[asa400]

> Worst outcome is the US attacks Cuba, Cuba allies with Iran, it turns out that Cuba has been stocking up on Iranian drones, and Cuba becomes a forward base for drone and missile attacks on the southern US.

If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland, it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon. After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution.

Having difficulty projecting force from the air with fighter bombers launched from air craft carriers and refueling caravans from the Indian Ocean or Mediterranean Sea against a determined enemy that has been preparing for this eventuality since 1979 is one thing. Being able to fly non-stop B-52 and B-2 sorties from home air bases with single-digit-hour flight times is a different thing entirely.

[integricho]

It is so rich hearing that America can attack anybody, but godforbid an attack on the "homeland" is an unforgivable act that will invoke nukes immediately.

[matheusmoreira]

That's how nukes work. When it comes to nuclear weapons, the world is divided into haves and have-nots. Anyone lacking effective nuclear response can be steamrolled by those who do with total impunity.

The USA has been attacked before but it has never been invaded and forced to fight a war on its own soil against foreign enemies. It's possible that they unconsciously believe war is something they bring to others, never something others bring to them. It's impossible to predict how traumatizing it would be for them if that belief is proven wrong. They could absolutely reach for nuclear weapons if that threshold is reached.

[bambax]

> the world is divided into haves and have-nots

Yes and the most important lesson of recent history is for have-nots to become haves ASAP.

[chii]

and that is why as one of the haves (by virtue of you being on this website), it is important to prevent any have-nots from getting nukes.

[conception]

If only we had non-violent means to do this! Man, what a revolution could be had if we explored those possibilities!

[cornholio]

Yes, we tried that with the JCPOA but Trump blew that up because it was signed by Obama.

Now the Iran theocracy saw full well that nukes are the only way they can stay alive. What exactly is the leverage against it?

[SmirkingRevenge]

Basically, I think the most optimistic possible outcome from of this is returning to something like the nuclear deal, but with way better terms for Iran.

This was all so completely stupid

[mikrotikker]

Last thing we need is an apocalyptic death cult having access to nukes.

[iso1631]

Why would you assume anyone on this website is from or lives in a country which has nukes?

[kelipso]

This is an english speaking tech forum, so it’s safe to assume most people here live in a country that has nukes like the US, UK, India, probably decent number of people who came from China and Russia too.

[fastasucan]

If thats important its counter intuitive to show that agreements about not getting any nuklear arms is worth nothing, and wont stop you getting invaded.

[senordevnyc]

Anyone lacking effective nuclear response can be steamrolled by those who do with total impunity.

Ukraine begs to differ.

[mycall]

Ukraine is different and did the reverse, giving up their nukes. They said it was too expensive to keep them, which is only partially true. Ukraine could have deconstructed them and created new Permissive Action Links (PALs) in Dnipro although this process would have taken years and carried a high risk of accidental detonation or radioactive mishaps during the reengineering phase.

[wiseowise]

And there’s also a small detail of Russia threatening invasion if Ukraine tried to decode those.

[cineticdaffodil]

Well they always do, so threats by the bad boys are just noise

[polski-g]

The US has allegedly said they will retaliate with nuclear strikes on Russia if Russia uses nuclear strikes on Ukraine.

[squidbeak]

Barring an attack on the US itself, the US under the current regime will never attack Russia. Whatever the kompromat happens to be, the President is completely bound by it.

[landl0rd]

The "kompromat" is the world's largest nuclear arsenal, some five thousand and change warheads, along with a delivery system that includes an HGV MIRV payload that can deliver a multi-megaton warhead at ~mach 20-something.

[wiseowise]

Why would Russia use nukes on Ukraine? It will make it even worse pariah than NK.

[zbentley]

> pariah

Which recent foreign policy actions by Russia indicate that they care overmuch about soft power, or consider its loss to be a significant risk?

[vharuck]

Honestly, I thought part of MAD was how, once a nuclear missile was launched, it would be better for other nuclear states to decimate the country of origin than to wait and figure out where it would hit.

[ceejayoz]

Subs make that more difficult.

[dlisboa]

That'll never happen.

[matheusmoreira]

Doubt.

[mindslight]

> It's possible that they unconsciously believe war is something they bring to others, never something others bring to them

Spot on. As an American who is quite critical of the imperialist dynamic, I still catch myself thinking this way. Like "what if Iran actually attacks something around me?" But it's war, shouldn't one expect that an enemy might attack at any point?! Except, we just don't think of war as something that might have direct repercussions for us personally, which is why most of us vote for chucklefuck leaders who start them so readily.

[fastasucan]

This is interesting. Even though its many years ago most of Europe have a big open wound from WWII. That might be a missing ingredient for the american people to be less trigger happy when it comes to bombing other countries. The act of bombing a school full of children would have turned everything on its head in my country.

[mindslight]

Your "big open wound" is my country's stepping into what was still mostly an elective war, saving the day, coming out as the head of a global economic empire, and being lauded for all of it - including well after the war itself for being the alternative to the more direct-subjugation-based empire of the USSR.

I'm not saying this to brag or something, but to drive home how radically different the perspectives are. Even our stories that are fundamentally tragedies (eg Saving Private Ryan) are still tales of distant heroic sacrifice, rather than the nihilistic smothering of helpless humans that war actually is. And to that above-it-all entitlement, we've mixed a cocktail of religious fundamentalism to help with the rationalization.

Vietnam was seemingly the only time since that there has been serious society-wide anti-war sentiment, and that's because people were being forcibly conscripted against their individual will. They fixed that by (effectively) removing the draft, while the economic treadmill was turned up such that more people "volunteered".

[numeric83]

The War of 1812 says "hello"

[freedomben]

That was my first thought too, but I think it's overly pedantic. If we're reaching all the way back to 1812 then I think parents point is true in spirit if not letter

[matheusmoreira]

It was fought on US soil but did they really get invaded in that war? They declared war on Great Britain. They even invaded Canada themselves. It just doesn't seem to match the conflicts the USA brings upon other nations.

[npongratz]

It might be mere semantics, but the 1814 burning of Washington has been depicted as an invasion.

https://archive.org/details/burningofwashing00pitc

[dragonwriter]

Yes, they got invaded. Just because it happened after they invaded someone else doesn't make it any less an invasion.

[psychoslave]

What was 9/11 if not military actions on USA own soils? Like, sure it can be labelled terrorism rather than "conventional military intervention", but psyops apart, on practical level that’s typical asymmetric/guerrilla warfare.

[xorcist]

"Military action", perhaps, but that is a very vague term. You replied to someone about "fighting foreign troops on own soil" which describes a ground invasion. 9/11 was something else.

It is USA did not respond with any military force. The response, if any, was behind closed doors and we may never know the details. The only thing we know is that relationships with the Saudis are closer than ever. Journalists aren't even allowed to question why they chop up their regime critics in small pieces and put them in a box because that is considered "impolite".

The public response was largely within domestic policy. New laws, new government agencies, more money spent on the military. It was also alluded to when fighting the continuation war with Iraq, but nothing was ever said explicitly about that.

[mortarion]

9/11 was not a military action against the USA, and the invocation of article 5 by the USA was illegimate.

[freedomben]

> 9/11 was not a military action against the USA

that's a surprising thing to hear. where do you draw the line between terrorism and war? I see a distinction without much of a difference.

[hermannj314]

The difference between war and terrorism is what language you use to say "God wills it"

If you say "Deus Vult", you are a war hero. If you say "Inshallah", you are a radical terrorist.

The rules are quite simple.

[chii]

it's indeed a distinction without a real difference, but terrorism is specifically targeted at civilians to produce some political outcome.

It's wild to suggest that terrorism against the US should not be responded with by military action - it's only the degree and targets that should be under debate.

[andruby]

Probably not a perfect line, but one way to differ both is wether the action was done by a Country (Nation) vs a "militant" group.

[squidbeak]

This is foolish nonsense. An organized foreign army directing improvised missiles against your cities is very definitely conducting 'military action' and is a valid target for a military response.

[SergeAx]

Just like Ukraine is being steamrolled by Russia, right?

[ekianjo]

> never something others bring to them

Ever heard of the independence war?

[bcjdjsndon]

There are gun nut americans who truly believe gun owners would contribute an effective resistance to a modern invading army because they own an ar15. That country is deluded and everyone falls off eventually and trump may have actually accelerated the country out of it's golden age

[throw0101c]

> There are gun nut americans who truly believe gun owners would contribute an effective resistance to a modern invading army because they own an ar15.

It would depend on their patience.

The insurgency in Iraq was eventually suppressed (American COIN manuals were updated). The insurgency (?) in Afghanistan outlasted the patience of the invaders.

So how long do the 'gun nutters' want to keep at it compared to the opposing force?

Further, it's worth asking how effective, on average, is violent disobedience. Generally speaking a movement has about double the odds of success by not using violence:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44096650-civil-resistanc...

[srean]

All the more reasons for Iran to drop their self imposed fatwa on nuclear weapons and get a few, to put an end to interference.

Iran has been on the receiving end of weapons of mass destruction, that is, chemical weapons, by way of US sponsored Saddam Hussein and lost close to half a million of their people. Yet they never for once retaliated with such weapons which to them is against their Islam.

Those half a million dead are part of a still unhealed wound and that is felt and remembered in every city and town in Iran.

[account42]

That's the whole point of having nukes - so others won't attack you.

[Cthulhu_]

Except that it's a bit more complicated than that. Russia has nukes and is under attack from Ukraine, and while in the past they sabre-rattled that they would use tactical nukes if there was ever any incursion, they haven't done so because they know that would cause the whole world to retaliate.

Then there's nuclear defenses - if a country would have an effective anti-ICBM system (like Star Wars or whatever), it would make a nuclear counterstrike ineffective and end Mutually Assured Destruction. On paper anyway, in practice there are no perfect anti-ICBM systems, and they're effectively cluster bombs so in theory after the initial launch they can break up into half a dozen "dumb" nukes. Good luck hitting those.

[nl]

> Russia has nukes and is under attack from Ukraine

I mean I guess that's one way to talk about a country that shoots back when it is invaded!

[KellyCriterion]

Eh, Russia is under attack by Ukraine?

In which universe is that? From mainland Europe, I have a different perspective who started to fight?

[vbezhenar]

No, it is not. Russia was attacked by Ukraine multiple times and nukes are still not used. India, Pakistan and China are in various stages of conflicts with each other for decades and all of them are nuke-enabled super-powers.

There are three points of having nukes:

1. Deter other countries with nukes from using them against you, or your military ally.

2. Prevent total annihilation in the war. You can lose the war, but not too much.

3. Burn the world to ashes. Very few countries can do it. It effectively forces the whole world to make sure that this scenario does not happen. So you can be sure that scenario where Ukraine conquers Russia and completely destroys it - will be prevented by the very Ukraine supporters. They don't want to live in the nuclear post-apocalypse, because there are scenarios where Russia fires every single nuclear missile on every major city on the Earth. As Putin framed it: We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will simply drop dead.

America lost several wars, recently they lost Afghanistan war and right now they're losing Iran war. They won't invoke nukes to overturn the table, they'll accept the lose.

[bambax]

> They won't invoke nukes to overturn the table

How do you know? Trump's frustration is on the rise; at some point he very well may threaten nuclear strikes.

Another scenario is, he tries to invade, an Iranian drone makes it through and sinks a big US ship, hundreds or even thousands of American soldiers die in a very short period of time. Now everyone's upset and the American public screams "revenge".

Then anything can happen, really.

[wiseowise]

> How do you know? Trump's frustration is on the rise; at some point he very well may threaten nuclear strikes.

Whole world will boycott USA if they use nukes.

[don_esteban]

Will they?

US can squeeze Europe/Japan as much as they want.

Just disable Microsoft/Google/AWS/Apple crap for them and they will be on their knees.

Although, I will give larger chances of Israel using nukes than then US.

[FpUser]

This applies to incumbents (well maybe until it does not). Smaller countries facing destruction of their regime might actually use the nukes. Probably do the test first along with the warning

[ibejoeb]

> they're losing Iran war.

What criteria are you using for this assessment?

[tristor]

> What criteria are you using for this assessment?

We lost the moment we started because we went on a whim and without a cohesive strategy. This was a stupid stupid thing to do, and the longer it goes on the more obvious it becomes that this administration has no idea what it is doing.

[schmidtleonard]

Pool's closed.

[thejohnconway]

If we look at the stated goals (as inconsistent as they have been):

Unconditional surrender -> nope Regime change via popular uprising -> nope Destruction or removal of enriched uranium -> nope Destruction of drones and ballistic missile capability -> nope

Final goal of getting back to the pre-war state (which is admitting loss in itself):

Reopen in the straight of Hormuz -> nope

So no objectives have been achieved, and although you could argue they will be in the future, this seems increasingly unlikely in the short timeline the Trump admin has given themselves. It any of them were possible at all, which seems doubtful.

[H8crilA]

America has lost every war in the recent past.

[kasey_junk]

Has anyone “won” a war in the recent past? In the old fashioned sense that they conquered something and used the newly acquired resources to make their own citizens lives better?

The problem with the post ww2 world is that the old definition of winning a war no longer holds. You just don’t see wars of conquest very often and they don’t seem to work when they happen.

The closest I can think to winning off hand is a few of the colonial civil wars. Vietnam for instance won in the sense that they outlasted the US and have a nominally communist government but it is not an outpost of the Soviet Union and it’s a major trading and tourist partner of the US.

Iraq is not led by a belligerent to the US dictator and Afghanistan isn’t home to training camps for terrorists dedicated to attacking the US (yet).

These were all extremely stupid, expensive and inhumane military actions. But the US never went into them to hold territory. So “there until we got tired of it” is as close to winning as it was ever going to be.

[H8crilA]

Yes, winning a war means achieving your political objectives. For example Iran wins this war even if they maintain the status quo. And they are on track to get even more, like obtaining ownership over the strait.

[Noumenon72]

Azerbaijan invaded Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 and now all their enemies are gone (disarmed and Armenians expelled) which presumably makes their citizens better off once they move into the empty territory.

[roncesvalles]

The Gulf War was a decisive victory, if you consider that recent.

[edgyquant]

It hasn’t. There hasn’t been a war in centuries where America didn’t obliterate its opponent. It loses politically because its people don’t want war, but it’s defeated militarily everyone it’s engaged with.

[myrmidon]

If you can not win a war because your population is unwilling to bear the cost, then you are still unable to win (that is in fact a very typical way for a war to end).

Nobody is disputing the fact that the US spends more money on arms than anyone else and has the shiniest of toys as a result, but "winning" in war is about effecting the outcomes that you want, not about whether your weapon systems are superior.

The US military has clearly failed to deliver the outcome that Americans wanted in many recent conflicts (Vietnam, Taliban); counting those wars as "lost" makes a lot of sense.

[afthonos]

The term of art for losing politically is “losing”.

[data_maan]

https://www.worldatlas.com/us-history/wars-the-united-states...

[senderista]

War is fought to achieve political objectives. If those objectives are not achieved then it is only fair to say you lost the war.

[chii]

that is what it means to be a superpower.

Don't be naive and think that there's natural justice and the world is fair.

[throwawayqqq11]

> When Us attacks Cuba

> Cuba might drone strike US homeland

> Cuba gets flattened

Being a superpower means being free of ethics or reason. 'We are the good' sufficently summarizes a regular US-born worldview.

You also shouldnt be too naive to think, US citizens would bring up ethics or reason when choosing their leaders or commenting on their own countrys aggression.

Why do you think, the world is unfair? Some decades ago, we had a world police.

[PKop]

How is this not just common sense? Why would we care more about foreigners' interests than our own? You're trying to apply a moral frame to a discussion of self interest and geopolitics. "The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must".

[subjectsigma]

What a stupid thing to say. Are you suggesting America should let others attack their homeland for some reason?

[unethical_ban]

No one said nukes, that a giant leap even from the most crazy non nuclear attack.

No one said the US is acting smartly, either, but it should not be surprising that the US would react harshly to a neighbor sending rockets.

[nevi-me]

To an otherwise defenceless country, it's really the same thing. Indiscriminately flattening buildings without notifying civilians to move, destroying industries, stealing their resources and reserves.

Who can recover from this, especially a small nation? You might as well declare everything to be radioactive.

So they'd react harshly even when they started it.

[markdown]

> Indiscriminately flattening buildings without notifying civilians to move

Boy they've really normalised this, haven't they?

No, it's not okay to destroy civilian infrastructure and make people homeless just because you dropped a pamphlet 30 minutes before you did do

[fruit2020]

Nothing happened to Israel for doing it. Have any level headed countries imposed any sanctions on them? Just condemning the leadership doesn’t count.

[jemmyw]

Korea. The US bombed every building they could and at the end were dumping bombs because they'd run out of targets.

[nl]

> Korea.

What are you talking about?

The US never bombed (South) Korea and they certainly didn't win the air war against North Korea.

[kelipso]

Back when North and South Korea were Korea, the US killed more than 10% of the civilian population and razed every building of what is now North Korea.

[jemmyw]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Air-to-ground_opera...

> North Korea ranks as among the most heavily bombed countries in history,[305] and the U.S. dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs

> Almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed during the war.

[lizardking]

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"

[dinkumthinkum]

I don’t know what rich means here or why homeland is in scare quotes but that’s the way it is. An attack on the US will be met with unrelenting and unstoppable force. I see a lot of delusional posts that seem to indicate people think the US military capability is weak but I assure you it is not. Also, you do realize the Iranian people were pleading for the US to attack. All these people holding vigils are fir the Ayatollah are just embarrassing themselves.

[ozim]

It is so rich you assume an account created in 2013 having no karma is indeed American.

Don’t forget this is the internet where 12 year old girls turn out to be 40 yo men.

[integricho]

what are you talking about?

[misja111]

> If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland, it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon.

Yes that would be a typical US solution. Let's liberate the Cuban people! By flattening them.

[randunel]

Americans sure love their war crimes! Indiscriminately killing civilians is how they've gotten past, present and future terrorist attacks. I can't imagine the parents of the children they keep on killing (or maiming, or otherwise) standing by and watching. People wouldn't necessarily need to wait for their country's army to do something when they've got nothing significant left to lose.

[data_maan]

To be fair, Iran is not pretentious either, killing a few thousand people because they dared to protest.

There are no good guys in this conflict.

[tovej]

What was the reason for those protests? Was it perhaps economic hardship brought about by US sanctions? How much is the US liable for the suffering of the Iranian people?

(A lot, is the answer)

That doesn't excuse the Iranian regime, but the US is not exactly helping, is it.

[bluGill]

It was hardship brought on by not attempting to address the problems. Sanctions made things a bit worse but if Iran put effort into ensuring there was fresh water instead of funding terrorists and building missles things would have been a lot better for the people. (And likely no senctions for those things)

[tovej]

A bit worse? The sanctions directly brought about this. Scott Bessent admitted -- unprompted -- that the purpose of the sanctions was to destroy the Iranian economy.

I'm not saying the regime is good. It's not. It's terrible. But that does not change what the US has done.

The US has consistently made the suffering in Iran worse over the years. And let's not forget that the US and the British caused the Islamic revolutionaries to come into power by installing a puppet Shah that was deeply unpopular.

[Joker_vD]

Why, that's why you don't do genocide half-heartedly, you need to go all in, roll up your sleeves and really get down to work! Can't get a swarm of radicalized people if there is no people left to get radicalized.

[no_shadowban_6]

The secret to understanding it all is that "liberate" really means "lynch"

[imtringued]

I'm not sure that you can have the moral high ground in a hypothetical scenario where Cuba conspires with Iran to attack the US. At that point both parties are banking on "might makes right".

[cyclopeanutopia]

Well, in this hypothetical scenario you can just as well say that Cuba is defending from the future threat from USA, the same way USA is now defending from future threat from Iran.

[xbmcuser]

Not future threat though what US has put Cuba through the last 70 years any aggressive military from Cuba is probably justified. And no any attack from Cuba on US will still be morally ok if they attack US military and US banks etc.

[misja111]

I was replying to OP who sketched the scenario

> Worst outcome is the US attacks Cuba ..

As you probably know POTUS was announcing already that Cuba would be next.

[expedition32]

If Cuba is attacked they are by international law allowed to strike military targets inside the US.

The US isn't magically off limits.

[BLKNSLVR]

Cuba's government is not the Cuban people, that's part of the whole point isn't it?

[ZeroGravitas]

> After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution.

Yes remember when they invaded Saudi Arabia? That taught everyone an important lesson on the consequences of terrorism on American soil.

[close04]

The suggestion that Cuba would risk that for no obvious benefit is weird. Some wildcards in Cuba might be doing this unsanctioned. But any Cuban sanctioned/sponsored attack is very unrealistic.

Cuba is the easiest target the US could have. It's very close to the US and very far from any potential ally. The US has never shied away from committing acts of extreme cruelty, well into terrorist or war crime territory. From dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, phosphorus bombs, drone bombing innocent people, schools, hospitals, institutionalized torture, etc. even with far weaker reasons.

There is no scenario where a direct attack on the US wouldn't lead to an extremely violent response in complete disregard of Cuban lives. And get away with it.

[decimalenough]

The hijackers were Saudi nationals, but the operation was in no way sponsored by the Saudi state, which is a staunch US ally. Which is why the US proceeded to (attempt to) flatten Afghanistan instead.

[xorcist]

> the operation was in no way sponsored by the Saudi state,

We do not know this. There are plentiful evidence to suggest direct involvement of the state itself, and the bin Ladin family is certainly hard to untangle from the Saudi state. That is just from what we can know from unclassified sources.

[orochimaaru]

There wasn’t anything to flatten in Afghanistan. They were coming off a 20 yr civil war.

[temp8830]

Proxy war. And that's an awful lot of years and billions spent on flattening nothing, don't you think?

[pengaru]

Donating fuel to terrorists on the other side of the planet isn't cheap

[bparsons]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/september-...

[jacquesm]

> Which is why the US proceeded to (attempt to) flatten Afghanistan instead.

It seems to have made things better for the Taliban.

[cucumber3732842]

The current Taliban are an almost completely different organization despite there being continuity from then to now. A good comparison point is the church of England in 1520 vs 1620.

[bluGill]

It is a very different taliban

[maxglute]

The real thought experiment is ~600m people in central/south American within ~6000km, i.e. IRBM range of US gulf coast, where ~50% of US oil refinery and LNG plant production are. Now that Iran has validated mid tier power can cobble together precision strike complex, it's only going to be matter of time before relatively wealthier countries realize only way out of M/Donroe is to build conventional strike against US strategic infra. This stuff going to get commoditized sooner than later with competing mega constellation ISR. It's pretty clear building up conventional airforce/navy etc will simply get overmatched vs US projection and only credible deterrence is PRC style rocket force. There's a fuckload of places to hide 8x8 missile launchers in the Americas.

E: 50% of PRODUCTION, not plants, as in a few plants responsible for 50% of US refinery / LNG production.

[AnthonyMouse]

> 50% of PRODUCTION, not plants, as in a few plants responsible for 50% of US refinery / LNG production.

This is making a pretty big assumption that the long-term US energy mix is going to stay the way it is.

The primary historical impediment to electric vehicles was high up-front cost, in turn driven by high battery costs. However:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-battery-cell-pric...

We're soon to have electric cars (and trucks) that cost less ICE ones, on top of the lower operating costs. Which in turn cost even less when more solar and wind are added to the grid because the "charge more when power is cheap and less when it's expensive" thing lowers their operating cost even further and reduces the amount of natural gas you need in the grid because periods of lower renewable generation can be offset by deferred charging instead of natural gas peaker plants.

Even without any purposeful efforts to do anything about climate change, the economics point to fossil fuels declining over time as a proportion of energy. Meanwhile the US administration flips parties every four to eight years and the next time they're Democrats they'll be trying to hasten that result rather than impede it. Which makes a long-term strategy of building the capacity to target petroleum infrastructure something that could plausibly be increasingly irrelevant by the time it would take to implement it.

[maxglute]

Yes, refinery mismatch vulnerability something that can be built around, ~10-15 year horizon. US can also bring down oil as % of energy mix and distribute renewables. If US smart they would do this.

But at same time, extend IRBM range by 1000km, and replace refineries with hyperscalers, or whatever targets that worth deterrent value (energy at top of list). Refineries just most immediately very high value targets that happens to be closest to missile range.

But the assumption is less about US adaptability/smartness, as the way commodity conventional strikes is trending, CONUS _ will _ be vulnerable eventually. Fortress America is as much function of geography as technology. Just like how 20 years ago Iran couldn't hit Israel or many GCC companies even if it wanted to... now it can. The natural outcome of longer and longer range strikes is at some point US becomes in range of Monroe neighbours who doesnt want to be Monroed.

[AnthonyMouse]

> But at same time, extend IRBM range by 1000km, and replace refineries with hyperscalers, or whatever targets that worth deterrent value (energy at top of list).

Hyperscalers are probably not a great example because a) they don't really benefit that much from being physically centralized (especially at the building level rather than the regional level) and b) data is one of the easiest things to keep redundant, and then even if you destroy a large facility, backups get restored to another facility or distributed set of facilities with no downtime at all if the target is well-prepared and only a short period of time if they've done even minimum diligence.

The critical ones can also do the "build it on the inside of a mountain" thing and then your capacity to take down grandpa's WordPress is mainly useful to the target for rallying opposition against you.

> whatever targets that worth deterrent value (energy at top of list).

If "energy" turns into solar panels on the roof of every house and widely distributed low density wind farms etc., that's pretty hard to target.

In general centralization is often done because it has economies of scale, but those same economies of scale have diminishing returns. One huge facility reduces certain fixed costs by a million to one (i.e. 99.9999%) over having a million small facilities, but a thousand medium facilities are much harder to target while still reducing them by 99.9% and the remaining 0.0999% is negligible because you're long since already dominated by unit costs. The target can also choose where to take the trade off based on how likely they expect to be targeted. And that's a broadly applicable principle rather than something that only applies to any specific industry.

[maxglute]

Hyperscale/data just one example, f35 manufacturing, specialty feed stock production, transformers, gas compression etc, the list of currently centralized (as in have large target profiles) that will remain soft for decades is long with varying degree of disruption/dislocation, i.e. you don't restore hardware with multi year lead times.

Those are ridiculous / absurd economies of scale numbers, splitting piles up 20-50% per duplication inefficiency, especially in US context (expensive regulatory/physical buildout), splitting 1 hyper to 1000 medium is not marginal more cost, it's magnitudes / 1000%s more cost - costs private or public will not go for, and is prematurely self defeating because others can always build cheaper missiles than US can build infra (hence goldendome theatrics).

In principle, US can preempt CONUS physical vulnerabilities, where 100+ years of built up over assumption of CONUS not being vulnerable. In practice the chance of that happening approaches 0. Didn't even harden CENTCOM air shelters and planners have been noting vulnerability for years. Not just economies scale, but JIT and all other aggregate downstream optimizations US likes to make in name of efficiency. US simply not culturally PRC who does not mind (and is optimized for) some extra concrete for physical security. Not that PRC does not have huge vulnerabilities, just development has been made with mainland strikes in mind.

[AnthonyMouse]

> splitting 1 hyper to 1000 medium is not marginal more cost, it's magnitudes / 1000%s more cost

It isn't. The primary costs of both the medium and enormous facility are the same: Server hardware and electricity, and server equipment and electricity don't have significantly lower unit costs when you're buying a million instead of a thousand. Also, you can still buy a million servers and then put them in a thousand different buildings.

It's only when you get down to very small facilities that things like staffing start to become significantly different, because amortizing tens of thousands of employees over millions of servers results in a similar unit cost as amortizing tens of employees over thousands of servers. It's only when you get to the point that you have only tens or hundreds of physical servers that you get scale problems, because it's hard to hire one tenth of one employee and on top of that you want to have more than one so the one person doesn't have to be on call 24/7/365. Although even there you could split the facilities up and then have multiple employees who spend different days in different locations.

> especially in US context (expensive regulatory/physical buildout)

This is another reason that "hyper economies of scale" don't actually do you any good. Which costs less, having dozens or hundreds of suppliers for the various parts of an aircraft, or one single Lockheed that should nominally capture all of these great economies of scale from being a single company?

It's the first one, because then it's a competitive market and the competitive pressure is dramatically more effective at keeping costs under control than a single hyper-scale monopolist that should be able to do it more efficiently on paper until the reality arrives that they then have no incentive to, because a monopoly is the only one who can actually bid on the contract and a duopoly or similarly concentrated market can too easily explicitly or implicitly coordinate to divide up the market. At which point they can be as inefficient as they like with no consequences.

This does mean you have to address the regulatory environment that tends to produce concentrated markets, but we need to fix that anyway because it's a huge problem even outside of this context.

> where 100+ years of built up over assumption of CONUS not being vulnerable

That's not true, there was a significant push during the Cold War to decentralize things to make them less vulnerable to nuclear strikes. The government pushed people into the suburbs on purpose:

https://www.wagingpeace.org/nuclear-weapons-and-american-urb...

There are obviously significant costs to that but Americans were willing pay them when there was a reason to and much of the landscape is still shaped by those decisions even now.

You also see this in the design of the internet, which came out of the same era and has a design that facilitates the elimination of single points of failure, and that sort of thing is as close as we've seen to an unmitigated good.

[zimpenfish]

> This is making a pretty big assumption that the long-term US energy mix is going to stay the way it is.

It's the stated goal of one of the parties to keep or increase fossil fuel usage, isn't it?

> Meanwhile the US administration flips parties every four to eight years

Magic 8 Ball says "yeah, in the past, 2028 isn't looking good though"

> next time they're Democrats they'll be trying to hasten that result

Which will be blocked and/or immediately overturned by the current/next Republic Congress/Senate/SCOTUS/President.

[bluGill]

It might be the goal - but there are a lot of other factors than just one party.

[AnthonyMouse]

> It's the stated goal of one of the parties to keep or increase fossil fuel usage, isn't it?

The stated goal of the same party is to have "cheap energy" and the way voters judge is by things like how much they're paying for electricity. Which means their incentive is to make a lot of noise about how much they hate windmills and love coal while not actually preventing data center companies from building new solar farms to power them. One of their most significant benefactors is also the CEO of the largest domestic electric car company.

> Magic 8 Ball says "yeah, in the past, 2028 isn't looking good though"

Two years is forever in politics. We also have the leader of the Republican party doing all the pandering he can right now because he's trying to sustain a majority in the midterms, whereas in 2028 he can't run, and what's Trump going to do in the intervening two years during which he has no personal stake in the next election?

> Which will be blocked and/or immediately overturned by the current/next Republic Congress/Senate/SCOTUS/President.

That's not what happened last time. The electric car subsidies were introduced in 2008 and sustained until 2025.

We're also at the point where these things are going to get rapidly adopted during any period without active resistance to them.

How many years of the majority of new vehicles being electric or plug-in hybrids would it take before there are enough in the installed base to cause a long-term reduction in petroleum demand, and in turn a reduction in the economic and political power of the oil companies? Also notice that this still happens if Asia and Europe adopt electric vehicles regardless of whether or to what extent the US does, since it's a global commodity market.

[gizmo686]

The problem for a would be attacker is that the US still has enough military power to give almost any country on the planet a very bad day every day for as long as the US cares to. Historically, the way to win against the US is to survive long enough for the US to get bored and leave. The last time that happened, it took us 2 decades to get bored.

[maxglute]

The problem is they are not would be attackers, they're countries building up domestic defense that US would have to preempt ala Cuban missile crisis, and sustain preemption over entire continent, with each preemption legitimizing rational for more build up.

Of course US can try to coerce INF for conventional in Americas, but commoditized conventional precision strike are conventional... and commoditized, it's the kind of product where specialized dual use components may need to be sourced... among millions of TEU traffic, but otherwise local industries can build, like Iran.

There's also no global pariah status for proliferating conventional missiles for self defense and hence accessible to many players, coercion / enforcement would require trying to mow grass to keep capabilities out of 600m people...in perpetuity... tall task even for even US. Especially considering form factor of missiles... i.e. sheltered / hidden, they are not major battlefield assets like ships and planes that needs to be out to have wheels turned.

Ultimately it's not about winning vs US, it's about deterring US from historic backyard shenanigans by making sure some future time when US is tempted, and US always tempted, it would risk half of CONUS running out of energy in 2 weeks.

Like the Iran logic is extremely clear now, no amount of defense survives offensive overmatch, the only thing left is to pursue some counter offensive ability that can have disproportionate deterrence value. The thing about US being richest country is US has a lot of valuable things.

[b112]

I think you underestimate how much of that 50% is just exports. And how much other plants can be scaled up quickly. And how the US can temporarily nationalize things, and ensure all the output goes domestic. Just a backroom threat of emergency, temporary nationalization, would ensure CEOs give the US priority.

IE, they'd get to retain higher profits.

What I think would really happen, is the rest of the world would suffer and run out of energy. Not the US.

[maxglute]

There's no think, this is know territory.

Gulf coast PADD3 refineries = disproportionate production of diesel, aviation, bunker fuel for CONUS use. Something like 70% of all refined products used in US comes from PADD3, other refineries cannot replace PADD3 complexity/production levels (think specialty fuels for military aviation, missiles etc). US economic nervous system is EXTRA exposed to gulf coast refinery disruptions. PADD3 refineries (or hubs / pipelines serving east/west coast which more singular point failure) itself enough to cripple US with shortages even if all exports stopped. Gulf gas terminal is for export i.e. doesn't materially impact CONUS, it's deterrence conventional counter-value target. There's also offshore terminals. The broader point being gulf coast has host of targets along escalation/deterrence ladder.

[b112]

Yes, I'm not disagreeing that there are lots of interesting things to hit on the Gulf coast. PADD3 is just another way to say "gulf" refineries, it's a location not a technical specification.

Other refineries can indeed take up the slack. Especially if the US stops exporting. Trains can deliver fuel, trucks. The US military would not be crippled, most certainly, and the domestic US would see primary production kept in-nation, not exported.

I'm not sure why you think that only Gulf refineries can make jet fuel.

NOTE: I'm not saying it wouldn't be a key attack vector, or non-disruptive. I'm just saying the US would do what it always has done, as any nation would do, it would ensure survival first, and so the rest of the world would suffer far more.

[fastasucan]

>What I think would really happen, is the rest of the world would suffer and run out of energy. Not the US.

Then why is it the US that is crying about opening the Strait? You know there are oil produsers outside of the US?

[jcattle]

Afghanistan took only 18 years.

For the 20 years war you are probably talking about: I wouldn't call significant civil unrest in opposition of the war "getting bored"

[fastasucan]

"Bored", is that what you call thousands killed, a massive national debt and a political minefield?

[dinkumthinkum]

You think the lesson from recent events is that these countries can challenge the IS militarily? Is this real?

[alsetmusic]

Downvoting a description of a technical solution for smaller nations based on actual evidence from existing conflicts is silly. You might not like the politics you perceive from someone using particular vocabulary, but the proof is there. The USA's supremacy has been challenged in a meaningful way (along with every other major military power). The strategies of the large powers will have to evolve.

[watwut]

USA is good at bombing places. It just so happen that it usually looses the wars after that and usually creates a lot more probpems for itself in the long run.

Taliban is back in power, having stronger grap on power then before. Meanwhile, everybody knows what happens to those who cooperate with USA - they get abandoned and betrayed.

[jacquesm]

All this does in the long run is set the stage for another 9/11.

[dfedbeef]

Literally. The US is run by people who can't see past their fucking noses.

[nathan_douglas]

There are no incentive structures (besides possibly "posterity") to encourage anyone to see past their noses. In fact, hardly anyone at any level of any organization, public or private, is able to operate with a real longterm, sustainable outlook. They'd get shitcanned for trying to plan ahead, even if they were intellectually equipped for that.

[akimbostrawman]

Correct but not in the way you think

[dinkumthinkum]

With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically says that we should accept terrorists regimes to do what they want because if they don’t, they will commit terrorisk against us. That is not the right way to deal with bad actors.

[tsol]

Sounds more like he's saying killing civilians naturally makes people mad at you. We shouldn't avoid talking about this because of this fear of terrorism. In fact some would say when army kils someones family, they will look at us as the terrorists and demand it not be accepted like you

[protocolture]

With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically suggests you should bomb civilians in terrorist countries, because that reduces terrorism somehow. Despite the whole GWOT making that lie obvious to everyone.

[fastasucan]

Wait, are you talking about the US government now?

[jacquesm]

You should live up to your nick and do some of that thinking. I never said we should accept 'terrorist[s] regimes'. But there is a massive difference between actually doing something about terrorism and bombing large numbers of civilians in the hope that the problem goes away. That only results in more terrorists as has been amply borne out by history to date.

You don't deal with bad actors by becoming a bad actor yourself. If the US really wanted to deal with 'the terrorists' (by your definition) then they should start with ensuring that there is no risk of increasing their numbers as a result of the operations performed. Failing at that is an automatic own goal because now you've turned a problem into a larger problem.

Terrorism is the typical response of any group that isn't able to wage war in the preferred manner of the perceived enemy. But nicely declared wars between nation states are an imaginary thing, every nation that ever went to war pretended they had the moral high ground, brought a suitcase full of fig leaves and usually some holy scripture or some other book to prove that theirs was the just cause. Solving that takes unity, time, massive amounts of money and the ability to introspect. If you don't bring all of those (or even none of those) to the table then the only thing you will achieve is that you will end up in a (possibly much) worse place than where you were before.

Lumping everybody in Iran under the 'terrorists' banner is just as stupid as lumping everybody in Israel under the 'zionists' banner. Neither is going to lead to a resolution, all you will end up achieving is more war, more people dead and another century or so added to this conflict. But I'm not surprised. Trump & Co are categorically incapable of planning anything that takes longer than a news cycle, whether it is making changes to the White House or trying to grab some more oil.

[rjzzleep]

People way underestimate what kind of mental fortitude you have to have to fight an overwhelming enemy. That's not something a tourism oriented country like Cuba has. At least I massively doubt that.

It lacks the ideology to fight such a war, since you have to be ready to die. That's why Yemen and Vietnam won, while Venezuela folded. This is also why US "culture" is so much more powerful as a weapon than the aircraft carriers.

[Galanwe]

The willingness to fight until the end, whatever the cost, is not something you rate a priori.

The thing with war is that once you have it for a certain amount of time, you create a generation of people whose kids died, wife died, neighbors and family died, you have nothing to loose anymore.

There is a critical mass of casualties upon which you effectively create a population whose sole purpose, for generations, will be to resist and harm you, and that is not dependent on culture or whatever "tourism orientation" a country is labeled.

[corimaith]

>The thing with war is that once you have it for a certain amount of time, you create a generation of people whose kids died, wife died, neighbors and family died, you have nothing to loose anymore.

You... didn't learn history from before 1945 did you?

[nixon_why69]

Guns, radio and widespread literacy change things. We're not talking about the harrying of the north here.

[darkwater]

Yes, but if they can annihilate or get you to surrender from the beginning, there won't be such a generation.

[psychoslave]

With incongruous premisses, one can conclude anything. How many cases of such a total annihilation/surrender goal have been attempted in human history, and how many actually achieved it?

[darkwater]

I mean, the GP example about Venezuela and Cuba was totally on point. They are not at any degree comparable to the sentiment against the US and the west in general of some Middle-East countries. I mean, Palestinian are bound to hate to death Israel and the US for a couple generations more (and for good reasons). The same does not apply to Venezuela, even with all the Chavez/Maduro propaganda against the Evil Empire.

[stuaxo]

Probably have to be quite strong to live in Cuba in the first place.

[meheleventyone]

Russia pre-invasion of Ukraine probably said something very similar.

[dragonwriter]

I don’t know if you are hiding a reasonable point underneath a misuse of the term “ideology”, but the idea that the fine differences between the Cuban and Vietnamese flavors of Marxist-Leninist ideology are critical differences on this point seems unconvincing without some argument clearly articulating the relevant ideological differences an how they produce the described divergence in capacity.

[bryanrasmussen]

>If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland, it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon.

I sort of think it maybe is an exaggeration, you're evidently of the opinion that the U.S happens to have enough battle ready troops with the requisite hardware positioned within a few hours of Cuba so that they can invade and flatten in the time it takes to fly from Miami to Havana?

I don't know, but a Destroyer would take about 10 hours to get from Florida to Cuba.

It seems your definition of invade and flatten is just dropping bombs, but that definitely does not handle the invade part of things, and it remains to be seen as to whether, with drones, being able to fly non-stop is the great technological advantage it once was.

Some preliminary evidence from around the world suggests in a drone led conflict it confers the ability to have expensive hardware destroyed and pilots killed non-stop.

[baq]

Assuming the scenario happened the first bombing runs would be over after 2h and would continue for the next 48h until amphibious assault fast response finishes landing, by which time it’s safe to assume there isn’t much left to defend (though rubble makes a horrible war zone for the attacking side).

Cuba simply isn’t Iran. They’re a blockaded island with not much military experience. Iran is a huge mountainous country preparing for war for the last 40 years with first hand experience of getting blown up from above and from the inside by USA allies and surviving just fine.

[jacquesm]

Yes, and then they will be welcomed with open arms, right?

[bluGill]

By at least some. The Americans I know who have traveled to Cuba (policy changes, it was possible a few years ago at least) report the people love Americans. Of course what you see as a tourist isn't reality but at least some is true.

[jacquesm]

Tourists visiting NL also think we love tourists here.

[baq]

I don't think they'd be welcomed at all is the point...

[lawgimenez]

USA “flattened” and invaded Afghanistan but decades after Taliban is just back again.

I don’t know, maybe it’s time for USA to just stop getting involved in wars.

[Cthulhu_]

For any country, really; wars cannot be won anymore unless you exterminate its inhabitants completely. At best you can force a regime change, but as Afghanistan showed, that's fragile and tenuous at best if it's not fully backed by the population.

[dinkumthinkum]

Afghanistan and Iran are not the same. Afghanistan is filled with people that don’t know the Earth is round. Iranians or Persians are educated and largely do not support this regime at all.

[gerash]

Doesn’t matter. Once bombs start hitting next to you, you rally around the flag

[flextheruler]

Do they support the governments that started this by blowing up 100s of children at their school? Give me a break, even the left-wing Iranians who hate the theocracy also hate Israel. Hell nearly all left-wing young people in the U.S. despise the Israeli government's actions and U.S. support of said actions and that's only for things that have happened in the last year.

[dinkumthinkum]

Yes, they do actually.

[flextheruler]

Please provide your source for opinions that are not generally accepted except among those with politically self-serving bias. A few seconds of research demonstrates that's false. https://mei.edu/publication/new-polling-highlights-iranians-... 67 percent opposed to even normalizing relations with Israel. 61 percent of support Iranian proxies or Axis of Resistance. 70 percent agreed their military presence makes them safer at home. We have no reason to believe any of these have decreased since the bombing campaigns have begun. While there are significant numbers of people who would protest the government and maybe attempt to overthrow it, there is no where near enough evidence to suggest it possible and the last half century has demonstrated this.

We already supported a major ground campaign against Iran with the Iran-Iraq war that caused millions of deaths and ended in Iranian victory after 8 years.

[cbolton]

Or at least stop starting wars.

In this case it's especially depressing that the war's rationale exists only because Trump wanted to tank the deal made by Obama. Which was not a perfect deal but better than the status quo back then, and much better than any likely outcome of this war.

[ap99]

War is one manifestation of politics.

Politics will exist for as long as there are people.

Any country not able to or interested in waging occasional war will be destroyed by countries that can and do.

Simple as that.

But please I'm interested in hearing any utopia arguments that claim we can/should deprecate war. And remember - you have to convince your country along with every other country.

[ifyoubuildit]

You haven't really made an argument of your own. You've just made a claim and presented no evidence. "Simple as that" is neither argument nor evidence nor rationale. This is no better than the people who fall back on "war is hell" to justify when they've fucked up and caused the deaths and suffering of a bunch of civilians for no good purpose.

You could at least say something like "we have to bomb the people so they can be free" or "don't you know the Iranians were seconds away from nuking new York, because they have no regard for their own survival".

We should "deprecate" offensive wars of choice based on lies because the opportunity cost is enormous (what could we have bought with the 200+ billion they're already looking to spend here?).

Every time we do this we create more terrorists (see the blowback incidents weve already had from this war), which results in more egregious government overreach on the domestic population (see patriot act and the experience of commercial flight in today's world).

And those are just some of the basic reasons. I don't have time to write them all.

[kqr]

> Having difficulty projecting force from the air with fighter bombers launched from air craft carriers and refueling caravans from the Indian Ocean or Mediterranean Sea

This is not to be underestimated. It is very rare to be able to project military power far from one's capital. That the US is able to do it at all is remarkable. We should not expect it to be easy.

[venzaspa]

This is in large part because the US relies on their bases in allied countries at their grace.

[ericmay]

We can remove them and do the isolationist thing as many have been clamoring for. Then we have no need for bases in Europe or the Middle East. Gulf States can figure out how to live with a nuclear armed Iran or one that has a repository of thousands of missiles to blow up gulf state infrastructure when they misbehave. We can remove the bases in Europe too, and when Russia invades Lithuania the Spanish and Germans can take care of it.

Or perhaps these bases aren’t just in allied countries “at their grace”. These alliance systems don’t just solely benefit America.

[protocolture]

I mean, theres meant to be intangibles, and some financial support. Most of the financial support got cut by doge and the rest would go with leaving NATO. The intangibles literally never eventuate. Australia tried to invoke ANZUS with East Timor and got brushed off, despite the various US facilities in Aus being sold to the australian voter as insurance that the US would help if requested.

Honestly the US as a strategic partner is just a joke. its nothing but sigint.

Lets not even start on AUKUS.

[ericmay]

I don't disagree with you, but just pushing back on this high-and-mighty "we let you be here" sensibility from the OP. For some reason folks seem to have become convinced the opposite way from MAGA that these bases only serve American interests which is certainly not the case. Likewise the bases also don't only serve the interest of others, they allow us to have more flexibility in our objectives and responses to issues that we see.

[protocolture]

>we let you be here

Read

"Our government is so thoroughly rooted the US can just build whatever it pleases on our soil"

>these bases only serve American interests

Pine Gap does SFA for us. I don't think we have a need to let the US communicate with their subs through the WA antenna.

Like absolute best case we have painted a big "Nuke Here" target on the country, because we are actively a part of their nuclear communication protocols. Not to mention, this is a fact that our government intentionally hid from us for like a decade, when Pine gap was at its most contentious.

Can you quantify any benefit we have received, there's only been a single military invitation and they bailed on it.

[fastasucan]

Its equally misleading to pretend like the bases have just a couple small benefits for the US. Come on, please. You dont believe it either. Ah yes, the post world war doctrine has been so that the us can have more flexibility. Sure thing. What a waste it has been for European Nations to have sacrificed lives for Americas wars the last decades.

[dinkumthinkum]

Their grace? Who powers NATO? People need to realize that just because you don’t like something like America, it doesn’t mean beliefs that are divorced from reality about it are true.

[mo7061]

The uk, what the USA refers to as the unsinkable aircraft carrier

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Being able to fly non-stop B-52 and B-2 sorties from home air bases with single-digit-hour flight times is a different thing entirely.

I agree with you in principle, but I worry that the United States hasn't been stockpiling enough ordinance to keep that up for very long at all. We don't keep many munitions factories on a hot standby either.

[jandrewrogers]

Of all the shortages the US military has, this is not one of them. They have an almost unlimited capacity to destroy fixed targets.

[lenkite]

> If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland,

Cuba is not stupid. They will attack the infamous Conquistador Torture Base on their soil and US ships that carry out high piracy of their trade vessels.

[madaxe_again]

If Cuba bombed the US, the US would bomb shakes dice Antigua in retaliation.

[ykonstant]

I read shakes dice as a Latin term and had a good laugh. "Ah, if they bomb us, we will retaliate on Ecuador shakes dice."

[Cthulhu_]

Why would they do that? They won't have any nukes (not after the Cuban missile crisis), and the island isn't big enough (plus closely monitored) to house any significant amount of weaponry. What would they shoot them at? It'd be superficial damage and / or civilian casualties at best, and the retaliation would be immediate and devastating.

[fastasucan]

So you are saying the US has no problems with killing civilians; women and children?

[protocolture]

>it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon.

The bay of communism needs to be regularly watered with the blood of pigs or something.

[zimpenfish]

> After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution.

Unless it's by a right-wing white male, obvs., in which case they get promoted / lauded / re-elected / etc.

[stein1946]

> it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon

But it is, the US is no position to flatten anything.

Afghanistan? Lost Vietnam? Lost Ukraine? Lost Iran? will be lost

And these are heavily embargoed 3rd world countries.

In the first days of the Israeli-US war in Iran (a country under decades of embargo by the way) the US, Israel and vassals lost 60+ planes (plus who knows what else they are not reporting.

Trump is not coming out of this, if he makes the grave mistake of sending troops to their demise this administration is done.

[dragonwriter]

> But it is, the US is no position to flatten anything.

The US is certainly in a position to flatten (with conventional force) anything in the Carribean, whatever failures it had in long counterinsurgencies where the logistics tail wrapped nearly halfway around the world. (And however badly it would probably fail in occupation in many of the places it could easily flatten close by, for that matter; flattening is much easier than occupying.)

> Afghanistan? Lost Vietnam? Lost Ukraine? Lost Iran?

Lost Ukraine? Ukraine hasn't lost and the US was never a direct belligerent in that conflict.

[srean]

60+ planes !? Not disputing, just interested to learn more.

It seems Iran offered little to no defense against bombing raids. This may have changed recently.

[andruby]

I can only find references to 16 US planes lost (0 Israeli planes)

[dinkumthinkum]

This is pure propaganda. It should be flagged as misinformation. There is no true to this complete nonsense that 60+ planes were lost. You can hate the US or have any opinion you want like the Ayatollah was great or whatever but don’t spread pure social media propaganda, please. Do you know how big of a deal losing 60 actual planes for the US would be? I would just say, if you are quite sure about all this then I think you might hit it big on polynarket.

[bluegatty]

"After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution."

Ok, just follow through with the logic.

If the US 'flatteNed' Cuba (like Gaza) in response to a few drones - it would 100% make the US 'The Evil Empire' and turn the world 100% against America as a neo fascist entity.

The costs would be unthinkable, and probably the demise of the nation as a having a 'historical special place'.

It would not ever fully recover, and the 'New World Order' would be something really hard to imagine.

In reality - something else would play out ..

I think the response would be disproportionate, but probably focused, but it depends on the 'populist effect' aka what exactly Cuba attacked, and how it was provoked.

If the US attacked Cuba first, and responded with drones on a US military installation - I'll bet there is populist resistance to escalation.

Event that tussle alone would look really bad on US, would guarantee the DJT regime probably 'last place' for all US presidents, people would be calling for 25th Amendment and for new leadership, even at the same time as they might even support strikes in response.

It'll mean total political chaos until the Admin steps away, probably Congress/Institutions trying to put a 'bubble' around WH Admin.

[geysersam]

> If the US 'flatteNed' Cuba (like Gaza) in response to a few drones - it would 100% make the US 'The Evil Empire' and turn the world 100% against America as a neo fascist entity.

It has already happened. Even in west Europe politicians are discussing how to protect their nations from US imperialism. Every remaining alliance the US has is strictly quid pro quo, there's no trust left anywhere (Israel being the singular exception). Meanwhile 50% of the planet is completely fed up and can't wait to have China take over as leader of the international order.

[dinkumthinkum]

The whole thing is stupid. The US wouldn’t flatten Cuba. Only leftists think the Cuban people support the communists. It’s like that Hasab Piker saying “the good Cubans are still in Cuba but the ones in the US that don’t like communism are crazy.” The reality is we would decapitate their regime, kill all their top brass, blow up their military installations, probably gave some collateral damages, and then in a year there would be reports, modern vehicles, and commerce.

[bluegatty]

"The reality is we would decapitate their regime, kill all their top brass, blow up their military installations, probably gave some collateral damages, and then in a year there would be reports, modern vehicles, and commerce."

I couldn't imagine a delusional statement, considering we are literally at the moment, failing to 'change a regime' in an active war, once again!

The lack of self awareness here is ... scary.

Iran? Afghanistan? Iraq? Vietnam? Venezuela?

How many more lessons do you need, beyond than the one literally on your TV set right now ?

Here are some historical realities:

Nobody thinks of 'Castro Inc' as 'Communist' other than young folks on Reddit, or people listening to Joe Rogan.

Every adult - those living there, here, and elsewhere - know that Castro Inc. are ruthless authoritarians - their 'nominal communism' is barely relevant. Ideology is barely cover for anything as it is with all regimes.

If they have any residual popularity at all - it's for 'Standing up to America!' and those who held up the ancien regime in Cuba that 'Kept the people down!' - which has at least some historic resonance.

Nobody liked Saddam, nobody likes the Taliban, and the Communists in Vietnam were not popular in the South, and unlikely in the North as well.

Chavizmo had popular support, but that waned, and nobody likes the current regime.

And yet - where is all of this 'modern vehicles and commerce' in all these places?

The lack of self awareness is shocking.

The US ended up killing 100's of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Almost 1 million peopled died in Saddam's US-supported invasion of Iran.

The Israeli government has now admitted that up to 70K Arabs were killed in Gaza.

Many in the US have no problem bombing the smithereens out of civilians, so long as there can be some kind of populist cover for it even if it's totally disproportional.

If Castro Inc. were so irresponsible that they sent drones into a US base, it's entirely plausible that Trump Inc. bombs Cuba with enormous civilian collateral damage.

Whatever happens, the regime will not fall, thinking as much is a dangerous insult to reality.

The only way Cuba could be liberated by force is a 'full invasion', which is technically very feasible but completely unlikely, or, a long, protracted movement towards detente. That's it.

[dinkumthinkum]

All of those are different conflicts. There hasn't been change in Venezuela? Have you seen the political prisoners being released? Are you aware of Germany, Japan, or Panama? Every conflict is different. I thought the Iraq war foolish and the Afghanistan war did not have clear goals and too many different presidents. I think it is interesting that you know that no Cuban living in the US that does not listen to Joe Rogan and is not on Reddit doesn't think of Cuba as communist. It's a pretty unbelievable statement. I don't know if this some leftist No True Scotsman thing or what. You think because they are authoritarian, they are not communist? How do you think we ensure that I have a right to your labor if not by force? I guess we will just see what happens.

[paganel]

> flattened

How will the Americans do that? Nuclear bombs? Because it doesn't seem to me that they have the conventional arsenal to flatten a country like Cuba.

[swiftcoder]

Cuba is a relatively small island, and (by area) it's mostly agrarian. Conventional bombing campaign on the industrial and urban centres would send them back to the Iron Age in a matter of days. Which is why this whole scenario is absurd, Cuban leaders aren't about to start a war.

[no_shadowban_6]

Whose homeland is the US?

[seanmcdirmid]

That’s MAD. It’s much more likely that we just blockade and invade Cuba than we nuke it. Even Trump isn’t crazy enough to start a nuclear war (I hope).

[ErroneousBosh]

> it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon

With what? The UK has already said we're not saving you this time. You're on your own now.