| > > Why even have this military if anything that affects the market makes the US cower in fear? First of all the chain of those cowering in fear begins with the the actors around ship transit , meaning the owners but also the seamen , they don't want to cross if there is a > 5% chance of being hit . And the seamen are actually being forced to accept such risk, they signed up for something else entirely, their risk preference would be around 0.0% because these days nobody dies at sea anymore. Without Hormuz the world runs out of oil and that is a much bigger problem than just stock market going down With the mines and drones and asymmetric warfare you'd need to conquer the entirety of Iran alley by alley and mountain by mountain to secure the strait for a risk tolerance in line with the aforementioned 5% This war was lost when the U.S. wasn't ready to intervene during the week of popular uprise against the regime, had the intervention happened back then , maybe it could have been possible to overthrow the Ayatollah system and reinstall the Shah (who btw was no Saint either) John Mearsheimer has called this right from the first day, he said that Iran 'holds all the cards' and he's been right on everything down to a T (no pun intended) [0] It has been an acrobatic adventure in the Middle East with lots of expenses and very little human losses to follow the 'Greater Israel' ambition of Israel and Bibi. But we must not forget that we killed their Supreme Leader and Religious Leader all wrapped in one , they will not let this slide and with the asymmetric war and warfare this Administration has exposed itself to potentially another 9/11 that would at that point force a ground war with lots of victims. [0]http://youtube.com/watch?v=DBOVT0UdHXg |
2014 - Claimed Putin had no interest in annexing large parts of Ukraine, conquering it, or pursuing regime change
Feb 2022 - Putin had “no intention of invading Ukraine” in the sense of large-scale conquest (days before the invasion)
June 2022 - “There is no evidence in the public record that Putin was contemplating, much less intending to put an end to Ukraine as an independent state… Putin was not interested in making Ukraine a part of Russia… the Russians pursued a limited aims strategy”
Repeated claim (2014–2022): Putin is a rational actor who understands the costs and would not pursue maximalist territorial or imperial goals in Ukraine