Unless we know the actual proportions in the blend, I think it is a bit premature to judge that the US will hold China's oil lifeline in its hands simply by invading Iran.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
The reality of human nature is that successes encourage, while failures discourage.
The reason the US has gotten bolder in recent times is not just because of desperation, it is also because it has seen great results from its new doctrine of quick, precise, and most importantly cheap decapitation strikes.
The ghost of Iraq and Afghanistan haunted American interventionism for twenty years. The failures of American nation-building, the trillions spent, the tens of thousands dead, and from a political perspective, the repudiation of Bush and all those associated with him, caused serious face loss for the neo-conservatives in Washington. It made future presidents timid about sending troops into a foreign country and so we saw an overall decline in US interventions for nearly twenty years.
But that's starting to change. A new military doctrine is emerging - in Syria, in Iran, in Venezuela, and arguably even in Ukraine, where the US is combining well-orchestrated, "light touch" precision strikes with heavy intelligence support to achieve more limited political and economic outcomes on the cheap. Sure, you might not be able to get a local base or "modernize" the country to your liking, but you also don't need to spend decades of time and trillions of dollars just to have the country end up working with the Russians and the Chinese any way.
This is not exactly a new doctrine - the concept of limited scale, intelligence-driven operations has always been in the arsenal - but it seems to be making a come back off of three things: 1) new technologies (or technological disparities, to be more exact) that enable more comprehensive denial of a nation's ability to fight back without lengthy, expensive bombing campaigns, and 2) decades of experience conducting precision operations in the Middle East, where the US military had to learn how to do things with a light touch the "hard way" because the shock & awe doctrine wasn't working, and 3) new-found political culture where "total victory" is no longer the goal and cutting losses early is completely acceptable.
Overall, I'd say it represents a return to form for US interventionism and the neo-conservative establishment, and if proven to be sustainable, can serve as the basis of a new grand strategy of "intervention on the cheap." Of course, the rest of the world will adapt to this, and ultimately it only takes one catastrophic failure for us to go back to step one.
The reason the US has gotten bolder in recent times is not just because of desperation, it is also because it has seen great results from its new doctrine of quick, precise, and most importantly cheap decapitation strikes.
The ghost of Iraq and Afghanistan haunted American interventionism for twenty years. The failures of American nation-building, the trillions spent, the tens of thousands dead, and from a political perspective, the repudiation of Bush and all those associated with him, caused serious face loss for the neo-conservatives in Washington. It made future presidents timid about sending troops into a foreign country and so we saw an overall decline in US interventions for nearly twenty years.
But that's starting to change. A new military doctrine is emerging - in Syria, in Iran, in Venezuela, and arguably even in Ukraine, where the US is combining well-orchestrated, "light touch" precision strikes with heavy intelligence support to achieve more limited political and economic outcomes on the cheap. Sure, you might not be able to get a local base or "modernize" the country to your liking, but you also don't need to spend decades of time and trillions of dollars just to have the country end up working with the Russians and the Chinese any way.
This is not exactly a new doctrine - the concept of limited scale, intelligence-driven operations has always been in the arsenal - but it seems to be making a come back off of three things: 1) new technologies (or technological disparities, to be more exact) that enable more comprehensive denial of a nation's ability to fight back without lengthy, expensive bombing campaigns, and 2) decades of experience conducting precision operations in the Middle East, where the US military had to learn how to do things with a light touch the "hard way" because the shock & awe doctrine wasn't working, and 3) new-found political culture where "total victory" is no longer the goal and cutting losses early is completely acceptable.
Overall, I'd say it represents a return to form for US interventionism and the neo-conservative establishment, and if proven to be sustainable, can serve as the basis of a new grand strategy of "intervention on the cheap." Of course, the rest of the world will adapt to this, and ultimately it only takes one catastrophic failure for us to go back to step one.
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Okay great! Rubio, would you please work with Donroe Trump and move the UN HQ out of the United States? I'm sure China is more than happy to become the new home for the UN HQ.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
All very devious, expect China doesn’t need to buy oil from Venezuela or even Iran for that matter.
China previously bought oil from Venezuela more as a favour to keep Maduro afloat as opposed to China literally not being able to live without that oil. Same for Iran.
There are plenty of other sellers of oil, and China is in no danger of running out. Especially since there is a literal open market for oil in the world market.
Yes, China will need to use USD to buy oil on the open market, but it’s literally got more USD than it can use right now since it stopped plowing its surplus USD into US treasuries.
The professor is being way too alarmist and doesn’t really understand world economics and trade to think that plot can work like that.
If he was being bottom line in his thinking (sorry, haven’t got an hour spare to listen to all that podcast) and thinking about securing oil supplies during wartime. Well in what parallel universe was China ever going to ge able to continue to get Venezuelan crude during a hot war with America? That oil is a write-off from the get go, which is why China was careful to limit its dependence on Venezuelan crude to start with.
Similar deal with Iran, during a full WWIII scenario, you are going to have so much trouble getting Iranian crude to China it’s hardly worth the effort. Especially since in that eventuality, Chinese exports to America and Europe will also cease, which will knock a bigger chunk off of Chinese oil demand than the lost supplies from Irans and Venezuela.
In a total war scenario, China can probably make do with just domestic oil production plus its strategic reserves for years by speeding up transition to renewables for industrial and civilian usages where practical. What shortfall China might have can be more than made up for with secure pipeline oil and gas from Russia. So long as Russia stands, China will not be critically short of most strategic resources it might need in a total world war scenario. Additionally, China can get significant ME oil supplies via Pakistan if needed. China has plenty of options and fall backs it can call upon that it doesn’t need to worry much about America playing whack-a-mole trying to invade the whole world to make them individually stop trading with China.
That would be the best case scenario for China. Use asymmetrical methods to damage the US
I suspect they will try to ferment a rebellion, then like Libya and Syria, they will support the rebels, provide air strikes and slowly wear down the Iranian govt forces. Iran will have to suppress this asap with overwhelming force. Of course that will give trump an excuse to attack the country again so they better be prepared. Not sure how long Iran can hold out but they have been surprisingly resilient before.
Iran is not a serious country. Israel literally set up shop inside their borders. How does that inspire confidence?
Overall the scale of the unrest in Iran is greatly exaggerated. Up to 3000 protesters\rioters on all 90 mln Iran on visible photos\videos. This is more like the activation of various anti-government groups to distract the attention of the authorities before an attack from the US\Israel.
Article from October, so what actually happened after 3 month? Between Trump and NYT, there were also supoosed to be trade deals with 200 countries by now all lining up to do a deal, Xi was supposed to be eager to call Trump, TikTok was supposed to be sold rather than just creating a new joint venture thats not even TikTok US..
Honestly a lot of people are too conditioned to override common sense with American propaganda.
Between people and military, if its possible for Venezula to do anything US wants Machado would not be written off.