Stein Steinbeck

expert at changing 'is' to 'was'

Revenge is a dish best served cold

I must confess utter bafflement at this common refrain – even from the sober and level-headed, such as here – that Trump's stated objectives are somehow "tactical" and not "strategic," as if nobody intuits the direct connection between his clearly-stated strategic goal of rendering Iran incapable of threatening America and its core security interests, and the destruction of the tangible means by which Iran accomplishes that. It seems that conditional wisdom from past wars is now axiomatic; that no matter how crushing the tactical victory it cannot become strategic success without transformation via some dark diplomatic alchemy. To be blunt, this unspoken premise contravenes the evidence. Iran's threat to US security interests via its quest for regional hegemony was always rooted in hard power – indeed, Iran's waged non-stop regional war via proxy armies and relied on threatening a crucial sea line of communication + the globally vital oil infrastructure it serves as its defensive deterrent. By cultivating the Houthis they extended that threat to a second globally crucial SLOC and even went on the offensive there; the beginning of non-stop kinetic escalations to counter stinging kinetic defeats in their proxy wars which ultimately led to the current conflict. Soft power hedged, but ultimately failed to contain Iran's single-minded ambitions, just as it failed to contain the DPRK before it. The underwriter of all the regime's diplomatic dealings is violence or the threat thereof; their every bargaining chip is bloody. When a nation's power derives so fundamentally from hard power; even more than for most, it follows that destroying their capacity for warmaking destroys their geopolitical might. And yet, despite the President’s blunt and thorough statements of intent to those ends, the ground fact of regime change being pursued mostly by Israeli efforts (whom have the presence, the motivation, and the ground assets to enable it,) and the optionality of such as regards achieving the explicit objective of erasing Iranian ability to threaten core American interests – almost all professional interlocutors place success behind a veil impregnable to kinetic action. Regime change, the only in-doubt outcome, is elevated to decisive status via various theories; ranging from the supposedly inevitable progress of their nuclear program via inexorable will to dark musings of the war spurring some global proliferation cascade. Proponents of the former either omit explicit predictions of program reconstitution timelines in light of the systematic and thorough leveling of the centrifuge production and supply chain now ongoing, or offer ones that seem ludicrously short in light of the above; the “Tony Stark in a cave with a box of scraps” theorem. (Nor is the feasibility of building a sufficient arsenal of delivery systems under constant air threat; an especially curious omission given even long-time naysayers of BMD now discuss sipping martinis on IRBM aimpoints.) Advocates of the latter remain conspicuously silent on the probable rouge-states-cum-nuclear-powers-in-waiting lurking in the wings, which makes it difficult to evaluate their claims that destroying dangerous regimes pursuing nuclear weapons somehow increases the global risk from nuclear weapons. This is especially noticeable in Iran’s case. Firstly the regime’s decades-long struggle against increasing instability and waning political legitimacy is already at fever-pitch; with enforcers slaughtering protesters by the tens of thousands and decades of economic misery now compounded by existential pressures like insufficient water supply. The proliferation risks of a nuclear-armed Iran suffering a collapse or coup remain broadly unexplored; a curious omission given the many interlocutors remarking on Khameni’s probable successors being “more hardline” and Khameni’s own advanced age. Nor does Iran perfectly scan as a rational state pursuing rational goals via rational strategy that similarly rational rogue states would take as an exemplary case study. This fact is easily intuited via Iran’s five-decades long foreign policy of waging nonstop war upon, pursuing nuclear weapons in proximity to, and declaring their national raison d'être to be the destruction of, a state that already has deliverable thermonuclear weapons and unquestioned will to existential survival. And of course the “conventional invasion to proliferation incentive” causality chain is never applied to probable future policy of a nation devoted to pursuit of regional hegemony via proxy war once it’s inviolate behind a nuclear deterrent – despite the ongoing land war in Europe providing a perfect case-study. Indeed, it almost seems some august commentators *want* more results like the Russo-Ukrainian war; as if Proper Policy is defined strictly by the contours of Cold War era calculus. Only two days hence a remarkable article appeared in Foreign Affairs, shot through from headline to conclusion with a borderline scolding tone as it detailed how Iran’s stunning failures of deterrence and, above all, its failure to gain The Bomb, has made the world a more dangerous place. One can only imagine the reactions this engendered in Kyiv. For as Ukrainians can tell you, arguments revolving around unidentified “governments” pursuing nuclear weapons pale in comparison to tangible threats immediately before you, especially since they present weighable risks against nebulous theoreticals. As Liddel Hart once said, Clausewitzian focus on tactical violence is but one tool among many in grand strategy; and the goal of grand strategy is to destroy the opposing government’s power to make war. And to achieve this at lowest possible cost; one must strike at the enemy’s weakness; to effect their disarmament rather than destruction. And I can think of no scenario of "throwing a grindstone against an egg," (as Sun Tzu summarized,) more clear-cut than strategic bombers leveling the defense industrial base of a nation reliant entirely on counter-value deterrent, asymmetric insurgencies, and above all its enemies’ own "strategic patience" to safeguard their warmaking power. But I only have a bachelors, so what do I know, anyway?

Re-imagining Villains 95

This indie team is making a game where you must escape a prison with only a spoon. - Inspired by classic cartoons - Every inch you dig brings you closer to freedom - Your only tool is a spoon It's called Escape By Spoon.

Mayor Mamdani’s homophobic, racist terrorist-sympathizing wife, who recently got exposed called black people ni***rs and gay people f**s, has shut down her 𝕏 account.

every disco elysium copycat is uniquely nauseating, as if the sole lesson they absorbed from playing it is "people love this, and i want to reenact what is desired without any human feeling or understanding". the king of comedy of game ripoffs, a litter of pupkins

TheBurntPeanut responded to a viewer who asked “why is the stream in 360p” 😭 “It just looks like that for you because the houses in your county are made of sticks and clay, You live in a 3rd world country sir”

I don’t even have anything against K-Pop Demon Hunters. But you know it’s unfair when everyone knows the most influential animated movie of the year was something else.

So tired of this straw portraits in media... Where are our joyful, calm, smart, positive and humane Priests we see irl?

its funny that nick is getting bleeped on stavs show but its bleeping out him telling people to go murder ice agents in minnesota

Me too.

The year Family Guy gave us the legendary scene of Stewie dancing with Gene Kelly!