Of course now we have cheap drones, putting massive asymmetric financial power. Every time Iran fires a $1k drone, America fires a $1m missile to stop it.

That's a great way to lose a war of attrition.

America has been losing wars for 50 years, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. 11 carrier groups or 110 doesn't make any difference.

And nearly half of the US supports this.

Who hasn't been seen or heard from yet. I'd give this a few more days before pronouncing it a done deal.

During the Cold War, there was an easy "US good, USSR bad" pattern for the world to be inspired by, but with the fall of the Soviet Union, the rest of the world no longer needs to (or even can if it wanted to) rally around a call of "hey, at least we're not the USSR".

Now we don't have the USSR in the picture, what does the USA offer? Much of the rhetoric I see from it these days is "We're not China", and true, you're not, but when we're looking in from the outside there's a loss of scale and rightly or wrongly the ICE detention camps and exporting of people to CECOT, looks much the same as Uighurs being put in Xinjiang internment camps.

Meanwhile, increasing fractions of my hardware, from injection moulded widgets to laser welding kits, from 3D printers and PV to computers and smartphones, is made by Chinese firms, so China looks increasingly like the place where stuff actually happens, and conversely the USA looks increasingly like the place where grand visions are pronounced only to fail from lack of awareness of how to engineer anything or what customers really benefit from (e.g. Juicero, Metaverse, Cybertruck).

I'm not entirely sure I buy this. Everything you said feels true, and it's happening in the moment. But I think you're missing the forest for the trees. The way you wrote "hyperfinancialisation" makes me think you are European (German?)

I'd imagine a vision for the country would be explained at places like World Expo right? In 2025 their booth (developed during Biden years even though it launched during Trump) gave a "semi" okay idea of where the country is placing its vision. Was it expressed well at the Expo? Not entirely sure, but it was there.

Historically, they didn't need to really do much at these Expos because who doesn't know the U.S.? And who doesn't know what the country is about? But I guess with the increasing decline of the U.S., they now have to 'advertise' themselves and explain to people what the underlying vision is.

In the end, the underlying theme seems to be "optimistic collaboration led by American innovation". Yeah I know its hard to picture this in the moment after everything that has happened in the last year but as the Biden years ended this was the thinking among government officials.

[1]:https://youtu.be/NVCcdeYMzpU?t=183

Watching this video a year later, it just seems so comical that this whole vision of "collaborative innovation": of the future being a collaborative project, with America wanting to lead it but not alone, and the slogan 'Imagine what we could create together' just seems comical after everything that's occurred in the last year. I guess it remains to be seen if this vision will hold once Trump is out of office.

I think this is a bizarre comparison. The people of Vietnam hated the French colonial occupation, and most of them despised the American-backed regime as well. They were fighting a 20-year-long anti-colonial war for independence (something that China, by the way, does not want any of the people they've colonized to emulate).

On the contrary, there's every indication that the people of Iran, as well as Venezuela, legitimately hate their repressive regimes and want nothing more than a chance to overthrow them. This isn't imposing regime change on some country that had never thought of it. It's clearing the path for the people of that country to execute regime change for themselves.

In that sense, our role here is quite a lot more like the Soviets in Vietnam, than America in Vietnam, or of either country in Afghanistan. We're not in the position of needing to prop up a puppet regime or find ethnic groups or exogenous actors. All we really need to do is target the existing oppressors.

>> if the US decides to unilaterally stop bombing Iran, it leaves Israel open to the Iranians, which is something Israel and AIPAC won't let the US do.

Stop with the AIPAC > blaming Israel for getting America into this. Israel did great work taking out Iran's defenses and gaining air superiority in the previous 12-day war, and it was only held back from continuing by the US - temporarily losing the total control it held. Furthermore, in no way is Israel going to be open to attack after this, whether or not the US remains involved.

Consider what happens if this war does succeed in weakening the Iranian regime to the point where the people can come back into the street and overthrow it: Russia loses its drone and missile manufacturer, the West has a bargaining chip in oil against China's control of rare earths, and conceivably there is a broad peaceful order in the Middle East between Sunnis, Shia and Jews, all relatively Western-facing, potentially progressive and aligned with the US and Europe. Would that be a terrible outcome?

This entire saga has been a wake up call to the middle eastern states. They thought all the money they paid to the US over the years got them a first class ticket when in reality they are sitting way back in economy.

There aren't many options on the table. Cozy up to China? Maybe the middle eastern and OECD countries can do it but not the Asian countries. The right strategy would be to join forces to try and help the US get back on track because what other superpower is there? And that means somehow dealing with Israel as they are going to continue causing trouble for everyone.