politicians, generals, grunts and civilians of the other nation on the other.
> If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it's that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.
-- Marjane Satrapi
Yeah, the Iranian and the US government aren't "the same". But I trust the point is obvious anyway.
> [Q: Isn't there a certain calculus that someone who is sitting in the shoes of a Condoleezza Rice can make, that they're responsible for the best outcome for American citizens, and there's an upside of going into Iraq which is we get one of the greatest material possessions in world's history, and there're downsides which are: we upset the international community, and maybe there's more terrorism. Couldn't you envision a calculus where they say, sure, that's the reason, and it's a good reason, let's do it. What's the flaw in the calculus?]
> Oh, I think that's exactly their calculus. But then we ought to just be honest and say, "Look, we're a bunch of Nazis." So fine, let's just drop all the discussion, we save a lot of trees, we can throw out the newspapers and most of the scholarly literature, and just come out, state it straight, and tell the truth: we'll do whatever we want because we think we're gonna gain by it. And incidently, it's not American citizens who'll gain. They don't gain by this. It's narrow sectors of domestic power that the administration is serving with quite unusual dedication...
-- Noam Chomsky, "Why Iraq?" at Harvard University, November 4, 2002
Those "narrow sectors of domestic power" use those under their thumb to against narrow sectors of other power centers, and vice versa. And there was never a "need" for it. Not 100 years ago, not 10000 years ago. War is good for "absolutely nothing". That's why you have all the ceremonies and uniforms and somber faces. It's like royalty that way. Or religion.
If we think adding infinite energy, "infinitely" fast and free computation, "infinite" memory, "free" sensors attached to every pebble in the solar system to the mix will lead to more freedom just like that seems.. unlikely. As in, the parties who right now aren't showing any signs of stopping their consolidation of power, their efforts to atomize and disenfranchise people, when they are still only struggling for limited power, will just... step aside once there is "infinite" power to be had, instead of using it to tighten their grip, and also stab each other in the back and consolidate as much as they can? Why would they? Who would make them? With what?
Instead of removing a "need" for war, which I'd say never existed in the first place, infinite resources could just as well allow for an infinite amount of it. A boot on a human face, forever. Ran out of enemies? Clone some. Ran out of traitors? Entrap some. Think Starship Troopers.
Awkardly translated from the German version back to English via DeepL:
> Suddenly it turns out that what the human imagination has banished for millennia to a realm beyond human competence can actually be created. Hell and purgatory, and even a reflection of their eternal duration, can be constructed by allowing people to die indefinitely using the most modern means of destruction and the art of healing. What these types, of whom there are many more in every big city than we would like to admit, realize when watching these films or reading these reports is that the power of man is greater than they dare to admit, and that hellish fantasies can be realized without the sky falling and the earth opening up.
The Bab-el-Mandeb has tons of ships in it, and as far as I know the only ones Ansar Allah have attacked are the ones who have ignored their very clear criteria.
It’s incredible to watch in near-real-time how hollowed out the US’s ability to project its will has become. They announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, and within days it seemed to collapse. Looks like there aren’t many folks signing up to be vassal states these days.
It’s such a cringe name, I wonder if that hurt the adoption. I think the real issue is that the Operation gives a bit too much power to the US to direct the participants. There is cooperation and then there is subordination.
I work a lot with governments and from my experience naming matters a lot, way more than it should. They’re basically always in campaign mode even when they’re in power. Often the first question is what will people think when they hear the name of the project. Most people don’t read briefs so often their entire perception is from the title and what they’ve been told to think about it by others. I’ve had to kill projects due to too much time taken up in committees over the damn name of the thing.
Russian jets downed a US drone over the black sea in March 2023, I thought for sure there'd be a commensurate US military response. But there didn't appear to be one. Was it because no human was aboard the drone (so no response was justified), from fear or escalation, or something else?
In any case, if a large cargo ship were sunk, would the US or other nations go to war, would they retaliate with a similarly sized response, or would they do nothing (as with the Russian downing of the US drone).
Does anyone have some good resources on this topic? As a layperson I find military responses difficult to predict. (I'm familiar with foundational game theory, but not specific to international relations and security)