carpoftruth [any, any]

Policy tensor on a model of Chinese vs America in the west Pacific, informed by experience in the gulf and eastern Europe.

https://open.substack.com/pub/policytensor/p/an-equilibrium-model-of-counter-base

Tldr is that American bases in West asia would get fucking washed in a week of real combat with China.

Given these observations and our results, deterrence in Asia is no longer a feasible foreign policy objective for the United States.

This person is a pretty good follow on twitter too

The latest chapo is an interview with Ryan grim and Jeremy scahill and is worth listening to

https://pca.st/episode/0b9ea40b-b865-4872-9568-088629452767

That likely involves a Chinese embargo of Israel or at least severe economic sanctions, plus making some tough threats and ultimatums to some of Israel’s regional and weaker global allies. Its been my opinion for a while that China could end this entire conflict in a few months by using their economic leverage, but it’s strategy the country seems to want to avoid at all costs to maintain their current foreign policy strategies.

Agreed that’s possible and could even work if it was globally coordinated, but 0% chance they’ll do this. China doesn’t seem a big fan of unilateral sanctions.

agreed, I think it’s probably a positive for Iran itself, but lebanese/palestinians are really taking it on the chin in the meantime.

the negotiations do seem like a waste of time, but the alternative of resuming hot war isn’t great either. this grey area middle ground mutual blockade is hurting the US, but the israelis are benefiting as well, since they are currently able to prosecute their war against lebanon and ethnic cleansing/genocide in gaza/west bank without being interrupted by iranian missiles. Iran said that they’re done negotiating until israel knocks it off, but I question whether not being willing to negotiate is sufficient to get the americans to reign the israelis in.

to expand on this, I’m aware of ansarallah, but their attacks against israel previously were not sufficient to bring israel to heel. the US is more extended now than they were before which is to their advantage, but unless they have some real new tactics I question whether their activation is enough pressure. hopefully hot war doesn’t fully heat up again, there is a real risk of world famine should the gulf really get blown apart.