America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

woggy

Based on recent stories on Ukraine signing agreements with GCC countries, it is Russian oil money vs Gulf oil money now.

doctaj

https://archive.ph/JOqhI

adventured

The single most interesting thing that will come out of the Iran war, is it's giving the go-ahead signal for China. I don't mean morally specifically, I mean practically: China is plainly seeing the US can't sustain a long campaign what-so-ever. The US has burned through ~850 Tomahawks in weeks, 20-25% of its stock. Again an opponent that wasn't that hard to knock down in terms of air to ground / ground to air, and strategic targets. While the US can demolish high value targets all day long (assuming it can find them), it won't be able to sustain volume. And this is against a dramatically outmatched opponent (in terms of air + navy + intel, not boots on the ground). China will build a hundred cruise missiles per day and truck them in from factories far away from the coast. The US can build 10-20. China's cruise missiles won't be as good, and they won't need to be. And that's the absolute least of what China will hyper produce in a mobilization to a war manufacturing stance. The US should just wave the flag before the first shots are fired re Taiwan given what we're seeing in Iran, it's over before it ever begins. The US can't control the Straight of Hormuz properly, without taking losses (which it clearly doesn't want to do). That's a trivial task compared to trying to keep China from controlling the waters near Taiwan. The US won't be able to even get close to Taiwan is what this is demonstrating. China can stand-off the US easily. The US is showing China and the world that it has zero chance at stopping a takeover of Taiwan. China should be looking at this Iran mess and moving as fast as it can to launch their invasion. The US isn't ready, and won't be. The US could put up a big fight at a full war mobilization, given some time to spin up. That scenario will not occur with regard to Taiwan. China has the green light. --- edit: There was a story about the early days of the invasion into Iraq by the US, after 9/11. It was about the US soldiers rolling into Iraqi towns, cities. They thought the US soldiers were maybe superhuman, or at least had extraordinarily advanced technology. An Iraqi boy wondered if the US soldiers could see through buildings with their helmets and goggles. After all they dispatched Saddam from power so quickly, seemingly so easily - one can understand the wonder. Then they figured out the US soldiers were just meatbags like any other soldiers. That IEDs killed them just the same, and sniper rounds, and so on. One of the very large benefits to rarely using your capabilities as a military superpower, is so that your enemies are unsure of just what you're capable of if pushed. And if you're lucky enough to put on a staggering outcome - as in the first Gulf War - in which Russia got to see their hardware decimated by vastly superior US weapons, then you should rest on that perception as long as possible. Iraq and Afghanistan substantially weakened the perception of US military domination (just a Vietnam did before that, for a generation). Iran doesn't show the US to be weak per se, rather, it shows the limits of its present endurance capabilities among other things. And that's what China needs to know. And of course this happens to major powers from time to time throughout history. Russia goes into Ukraine and gets humiliated, its capabilities at the point of launching that war, were revealed to be embarrassingly mediocre compared to what was thought to exist. Or the USSR and Afghanistan before that.

jmyeet

How times have changed when a neoliberal institution (not quite as bad as The Economist) openly says this: > Even the threat of terrorism from the region was a consequence of American involvement, not the reason for it. Had the United States not been deeply and consistently involved in the Muslim world since the 1940s, Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking an indifferent nation 5,000 miles and two oceans away. Contrary to much mythology, they have hated us not so much because of “who we are” but because of where we are. In Iran’s case, the United States was deeply involved in its politics from the 1950s until the 1979 revolution, including as the main supporter of the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The surest way of avoiding Islamist terrorist attacks would have been to get out. This is absolutely correct and it's wild we now live in a time when mainstream media just comes out and says it. I agree with two general themes of this article: 1. This administration has done more to destroy American's global power than any other in history and it's not even closer. We live in a time when Europe is questioning its position of being America's dog. The Gulf states are questioning what they get out of America's security guarantee if America can't or won't protected them; and 2. Russia and China are huge winners here. China simply has to do nothing and not interrupt the US while they're making a historic and unprecedented mistake. And Europe and the US will likely make peace with Russia over Ukraine because of spiralling energy costs thanks to America's reckless misadventure in the Gulf. This is going to end very badly for the US and it will (IMHO) go down as the biggest own-goal in American history.

NooneAtAll3

So... will we see EU apply sanctions?

12971h

Robert Kagan is not wrong about many points, but it is worth noting that he is one of the leading neocons, husband of Nuland, and architect of PNAC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C... The think tank (Brookings Institute) which he is part of laid out the Iran strategy "Path to Persia" something like 15 years ago. I think he does recognize that the US needs Europe for projecting power, so that part is genuine. The US could not prosper against a hypothetical Eurasian union. Not sure what to make of this. Maybe it is supposed to appease the EU (you still have allies in Washington), maybe it is a wakeup call for the deep state to pull the brakes.

fuzzfactor

Can't read the Atlantic any more since it became private, but nobody can deny that America's more of a rogue and less super than it was a year ago.

CHB0403085482

If you missed it ~ https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/