In Gulf War I, Iraq fired ~ 40 modified Scud missiles at Israel, causing ~ 200 Israeli civilian casualties So far, Iran has fired 10x the volume of missiles, for the same magnitude of casualties inflicted One way of gauging the improvements in missile defenses and

Obama did the opposite in Libya, intervened, ensured Qaddafi was gone. Result: civil war, bifurcation of the country. In Syria, Obama stepped back from the brink. Assad continues in power for more than a decade. Result: civil war Obama is heavily criticized for both The

One distinctive element of warfare in the current era is the prominent (and increasing) role of the intelligence branches For Ukraine, SBU is an operational branch every bit as much as the army or the air force. CIA has been a lead agency in supporting Ukraine's war effort,

Unless you really know what you’re doing, there’s zero point in watching any of these videos (official or other) of missile strikes or whatever Some are straight up fake, others are manipulated; frequently, it’s simply recycled footage It is very hard to tell the difference,

You frequently hear that about US military subsidies to Israel But the funds are mostly recycled back into US defense industrials, so in reality it’s just an indirect way for DoD to inject funds into and maintain capacity in the defense industrial supply chain in the US

On the perils of intelligence driven wars, for the public: Gulf War II (2003) is a classic example of a war driven by intelligence. Unlike Gulf War I, which presented a clear and incontrovertible casus belli, namely Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait, Gulf War II rested

I don’t like the industrial socialism/financial capitalism framework But: The Dutch Republic beat the Spanish in the Eighty Years War (16th and 17th century) The UK defeated Napoleon in the 19th century More pertinently, in the 20th century, the UK defeated Germany in 1940

This is why the suburbs are popular

There is a seriousness to Israeli politics that is absent in most other places. A collective sense that you hold the destiny of the state in your hand. This is true at both the popular level and in the political class as well

George W Bush’s lack of political wisdom is perhaps most seen in the second order effects of his interventionism That when you do need to use force, it becomes much harder to justify doing so, because you have been so injudicious and profligate with it Imagine if there was no

Pakistan is usually assumed to be a basket case. But how many states have both nuclear weapons and can get both the US and China to deals with them? Islamabad has under-appreciated reservoirs of state capacity and diplomatic bandwidth

Bismarck’s navy was the world’s second most powerful: it didn’t exist, and therefore didn’t threaten the world’s largest naval power Similarly, Iran’s massive missile build up, in Iran itself, with Hezbollah, in Yemen, etc, all had only one plausible enemy Tehran would have

The difference in treatment between Iran and Pakistan is the difference between a state that chose confrontation with the US, versus a state that did not Pakistan has always pursed an independent path from the US, but never outright broke with it The results are clear. Even

Wright wanted to build the civilization of the Sun. He understood America's destiny

Another example of growing US conservatism It has left and right manifestations, as any general trend does. This is a leftist formulation of it

You can really see how something like a battleship would be valuable in today’s context Instead of big guns, an all-missile concept, primarily for anti-missile defense In WWII, the battle wagons ended up as valuable escorts for the more vulnerable (and valuable) aircraft

Common for tech guys to say surface ships are obsolete But you can’t shoot down incoming missiles from a submarine Surface ships have their role

Reasonable chance a foreign country could change US foreign policy just by getting Trump a Nobel Peace Prize

In the abstract, the US offer to Iran is a good one. But it’s an offer that is likely impossible for Tehran to accept

There are 9 nuclear-armed states in the world, representing almost 50% of the world’s population In a demographic sense, non-proliferation was a huge failure. But the absolute number of nuclear-armed states is still small, ~ 4% A rapid increase in this number will be as good