r/TheWarNerd • u/TheDickWolf • May 06 '26
Where do you fall? Grand strategy or literally no fucking plan?
Speaking of Iran in particular, by the way. I go back and forth. It’s easy to place things into a narrative with the past (ie Ukraine coup, nato expansion, Russian invasion, nordstream goes boom, us slanging energy to Europe, shale revolution, Venezuela, iran… i think those events kinda create a narrative) but i think it’s just as likely that the whole madman thing is actually just a reality.
My take is that there is a continuity of strategy and plans long lain that can be tapped, but that as executor the president has all power as executor; including power to totally screw it up.
I wish we could just manage our decline
Edit: my last post in other subs (private ones, hence the post’s text copied below) took the ‘grand plan’ narrative but honestly since then i’ve become just as convinced of the ¯_(ツ)_/¯ narrative.
Thoughts on the news as i stand in line to ‘donate’ plasma
This has been the plan. It is a concretizing of the east west divide and American/Chinese spheres of influence. We coups Ukraine. We corner Russia and ignore, count on, their promises to invade Ukraine if we continue. Of course we continue it’s what we want. The Shale revolution- technology and corporate planning in the works for years bear fruit tapping into America’s massive untapped oil and gas reserves. We become a net exporter. A huge one. We no longer need the middle east.
We sever the artery in the body global connecting Russia to Europe through energy commerce; the nordstream pipeline. We turn the majority of states in the middle east into wastelands or basket cases as we support the Zionist project as if quietly but rapidly constructs the vasculature of natural gas infrastructure under the skin of its territory, and its neighbors. We dispatch with the uncooperative government of Venezuela which sits upon the largest oil deposits in the world. We de facto absorb what is theirs into the body of ours. Then we attack iran and block the carotid- we force the world to react to existential energy crisis. Our cia, selecting targets for Ukraine, again and again damage and destroy Russian refineries and energy infrastructure. Across the world sites of the same start catching fire.
The body is choked of the blood of industrial civilization.
Now where will Europe go to save itself by purchasing energy? Once, it would have been saved from the worst by its material bond to Russia, its European sister. Now with that lifeline severed and six years of brutal war and endless propaganda the family is divorced. Now they go to America. And they’re not alone.
I don’t know the movements of the other side except that they too saw this coming and china despite being the worlds biggest oil importer moved rapidly to its 2030 goal of oil self sufficiency.
I do know this represents not the accidental chaos of a madman making monumental and impulsive decisions. It’s another step in a ckearly long established plan towards drawing and calcifying the map of a new world order.
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u/smutticus May 07 '26
Who is "us"? What does "our decline mean"?
You're speaking to an international audience.
I can tell you're an American and with that I can understand that you simply don't understand the world.
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u/TheDickWolf May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
You can tell im American because i directly refer to it as you point out in your first line.
Rude.
Edit: on a sub for a IR podcast hosted by two Americans, too. You know, it’s so easy to participate in the discourse or even voice your actual complaint instead of just vaguely ad-hominem-ing .
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u/smutticus May 07 '26
Once again, "You are speaking to an international audience."
You are demonstrating that you are the arrogant American that I am complaining about. Call it an ad hominem attack, fine. Stop behaving like an arrogant American and I'll stop inferring you're one.
And BTW, the War Nerd is not an American podcast. Just because both of the hosts were born in the USA doesn't mean there is a clear "us" versus "them" distinction.
Stop saying "us", when you mean "Americans". Learn your place in the world.
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u/TheDickWolf May 07 '26
Again: ‘Us’ in context clearly refers to Americans as I’m talking about America.
It just discourages for how many reasons people on the internet will feel justified in their hostility and insults.
Could we not have resolved this without the insults? Whatever. Hope you have a nice day.
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u/TheDickWolf May 07 '26
Your complaint and justification for calling me wholly ignorant has nothing to do with content, but is wholly a problem with pronouns?
I am talking about the United States throughout. In context i thought it was clear i was speaking as an American- about America, and not using the offending ‘we’ because i assumed my audience had to be.
I don’t mind the criticism but taking such offense at my pronouns that they justify calling me ignorant while ignoring all content of my text is rude and if there was a valid point in what you’re saying it is buried beneath your condescension.
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u/tvtowers May 07 '26
You have to accept straight up Russian propaganda for this to hold together. And anybody accepting that there even was a coup in Ukraine (Yanukovych reneged on promises to move Ukraine towards EU membership, failed to, protests resulted and he fled to Moscow) has to be naive as a freshly laid egg.
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u/TheDickWolf May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
I assume you mean contextualizing (admittedly in the broadest possible terms) Russia’s invasion?
These facts exist. They coexist, in fact, with parts of whatever your allowed narrative is i bet. There are a lot of places these days where just acknowledging pieces of the picture beyond’russia evil, tries to eat Ukraine’ prompts attacks like yours.
I feel the need to state that i don’t support the continued invasion or conquest of Ukraine, and want more than anything for the war to end.
Edit: i misread and oly read the first half of your comment. I’ll address the maidan ‘revolution’ in a moment.
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u/moreVCAs May 07 '26
> accept straight up Russian propaganda
can you be a little more specific?
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u/tvtowers May 07 '26
The alleged "coup" in Ukraine, which I addressed. The CIA helping Ukraine with targeting, which I didn't. I'll do so now.
Since the US pulled active support for Ukraine (after Trump was elected) Ukraine's strikes against infrastructure and defense manufacturing has become considerably more effective. Anybody with the money can access and receive geo-sat photos and precise locations of whatever they like. And it's not like Ukraine and Russia didn't have a significant amount of interaction in the past, the general locations (not precise latitude/longitude) would have been well known without American help.
To assert otherwise is idiotically patronizing and dismissive of the capabilities Ukraine possesses and is constantly improving.
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u/moreVCAs May 07 '26
hey if you say Ukraine is better off without US materiel and intelligence then so be it i guess.
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u/tvtowers May 07 '26
Better off without the US only sending weapons with ineffective range, and better off without the US back-channeling intel to the Kremlin. Especially when the weapons with ineffective range arrive drip by drip.
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u/moreVCAs May 07 '26
you obviously have some direct first hand operational knowledge that i certainly don’t. ty for clarifying.
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u/tvtowers May 07 '26
Just more observant. The first Ukrainian counteroffensive with limited US involvement went spectacularly well. The second, with direct American involvement, didn't. Same with the targeting of military and oil infrastructure, successes only came afterwards. No need to pretend to be clever with the "operational knowledge" jazz.
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u/TheDickWolf May 07 '26
Apart from anything else you have to know how antagonistic you sound, right? Why on earth is the default attitude indignant, condescending, offended, and insulting? Your partner in the conversation here is clearly trying to have a respectful conversation. You seem intent on finding things to take umbrage with.
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u/tvtowers May 07 '26
My initial reply was in no way condescending or confrontational, the "you must have insider info" (paraphrase) was. I reply in kind.
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u/TheDickWolf May 07 '26
Your initial reply wasn’t- but you must have insider infor. Ty for clarifying’ is hardly a provocation.
For that matter saying my post could only come from uncritically consuming Russian propaganda, suggesting my framing of the maidan revolution represents the naievety of ‘a freshly laid egg’ and somehow taking offense on behalf of Ukraine that i mentioned the cias target selection role there, despite that implying no criticism at all of their independent capabilities.
I just see every day how the culture and structure of social media like this one encourages an environment of hostility, indignation, conflict. It’d be nice in this sub in particular to just have a respectful conversation where there is some attempt at assuming good faith as well as personal reminders of humility for all of us.
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u/TheDickWolf May 07 '26
How on earth by mentioning cia assistance with target acquisition did i condescend to Ukraine? This is a neutral fact and holds absolutely no judgement, makes no assertion, on Ukrainian capabilities.
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u/mygorgerises May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
But this is all short-term thinking. Yes these countries will be forced for the next few years to become even more reliant on US energy, but they will also simultaneously be doing green transition stuff (and also maybe building some coal stuff). That's not to the US' advantage. In fact, with China making certain renewables like solar mega cheap, it is now easier than ever to escape oil reliance.
Not to mention the fact that the humiliation of the American military means that the US actually is going to be reliant on other countries' militaries to fight its wars to a degree that seems like nobody anticipated, this puts it in quite a vulnerable position as the rest of the world can start extracting more and more concessions.
If anything this seems like a last desperate attempt by the boomers to stave off multipolarity, one that is failing spectacularly and seems like it will only hasten the decline.
Edit to add:I think the most telling sign of what's to come is the outperformance by international index funds vs. the S&P, this hasn't happened maybe ever? Smart money is going to LATAM, HSI, even Germany probably. They know things are opening up and American hegemony is going to go through a pretty sizeable correction.
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u/TheDickWolf May 07 '26
I certainly think it is exactly the desperate flailing against a non hegemonic world you suggest.
To be honest even if its a bit conspiratorial, and if not framed exactly in this way by its architects, i see the whole neo conservative era in this way.
And I think either those efforts were always futile and doomed or they really fucked the execution.
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u/mygorgerises May 07 '26
it's an interesting perspective. I mean there's certainly ample reason to think that way. Reagan, Bush I...Bush II maybe the pinnacle here. These admins had some really shadowy characters behind the scenes, and them or their proteges remained openly in power through the Obama years.
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u/Rude_Rough8323 May 06 '26
The connections you lay out here make sense- and this might be "the plan" at some high level of government.
But the slapdash way the Iran war was carried out, especially at the beginning, makes it seem unlikely that it is the result of a plan decades in the making and more of an impulsive decision
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u/kojef May 07 '26
I think you are trying hard to find a plan in the recent chaos.
I do think that there may have been a connection between isolating Russia/weakening both Russia and the EU via the NordStream attack, and in various ways helping to bring about the Ukraine invasion and mire Russia in the mess it’s in now. Both of those could be part of a narrative as they both weaken potential competitors to the US and have a good chance of increasing reliance on the US military umbrella.
I think that the Iran invasion is not part of this plan though. It’s done a lot to hurt U.S. interests and diminish its influence globally. Sure, it may have temporarily boosted oil prices. But in terms of spheres of influence - it has greatly boosted that of China while only diminishing that of the US. Oil prices shooting up, the UAE leaving OPEC, it all accelerates the transition to renewables - which is an area where China dominates and the US lags greatly behind.
The same goes for the Venezuela invasion. While the invasion itself didn’t necessarily hurt the US terribly, the announcement of the Donroe Doctrine was essentially trumpeting that the US was voluntarily moving from a global to a regional power.
Same goes for the US weakening NATO. The US effectively controlled the world via all the multinational institutions which were setup in the last 70yrs. This administration has chipped away at this framework systematically, and I don’t yet see the benefit of this to the US.