[cryoshon]

yeah, that's the kissinger line of thought. "realism". except it doesn't hold up to reality, at least not in the modern or even the premodern era.

iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're what could amount to a strategically useful port. they might have some minerals or something. it wouldn't even be hard.

the answer is that nobody cares to. just as you don't bother taking a free cupcake at a catered event because you're not hungry, the world's governments do not necessarily increase their own power on the international stage with perfect game-theory play.

so, "air superiority is important for power projection", sure. if you were playing perfect game-theory and optimizing your country's power to the very limit of what is theoretically possible, you'd always buy the best air superiority solution. except we don't really see anyone else doing that. russia doesn't, and china doesn't. why? the answer is that they are sated with their current solution, even if it isn't the maximum possible solution. they're not interested in exerting the effort that it would take to build something like the f-35 because they recognize that it wouldn't improve their state's power enough that it would enable them to do anything new, nor is doing anything new such a big concern given that their main security issues are internal rather than external.

true geopolitical "realism" is realizing that the idea of 100% pervasive and cynical power maximization is an artifact of the american mind. countries are far more benign than kissinger ever expected.

[AnimalMuppet]

First, yes, Iceland would be easy to occupy. In fact, it's already happened once - the UK occupied it during WWII (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Iceland).

But holding it would be a problem, for anyone except the US or the UK. Let's say China occupied Iceland. How are they going to send supplies to their troops there? Well, by air or by ocean. That's going to be... problematic. It's going to be much more problematic if NATO lives up to its charter and defends its' member Iceland.

[sololipsist]

> iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're what could amount to a strategically useful port. they might have some minerals or something. it wouldn't even be hard.

> the answer is that nobody cares to.

This is an over-simplification of truly mind-boggling caliber.

[AnimalMuppet]

This is an incredibly unpersuasive response. You don't like the post? Fine. But correct it rather than just dissing it.

[sololipsist]

Some things don't deserve a response. In that cases it's perfectly acceptable to note this and move on with your life.

If you correct every brain-dead thing people tell you on the internet, either never say anything remotely controversial so you don't get ill-informed but confident replies, you spend all day correcting people, or you literally just started saying things on the internet to tell me how to live my life.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Some things don't deserve a response.

But you responded anyway. You just didn't respond with anything useful. So what you did, essentially, was waste 10,000 people's time by having them look at your non-response "response".

[sololipsist]

okay mom ::rolls eyes::

[cryoshon]

no more of an over-simplification than kissinger's concept of realism, to be blunt.

countries routinely do things that are contrary to the interest of maximizing their net power, and claiming "but it's anarchy out there!" isn't very accurate.

[sololipsist]

I didn't say a word about Kissinger.

If you need to pretend someone is arguing something they've never argued so you can disagree with them, you really need to take a step back and ask yourself what the fuck you're really doing.

[gaius]

iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile

Iceland is a founding member of NATO and is located in the backyard of two of the world’s most powerful navies. The Royal Navy spent the entire Cold War thinking about GIUK. Arguably its a free-rider in NATO but the idea anyone could invade it is laughable