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So, perhaps this too much of a war question, rather than a culture war one, but I'm having trouble understanding why Iran is launching attacks on random cargo ships in the Red Sea via proxies in Yemen, and now apparently directly https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-67811929 .
Ok, at least some of the vessels are Israeli linked, and they're hitting at US warships, but my confusion is what this hopes to achieve. Operation Preying Mantis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis seems an apt concern for the Iranians as a repeat: they cant hope to exert serious pressure on Israel's economy, and the moment they sink or damage a warship they're getting hit hard surely? And is it earning them any friends?
Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict. If you want to apply pressure to Israel, isnt that the way, especially given that Hezbolah has resources Hamas does not and could seriously threaten another front that would need actual Israeli resources. Iran isnt going all out with its assets, or the assets in cases are refusing to for self preservation.
So why hit ships? Is it really all they can do? Do they assume the US cant respond? Maybe it earns them some respect from the muslim world for standing up, but it just seems... odd. I'm not exactly Bismark, but I'm clearly missing something.
They've forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the north of the country, all without drawing the kind of polarizing international opprobrium that would give Israel a justification for the kind of Gaza-like heavy-handed operations which would be necessary to remove Hezbollah from within easy rocket range of the border.
If, as has been speculated by people like Haviv Rettig Gur, that one of the purposes of Hamas's 10/7 aggression is to ultimately make the feeling of security necessary to maintain a first world standard of living impossible in Israel and drive the Israelis into the sea through emigration/attrition, Hezbollah has achieved about as much as Hamas has done, without any of the downsides.
I have speculated about such a strategy before myself. I do not know if anti-Israel forces have thought through such a strategy, but to me it makes at least some sense. Israel's enemies are not capable of defeating it using conventional war. US and Israeli military forces are too powerful for that, and in any case Israel could use nukes if it was ever being conventionally overrun. Developing nuclear weapons and then using them against Israel could work - Israel is a small country and even nuking just, say, Tel Aviv might essentially end the Israeli project. But Israel would retaliate with its own nuclear forces and there is a non-trivial chance that Israel would retaliate by nuking not just the attacker, but also other Muslim countries. However, if Israel's enemies could impose a constant state of insecurity on the Israeli population that is significantly above the current state of insecurity there, it could conceivably cause many of Israel's most talented people to leave the country. One of the problems with such a strategy, though, is that the new Israeli diaspora would to some extent continue to materially support Israel, just from their new countries. If Israel retains a large core of people who are willing to tough things out and at the same time is being just as supported materially as they are now, just through donations instead of taxes, I am not sure that much would actually change.
A big problem with this strategy is that there's no way a state of insecurity could be placed exclusively on Israel without inspiring global copycats. The choice won't be insecurity in Israel vs security Elsewhere. It will be a government willing to defend you in Israel vs governments unwilling to defend you elsewhere, which is basically the same equation that drew countless Jewish migrants to Israel in the first place.
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The other problem is assuming Israel is just going to sit there and take it. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, none of them are invincible themselves, if Israel wants to they can hit back hard. It's not going to be easy, but of all countries, Israel is the least likely one to go down without a fight, putting aside the Samson Option.
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I'd take it around the other way -- Israel moved those civilians so that a junior commander within HZ cannot conduct a strike that would force everyone's hand.
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The Iranians and their allies know that the US Navy has other commitments, they really cannot afford another front opening up in Yemen. We should be looking at this as a global conflict. It's not just Iran and proxies vs Israel and US.
Raising oil prices is good for Iran and constraining Liberian (US) shipping is good for the whole Russia-Chinese-Iranian axis. I'm not saying there's a grand conspiracy where everyone is taking orders from Xi but they do have similar motivations and shared interests. We see Russian and Chinese tankers going untouched. Elements of the Chinese navy are hanging about nearby ignoring Israeli merchant ships that complain about being attacked. It also harms US prestige for its allies to be unable to use Suez.
Times have changed since the 1980s - Iranian anti-ship missiles and anti-access, area-denial weapons generally are more potent than they were, in comparative terms. The US is shooting down $2000 drones with $2 million dollar missiles that can't be resupplied at sea. This is not really sustainable.
What is the US supposed to do? Bombing Yemen has been tried and hasn't worked out for the US alliance group. Aircraft and armaments need to be conserved for the primary theater in Asia anyway. Invading Yemen is a disastrous proposition, second only to invading Iran.
What can Israel do? They're prepared to fight Hezbollah and Lebanon but their options for fighting Yemen are much less promising. If Hezbollah and Iran preserve their strength for if/when China and Russia fully enter the war, they have a greater chance of getting what they want. Plinking away at US merchant shipping and tying down forces in the Red Sea contributes to their group at relatively low risk.
Air defence wasn't really NATO's strong suit during the Cold War. NATO prioritized fighter jets over SAMs. Since then there has been 30 years of cut backs with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq costing an ungodly amount of money. SAM-systems had little use against taliban, and they cost a fortune to buy and operate. The cutbacks lead to a big drop in capacity, as cutting spending leads to a much bigger drop in deliveries. Half the budget and the unit cost increases due to diminishing production volumes.
Ukraine is currently consuming SAM systems at a much higher rate than they are produced. Nobody expected Russia to manufacture 3000 Geran drones in a year and almost none of them to be shot down by a fighter jet. Russia manufactures more missiles than expected and defending from Russian missiles wasn't the main priority during the forever wars in the middle east.
China is manufacturing missiles and drones at an industrial rate while Iran has managed to go from barely being able to fight in the skies to having thousands of flying systems. A war of attrition between American SAM systems and Iranian, Chinese and Russian drones and missiles is a big win for the latter. Especially if they are using 10 000 dollar drones built with parts ordered online.
Quite right. Also the lethality of surface to surface missiles has increased. Scuds in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were not very accurate, you could maybe target an airbase or some big target... nothing like the precision we have now. They were big, expensive and relatively easy to target on the ground, now there's a wide range of missiles that are smaller, harder to spot, cheaper to replace. I saw a Houthi military parade on youtube, where you'd expect to see columns of tanks they just had dozens of trucks with drones on them.
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Israel can’t do anything except reroute Israeli merchant vessels via the cape. Israel can’t attack Iran directly except possibly with a nuke in a Samson option scenario.
The US can’t attack the Houthis directly, whatever can be gained by striking Yemen has already been mined by the Saudis. They can threaten to strike Iranian oil sites to pressure them, although actually doing so would be a substantial escalation. It’s probably the next step up, though, other than maybe striking some Houthi land targets which everyone knows is a pointless gesture.
China and Russia have no interest in entering the war against Israel, they’re happy to stay neutral and occasionally grandstand against Israel’s actions in Gaza to boost their reputations with Muslims. They haven’t even sanctioned Israel, which would be the first step in actually taking a stand.
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On the other hand, it hurts Russia and China as well.
China is demand starved and this severely limits their competitiveness in European markets since they only do a minority of commercial shipping out of China and that isn't changing soon. This couldn't come at a worse time for them.
Russia does very little of their own shipping and ships going around the cape means that more shipping capacity is going to get bought buy Europeans, especially in big tankers. This risks significantly decreasing the volume of commercially viable russian oil exports (which could be good for Iran I suppose).
Europe obviously hurts from the higher shipping costs.
Egypt faces catastrophy if their Forex dries up and the rest of the Arab world hurts in the sense that it further decrease their ability to affect oil prices and the higher prices go to shippers, not them.
The only ones that unambiguously win in a material sense is the US, which one could suspect is why the response has been so tepid and seemingly inept, if one is conspiratorially minded.
I think it's just that America is administratively paralysed and inept and that this coincidentally hurts everyone but themselves in a material sense but also hurts their prestige and legitimacy as hegemon which I believe is probably more important than any short term economic gains.
I agree. At least one of the reasons you’ve seen the US be very limited in its response so far is that going full World Police now just allows everyone else in the region to abrogate their responsibilities and blame all violence on America. They want China to get upset with Iran, and are willing to drag things out to get it.
Even Egypt isn’t publicly condemning the Houthis yet, and China hasn’t said anything. Ironically, Israel’s a possible winner if this drags out, especially now the overland route between Saudi and Egypt (via Israel) is gaining steam.
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Global conflict? Kind of like a...... world war?
A comparatively cold one, if you will.
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One of the problems with being hegemon is that everyone has interest in weakening you. I think that some state actors have noticed something - while the US has the military capacity to respond, they no longer have the administrative one. Look at how many crisis there are that are not being handled well - US Southern Border, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, the strings of coups in sub-Saharan Africa, the saber rattling of Ethiopia, the saber rattling of Venezuela. Just sowing chaos may lead to the demise of the sovereign or at least pushing it into isolationism.
Only one of these directly involves the US, that being the Southern border, which has been a basket case forever. The rest, at worst, is indirect, like Israel/Gaza. The US has not been that successful regarding Ukraine, because the political will is lacking to expend more resources, and Russia was underestimated. In any decade there are at least some conflicts going on, some of of which may affect the US indirectly. This is not much different. Compared to as recently as the late 80s, in which the Cold War and Eastern Bloc was still extant, things are looking not bad.
There is a lot of antipathy to the US though, especially in the Middle East, Russia, and some of China, but this is hardly new. A watch and wait approach is ideal now.
Regarding this latest development between Iran and the US, I predict there will be no escalation and the issue will resolve itself. The US knows that Iran is useful, even as an enemy, because it helps keeps Sunni power in check. Sunnis are arguably worse, owing to long history of terrorism against Western targets that have nothing to do with Israel, and also state-sponsored terrorism by Sunni-majority countries. Iran has a long history of making provocations against the US that are self-contained, like in 2020 https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/01/08/irans-attack-on-us-base-in-iraq-underscored-depth-of-max-pressures-folly/
That is not how things work when you have a unipolar world. There are no crises that don't involve the hegemon. In a multipolar the flares on the borders of spheres of influence are expected. Let's take Ethiopia - Eritrea - while the likes of china and russia are to be contained (not controlled), the US diplomacy lacks the capacity to tell Abiy Ahmed to sit on his ass and shut up. Which is a strong signal to other countries - that if you want to stir shit, now is the moment. Part of it is that the non first world is just too big to ignore - so it is possible to have a form of parallel world economy.
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If nothing else, the 10/7 attack and Gaza war have driven a huge split in Biden's coalition on the issue, and has probably done a number on his approval and election polling numbers.
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I think it's what you wrote -- Iranian assets that have leverage are refusing to jump based on their own risk/reward ratio.
What's Hezbollah going to gain from striking harder? They will draw a huge Israeli response that will cost them dearly. Meanwhile they don't have much to gain -- Iran doesn't have an option other than to keep supporting them in Lebanon as the only credible Shiite power. Seems like a basic self-interest judgment. And they have enough of a power base they aren't completely dependent on Iranian support.
The Houthis, meanwhile, are almost totally dependent on Iran. And they benefit greatly since the Saudis are their main enemies and the conflict put the immediate brakes on the Israel<>Saudi thaw. The hotter it burns, the worse for the Saudis and greatly reduces likelihood of the [realignment of Israel/Saudi[(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-20/biden-says-hamas-attacked-to-halt-israel-saudi-normalization) that hurts Iran the most.
YMMV, but "local/domestic self-interest" is always a good first guess.
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The missile from Iran directly is interesting and would be a serious escalation if the result of a change in official policy. Of course it might not be official policy. One of the problems with pushing propaganda so heavily to buttress the alleged moral authority of your government is that your men are liable to believe it.
Sure, many Iranians seem opposed to their government’s policy on Hamas and the Houthis, but the IRGC is the best-funded and most loyal-to-the-revolution part of the Iranian state apparatus; it’s also more religious, I’ve heard that quite a few more senior commanders are committed Shia scholars of the Ayatollah’s theory. It’s possible this was a rogue action by a particularly zealous commander.
But in a sense it is an issue, it’s difficult when you build credibility on an issue for decades and then, when that issue finally comes to a head, you do nothing (and indeed resolutely deny you knew your proxy was on the attack). The Houthis, Hamas, even Hezbollah are funded in substantial part by the Iranian state, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own firm religious beliefs that can conflict with the often more pragmatic preferences of the Iranian elite.
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