so what's the deal with the iran thing?
- it seems useless for the trump admin (it is disingenuous imo to just refer to trump as if he's really some kind of rogue actor) to just be using this as a middle finger to european countries.
- why are european countries totally onside with everything else america is doing -- e.g. they all provide arms to the saudis and participate in the rape of syria and everywhere else - but pulling out of a nuclear deal with iran is Too Far?
- did someone just mention in a meeting "well, if north korea is fine, the next thing on the ol' project for a new american century list is.... iran" and now they're lining up for the next middle eastern domino (in their minds)?
- everyone (surely including they themselves) knows that america can barely threaten syria or north korea, let alone iran.
- the average american voter will definitely not remember this in the midterm elections (who cares about midterm elections) so it doesn't seem like a demonstration to the base (are they even needing demonstrations? don't trump voters still love trump?)
so what's left as an explanation? further spastic twitches of a very slowly and painfully atrophying empire? they looked at all the cards they held and realized the only action they could pull off that anyone would pay any attention to would be this?
cars posted:imo, the Trump administration doesn't want war with Iran. they think they can either wring more concessions out of Tehran or appear to be doing so and score points and fundraising cash from pro-Israel foreign & domestic backers that way.
all of the Western business community, their think tanks and their political puppets have their eye on one big number when it comes to Iran, their top rank in the world for percentage of GDP growth from labor according to long-term projections, and mainly in the amount of it that will come from skilled labor performed by its population's large proportion of young, educated future workers.
a full-scale war would destroy that otherwise likely future, as it already has in even slightly lower-ranked countries deemed to be worth more in pieces. within certain bounds, though, economic desperation within Iran's higher-educated households would facilitate its exploitation by Western capitalists and their compradors.
the desperate hope of the Western elite is to "open" Iran without breaking it, that is, to exploit its potential as a future source of cheap skilled labor without destroying that potential in the process. i think that's likely much of what's kept it from being attacked & invaded in full force already, and just as concerns most other common interests of Western capital, Trump's people don't differ in kind from any other bourgeois politicians who might otherwise hold their seats.
the debate in Washington is merely over how hard to squeeze Iran's neck, and for how long: the level of pressure to apply to achieve the desired result in the shortest amount of time, and without killing the goose that's scheduled to lay the golden eggs. an invasion or civil war would almost certainly do just that. those things might still happen, but i think they're pretty far down on the wishlist of the Western bourgeoisie at the moment.
tears wrote this awhile back and I thought it was pretty intriguing:
American hegemony has been in decline ever since, but, and its a big but, there have been successive waves of attempts to arrest this. The big one we all know about is the “neo-liberal” push, the exportation of manufacturing to the periphery to take advantage of the border enfrced low wage periphery. The second, which xipes stuff discusses in a way that I feel is slightly backwards is the post 9/11 phase. Now unlike the article above I don’t believe that the original intention of the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) was to destroy the countries and sow chaos – I think it was, and there is stuff to back this up, a failed experiment to re-establish a colonial empire proper. Decades on from Vietnam Afghanistan and Iraq were testing grounds for the “neo-con” Bush crew to see if it was possible to maintain an actual honest to god empire with occupying troops and all. This was their attempt at a “novel” solution to American decline. Needless to say it didn’t work, instead it produced chaos. But there’s always a plan B, which is where the article xipe posted comes in – this was not the original intention, but since it happened it can be capitalised on – what Robert Biel described as capitalism parasitic on its own decay. Entropy in the capitalist system has built up to such a high degree that the historic degree of control has been shown via Iraq and Afghanistan to no longer possible, instead the most feasible option is to sow successive waves of chaos and destruction in the periphery to destroy or prevent to formation of strong states, of which the follow-ups, Libya and Syria, were the test subjects, one success, one catastrophic failure in the biggest defeat for US imperialism since Vietnam.
lo posted:i think its a bit incorrect to see the americans as just doing the bidding of the israelis/gulf states, if anything it's the other way around(though that's also obviously an oversimplification)
Agreed, Israel is more an outpost of US imperialism rather than a behind-the-scenes puppetmaster. Israel is dependent on the US for military, political and economic support, whereas Israel is essential for US geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East (same goes for Gulf States).
drwhat posted:this thread is for discussing dumb garbage that idiot countries do as Sovereign Actions,
lo posted:i think its a bit incorrect to see the americans as just doing the bidding of the israelis/gulf states
it's dumb as heck!!!!