[lordnacho]

Superficially, the article is right, intelligence services didn't get this wrong, and the administration made a bad decision despite having a good appraisal to hand.

But really, it's a values failure.

Wanting to make decisions that are good for America, and good for its friends, is a value. Putting people you are supposed to represent ahead of yourself used to be the kind of thing people would say mattered. It used to be a thing that leaders tried to demonstrate that they had carefully considered their decisions.

Once you have an administration that puts itself ahead of everything else, this whole thing makes sense.

This administration is full of insecure people who want to show how strong they are. You can see it in how they talk, and the constant stream of memes coming from the WH. It's incredibly juvenile, stuff like having Trump portrayed with a sixpack, beating up his enemies.

Strongman regimes have a tendency to try to steal the blind, to use a poker concept: bully the opposition into giving you a concession, by making super aggressive moves. Like picking pennies off a train track, most of the time you will win and the opponent will back down, EVEN if on paper the opponent tends to have the better cards, because a rational opponent will appreciate putting a lid on risk. This last bit is really important, because it means the bully learns that he can win despite rejecting advice.

So you can go around sucker punching people until it stops working, and there's a decent chance Iran is where it stops working. If it's not Iran, it will be the next thing, because they can't stop.

And to get back to values, too many Americans are unwilling to take responsibility for their country's actions. If you look at what causes discontent with the current Iran situation, it is things like gas prices. In other words, self-interest, still.

[srean]

Cuba is already lined up. If they feel confident they would try on India because India often does not do what it is told. They have almost got that region under their thumb, except for India. Impressed by Srilanka though.

North Korea is another but I don't think they will dare to make that move.

[lordnacho]

What would the interest be in India? I don't think it figures much in the American consciousness, contrary to Iran or Cuba.

[pjc50]

I think this is being overstated by Indians who would like to think that India is more important to the US than it is; other than H1B discourse, I think the US has largely forgotten India exists.

Invading nuclear-armed India (from where?? Pakistan?) would be a completely insane thing even by Trump standards. It's a plan that disintegrates on contact with a map.

[srean]

Not necessarily with invasion to start with. First would be destabilisation. It's neighbors are not doing too well lately. Many of them imploded within a short time span.

India can do what to the US with its nuke ? It's a deterrent for China.

[JumpCrisscross]

India is weirdly more often forgotten in D.C., and almost never thought of as a threat, that framing is, as another commenter mentioned, a myth that largely propagates in India. It has recently only featured in Washington due to being a potential counterpoint to China, wherever that project is right now.

[bigyabai]

> India can do what to the US with its nuke ?

The same thing that France or Russia could do with their ballistic missile submarines. Just because the ICBMs won't reach the US doesn't mean that the ALCM and SLBMs are harmless.

[srean]

Indian submarines are in general quite noisy.

They bought a few that are more silent, but their acoustic signature got acquired through intelligence/bribery operations. Quite an irreparable loss that the Indian population is not as acutely aware of.

One asset that India can threaten is Diego Garcia.

[pjc50]

Everyone has forgotten ISRO. I don't see why they wouldn't be able to get a nuke into the US on a rocket, if for some reason they were mad enough to do so. But the US nuclear deterrent mostly makes that moot.

[srean]

Ensuring unchallenged access to the Indian Ocean is a big deal and access to Indian market under US favorable terms and conditions.