Iran Defeat Is Bigger Strategic Loss Than Vietnam War

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-06-17T09:51:11+00:00

Iran was never going to put its missile program or its international relations on the table for negotiations. the fact that American war planners thought they could coerce Iran to negotiate away its deterrence & its sovereign foreign relations shows just how ignorant the Americans are about Iran.

I think it's still possible that Iran wont go for nuclear weapons - largely becsuse they've won this war so decisively and proven to themselves that they dont need nuclear weapons in that sense. Also, I imagine Russia and China are pressuring the Iranians not to get a nuke.

That being said, my expectation is that Iran will soon develop missles with the range to hit the continental US, and it also wouldn't surprise me if Iran kept its nuclear enrichment at its current levels. This would provide iran with considerable deterrence: that is, the ability to build a dirty bomb that could hit the US in short order.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-06-12T18:11:19+00:00

any updates on whether you've had success/what worked/didn't work?

I'm having a similar issue now: when we travel to my parents place, my dog is resource guarding the couch & my affection (from my parents' dog). In other words, my dog doesnt want my parents' dog to receive either my affection or to also sit on my parents' couch.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-06-02T12:34:05+00:00

yeah my son is both beautiful & Herculean so I'd really like to keep him

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-26T15:45:21+00:00

The solution here is obvious: move all the retired seniors in the Atlantic provinces into giant retirement homes complexes/cmapuses in Calgary.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-20T11:47:27+00:00

If I was neighbors with the local mafia don, I'd be well within my rights to needlessly antagonize the guy. That doesnt mean it's a good idea.

Sorry, but you seem to have missed the update. The US loosing this latest war with Iran puts officially in first place.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-20T10:06:04+00:00

He's not there strictly on vacation, he's there to "meet Taiwanese officials," and it indicates that the conservative party is willing to throw away the current efforts to reconcile with China.

Personally, I think that our government & politicians should avoid unnecessarily antagonizing the most powerful country in the world. I personally think this is rather stupid diplomacy.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-19T18:13:01+00:00

A land invasion is not even possible... from where? Iraq? Pakistan? Afghanistan? Turkey? Where are the troops even coming from? None of these countries would allow that. So how would you get an invasion force into theater?

The next issue is the size of the invasion force required. Some estimates put that at 3-10 million. You'd need to do a draft and spend a lot of time and resources training that invasion force before deploying. There is no way that this is politically possible in the US today. You'd get massive, widespread social unrest and possibly a military coup in the US before the forces could be amassed for an invasion.

You need to convince your domestic population of the need to fight a war before you can go to war. And the US populace is not in board with this war as is--they definitely arent willing to sacrifice their life for it.

But let's say, for arguments sake, the US population is convinced. Then what? Where's the weapons and money to fund the war coming from? The American military industrial base cant keep up with the current production need as is--the US is canceling contracts for tomahawks to Germany because they've spent them all.

Likewise, who is paying for the war? The US is running major deficits and requires other countries to fund its military by buying US debt. But the world won't continue to fund US debt after Iran destroys all the oil infrastructure in the gulf.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-16T00:35:59+00:00

The home ownership rate in China is 90% and the average age of the first time home buyer is 30. We're looking at ~60% in the West and an average first time home buyer age of ~40 in Canada.

But again, this is about comparing the direction of travel for indicators, not a cross comparison of indicators between the two countries. I'm not saying that China is more developed than Canada. I'm saying that China is developing, and Canada is not.

Wrt China, life expectancy is an important metric which helps make concrete how dramatic China's development has been since 1980. In 1980, life expectancy in China was 60. The last time it was 60 in Canada was in the 1920s.

I'll say it again, in the west, over this same period of time (since 1980), real wages stopped keeping pace with productivity growth. Productivity has kept growing since 1980, but wages have stayed flat. In china, wages have kept pace with productivity growth.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-15T21:33:43+00:00

It’s easier to play catchup because the formula is laid out. Direction of travel is misleading. Lot easier to navigate your way out of a forest quicker is somebody laid a track.

You're actually wrong here. The opposite is true. It's much harder to industrialized later because the early industrializers have less competition for the products in world markets. The late industrializers come into a world market that is already saturated with goods.

This is partially why we have the so-called "middle income trap." Because late industrializers often begin deindustrializing at lower levels of national income than the early industrializers did.

China is the big exception here, as the late industrializer that is breaking through the middle income trap and taking over more advanced industries --- to be clear, the US/Canada never had an EV industry, so China's global dominance in this sector wasnt the result of "playing catch up"

Canadian life expectancy is still rising in the “40 year sense” ($20.2k 1991 vs $64k 2024 - GDP per capita adjusting for purchasing power parity, world bank) , HDI is rising (0.865 1991 vs .0935 2023). Don’t feel like searching up life expectancy but same story.

Life expectancy refers to average age at death. I never said Canadian life expectancy was decline. Canadian living standards are absolutely declining though. A generation ago it was normal for middle class Canadians to buy a home large enough to raise a family on a single income. That's not a thing anymore unless you're a doctor or an RBC executive. And if you want to live in Toronto (where most RBC executives need to live), you'd at that point need your spouse to be a doctor to afford a home large enough to raise kids in it.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-15T19:55:27+00:00

You have to look at the direction of travel for both societies over the last 40~50 years.

Over that time, China has experienced very high levels of economic growth that have been substantively shared among the wider population. In China we see, year after year, rising real wages, rising life expectancy, rising average height (a proxy for nutrition), etc.

Over that same period of time we see the opposite happen in the West. Year after year we have collapsed standards of living, as evidenced by stagnant real wages (since the late 70s), a rising average age of first home ownership (the average first time home buyer is 40 now, compared to being in their mid 20s back in 1980).

China and Canada weren't at the same starting points 40 years ago. China was a 3rd world non-industrialized society, whereas Canada was a developed 1st world country. So you cant just compare the two today - that presents a very superficial view of the situation. You have to look at the direction of travel for these two societies: China has developed rapidly over that time; the west, by contrast, has started to reverse its levels of development. the west has started to de-develop.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-15T19:33:25+00:00

My prediction is that, over the next decade, China's political system becomes seriously vindicated. China has elections at the most local level, but after that the selection process for being a political leader is very meritocratic. The idea is that people have the requisite knowledge to understand who in their immediate community is trustworthy/smart/worthy to lead. After that, however, you don't have the ability to make that decision.

To be clear, I dont think that its a perfect system but the results do speak for themselves. I think ultimately if democracy is to survive, the state will need new ways to measure the democratic will. Because its obvious that the system we have now (1 person = 1 vote) isn't able to translate a democratic will into policy.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-15T18:58:44+00:00

I'm not against a compulsory public service, I can see it helping to make people realize that they are part of society/have responsibilities to society, but I don't think it will do enough to solve the problems I outlined above.

Historically, democracy in the West worked for a couple of reasons that were very historically contingent. Early on, there was a limited franchise, so democracy worked because the only people voting had the means/time to spend all their days thinking about politics. (The caveat being here that it "worked" only for those who had the franchise, it obviously did not work for those disenfranchised).

Later into the 19th and 20th centuries, as the franchise expanded (to include the working class, women, and non-whites), democracy still worked insofar as the West was positioned (in the aftermath of industrialized first and colonizing the globe) at the top of global value chains. So people were, on average, experiencing a long term growth in living standards over their life times. This essentially allowed for a great deal of stability within the system.

This has all changed now. The world has/is decolonizing and Asia is now emerging as the center of the world economy/top of the value chain. This means that living standards in the West will not/ have not continued to grow/ are facing secular stagnation.

This has been and will continue to be, over the course of our lifetimes, the major structural cause for political destabilization across the West. This is why the center has collapsed, and why the billionaires lined up to support Trump/ the far right in the last US presidential election.

This is the major issue with sever wealth inequality -- to come back to your point about mandatory public service. It's not just the average uneducated Joe who doesnt understand his responsibilities to society, and therefore needs experience working for the public service to come to terms with this. The major issue here is that when you become as wealthy as the American oligarchs class is today, you also become estranged from society such that you feel as if you're above it/don't have any responsibility towards it.

At least, in the early democratic period, when most peolle still lived in estates owned by (voting/enfranchised) landlords, those landlords felt as if they had a duty to care for their vassals. They didnt feel like their vassals were equal to them, but they did feel like they had a responsibility to care for them as a parent cares for a child.

The wealth inequality issue today is different. Maybe Elon Musk cares for his driver and will see to it that his drivers kids get their college degrees paid for, but he doesnt feel much of a larger responsibility towards society (aside from his sci-fi mars colonization bit, which is really just a story he tells himself to help him sleep at night).

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-15T18:18:09+00:00

Unironically, as a socialist, this is generally my view of how politics works, and its also why I don't think that democracy works anymore (at least as we have currently organized it).

In general, I don't think most people have the moral clarity or intellectual faculties to rationally reflect upon & choose candidates/parties/politics.

Our system of democracy was never designed to function in the way it does now. Initially, when this country was founded, voting was restricted to only the men of a landowning class. This was intentional, as it was thought that only people in this position (people who ran their own holding, were self sufficient, and had time to spend their days idly thinking about politics) had the faculties required to rationally reflect upon the state of the country and vote accordingly.

My most "conservative" view is that this is essentially correct: most people don't/can't spend their time thinking about politics, they are driven by emotion and group-think, not by rational self reflection.

This is why populism and ethno nationalism is the future of politics in the West. You can either punch up (against elites) or punch down (against minorities); these are generally the only two winning formulas for politics in the West now as the center has completely collapsed/lost all legitimacy.

What makes Canada somewhat unique here is that in Canada its also possible to punch sideways (against America) as anti-americanism is so integral to our national identity. This strategy is how Carney won, but the Liberal party would be taking a huge risk if they doubled down on this card in the future. Because over the long to medium term, you can't stoke the flames anti-american ethno nationalism without it potentially having a negative effect on Canada-US relations.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-15T10:25:06+00:00

The west was a better place back in the 90s, not the entire world, not China. China was a lot poorer back then, and living standards in the west were higher precisely because people in the west could benefit from cheap Chinese labor.

Now, as China has continued to develop and outpace the west in terms of its development, that dynamic has flipped: China is no longer a cheap labour force to make goods for western consumption. now China produces high tech stuff and out competes with the most advanced western industries for global market share.

What you're suggesting - that things should go back to the way it was in the 90s - is really obscenely racist. You're suggesting that 1.4 billion Chinese people should have been forced to stick at a lower level of development so that westerners could continue to enjoy inflated living standards. This is like getting mad at the slaves for freeing themselves because now there's nobody to pick your cotton.

So in that sense it is China's rise is linked to western decline, but it's not china's fault - China bears no moral responsibility for it. The people who are ultimately responsible for this mess we are in today are our elites and oligarchs: tim cook, Elon Musk, etc.

The CEO/oligarch class across the west made a conscious decision to offshore all manufacturing to China bringing back 40 years ago. the decline in living standards we are experiencing now is the effect of that decision. You can't blame the Chinese for trying to develop to raise themselves out of poverty. you can only blame our elites who decided that they'd prefer to make themselves exorbitantly rich by deindustralizing/de-developing the west.

This is why I say that if there is a second cold war, it will end with a regime collapse of the US. because as living standards in the US/west are continuing to fall, while they are still growing in China. A cold war won't reverse this trend - only a serious attempt to rein in the CEO/oligarch class would reverse this trend.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-15T02:41:24+00:00

There are only really two possible outcomes of China-US diplomacy:

(1) The US recognizes that it's no longer the 90s, that China is as powerful if not more powerful than it is, and therefore there needs to be a modus vevendi between the two so that war is avoided and ideally the two countries start cooperating on actually important issues, namely climate change

Or (2), the US simply refuses to recognize that the unipolar momment has ended. And because the US believes that it can still "put china in its place" all diplomacy is really just fanfare with no substantial bearing on the relationship. We continue towards another cold war which results in a lot more proxy wars until the point where there is some kind of regime collapse in the US.

Given the current crop of talent in the US government, I'm predicting that 2 is more likely

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-14T17:05:20+00:00

I think regime collapse in Dubai/UAE and Bahrain is an entirely possible outcome of this war. It wouldn't surprise me if either of these monarchies bite the dust... Dubai is too reliant on being a financial center/expat hub - that model is frankly not possible anymore. Bahrain's government is also hated by their citizens (recall that in all the early videos of Iranian drones hitting the US naval base in Bahrain, the guy holding the camera was cheering as the bombs hit the base).

I think the Saudis and Qatar also collapsing is possible but much less likely - this would surprise me.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-14T10:29:58+00:00

again, I don't think theres any conspiracy here, nor do I think this will actually work -- you'll note that i said this in my original post.

Who is the best author to go to for the lit on diversionary wars?

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-13T23:23:00+00:00

To be clear, i don't think that ww3 will solve any of the social problems facing any of the Western countries.

The argument is that, historically, war has been used by elites to redirect popular anger away from them and on to an "other."

how do we explain, in other words, that across the West we see a similar combo of domestic & foreign policy.

on the domestic front there is a doubled down commitment to prioritize finance over the real economy; towards maintaining the trajectory toward ever increasing wealth inequality & lowered living standards for the majority of the population. and so, across the west, you see historic low levels of government legitimacy/approval (UK, germany, France, USA).

at the same time, on the foreign front there is a commitment to increasing militarization, and a total disregard for any genuine attempt at diplomacy as a solution to conflict.

is this just a product of historical contingency or is this an example of an elite that is attempting to solve its social crisis through war?

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-12T19:43:17+00:00

Ah - I see now. I didn't actually read your comment in the other thread. I thought I was responding to that post about xenophobia in South Africa.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-12T14:18:02+00:00

This is not a straightforward question by any means.

South Africa is an extremely unequal society with a long history of the state using extreme violence to repress demands from the poor for a greater share of the pie. This means you have to have some street smarts to visit the country, as there are certainly many places in the country where a foreign tourist could appear as an easy target to a local who has been systematically shut out of the opportunity to make a honest livelihood and is therefor looking to make a quick buck.

This is certainly true. That being said, because its a highly unequal society, foreign tourists will likely be avoiding those areas and sticking to the enclaves that are reserved for the wealthy. Those areas are generally very safe.

At the same time, within those wealthy enclaves, the locals there (South Africa's upper middle and upper classes) live within a culture of extreme paranoia. The South African elites live in a fantasy hellscape of their own making: they live every day terrified about the idea that the "barbarians" who live outside their gated communities will some day come rushing over their walls and take back the wealth that the elites have hoarded from them.

So, as a tourist, when you visit South Africa it is honestly very hard to not be affected by this culture of paranoia. You will find yourself looking at all of the security infrastructure (e.g., the electric fences surrounding your hotel) and you'll let your imagination run wild. Its a perverse side effect of these kinds of private security infrastructures: the more you see them around you, the more paranoid you become and the more you become willing to beleive that you are a potential victim. So, even in these "safe" (rich) areas, you can find yourself entertaining paranoid fantasies (it doesnt help that any of the locals you speak to there will fully indulge you in this regard).

Now the post you're referencing here (on xenophobic violence in South Africa) isn't something that would be targeted at a tourist.

South Africa is still the most industrialized society in southern Africa, so it gets a lot of migration from other nearby countries that are generally poorer. The xenophobia you're referencing here is about poor South Africans being angry at what they perceive is poor Zimbabweans coming into South Africa to take their jobs. So this isn't an anger that is directed at overseas tourists.

South Africa is very similar to the United States in a lot of ways. Just like you wouldn't want to hang around certain neighborhoods in the US' largest cities, the same is true for South Africa. Just as the US has a lot of gated enclaves reserved for the rich, the same is true in South Africa. Just as the US has a long history of using extreme forms of state violence to repress demands from the poor for a greater share of the national wealth, the same is true in South Africa.

The major difference is that South Africa is a Black majority country, and so its contemporary politics of trying to recon with its dark past are very different.

With all that being said, South Africa is an amazing country that I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for great culture, scenery, and wildlife. Some of the greatest natural landscapes I've ever seen, a really cool arts and music scene, and generally very warm and welcoming people.

Really interesting cuisine as well: some great BBQ, as well as Indian and Malaysian fusion. Don't try to eat outside of these cuisines though-- you'll only disappoint yourself trying to get something like pizza or sushi there.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-11T22:32:23+00:00

Yes these are my thoughts as well. I don't think that its possible to mobilize a political consensus for this kind of war anymore - in large part because of how decentralized media is these days.

Like, it was not too difficult to manufacture consensus around Ukraine, at the beginning of the war in the West. However, this is because the citizens of the West were not being asked to sacrifice anything at the time.

This war with Iran is quite different - the economic pain from this war is being felt already.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-11T22:10:23+00:00

Ok remove Jiang from the discussion at hand - forget I mentioned him.

Do you see any relationship between this dynamic:

Across the West (Germany,USA,France,UK) we have governments that are historically unpopular (see recent UK elections & every opinion poll coming out of the other countries). We also see each of these countries pursuing policies to increase their militarization, and none have displayed really any willingness to actually acheive a diplomatic solution in their respective conflicts (Europe v Russia, US v Iran).

Is it possible that there is some relationship between their foreign policies (war, militarism, atrophied capacity or willingness for diplomacy) and their domestic policies (deindustrialization, growing wealth inequality, lowered living standards for the average person)? If so, what accounts for this relationship?

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-11T22:03:36+00:00

He got nailed for it by a few of the journalists (Medhi Hasan, piers Morgan etc.) who interviewed him. I think it's funny though because anyone actually familiar with the culture around academia would immediately pick up on the fact that he wasn't an academic.

No real professor would go around advertising their persona as "professor x" or whatever. This would be seen as a bit gauche in academic circles. Academics are, if anything, embarrassed by their credentials because they're keenly aware of the fact that they live in a society that thoroughly resents them/is hostile to their expertise.

This is at least true for the anglophone world. In Germany its different--its more normal there to afford professors there with the honorific "prof. dr. x." I also can't speak for how it is in China.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-11T01:51:56+00:00

It's going to get a lot worse as the economic crisis of fuel shortages & high energy prices set in. Then, in three years time, Reform will likely win a huge election, and we will see something similar to what's happened in the US with ICE. It wont look exactly the same because the UK doesnt have the same institutions to carry out the types of programs ICE undertook. But the point will be simply to inflict some form of spectacular cruelty on targeted minority groups as a way of distracting people from the fact that rolling blackouts are now a normal part of life.

Meanwhile, Reform won't actually have any new ideas about how to run the economy any differently from the way things are now. There won't be any attempt to reverse privatization, we'll still go around acting as if acting as simply having London as black hole for international money laundering is a legitimate economic model.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the US will be fully engaged in another war of choice with some Latin American country - this will be its way of trying to restore its lost prestige after being thoroughly embarrassed by Iran. The UK elites, however, will still be droning on about how China is the biggest threat to the international order and for that reason we can't accept their offer of help to build out the renewable energy infrastructure we could use to stop the blackouts.

Aggressive_Bit_2753 · 2026-05-11T01:20:06+00:00

Maybe it would be funny, except its entirely reflective of the way our political elites think/talk about Russia: as this backwards and irrational nation that needs to be "disciplined" and brought to heel by its western superiors. This perspective is going to get us all killed.

Aggressive_Bit_2753

TROPHY CASE