If Bolton used that phrase, even knowing the history of it, then he’s an idiot.
If he used that phrase without knowing the history of it, then he’s an idiot.
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“The objective has been from the beginning to get oil exports from Iran down to zero,” Bolton said.
His boss keeps handing out exemptions so, how’s that going to work?
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Awfully strange how right-wing pundits like McInnes seldom want to live in the Heartland with the Real Americans™ they extol but rather in the big, vibrant, diverse urban areas they decry as hellholes or enclaves of comfortable and content affluent liberals they dismiss as “bubbles”.
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The objective is to start a war.
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Maybe, but there are more direct ways of doing that. I also doubt that the US can enforce a total export ban of Iranian oil. China and India will shrug and buy it anyway, and cheaply because nobody else will.
See the bit at 3:20 of this:
It appears that the plan is to besiege the Iranian economy until it provokes domestic unrest, then use that unrest as an excuse for American/Saudi/Israeli intervention. Fairly standard.
They’re already running short of medical supplies.
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An interesting opinion piece considering the effects of the Khashoggi murder on SA and Iran:
“It is now clear that Saudi Arabia will not be able to lead a regional coalition to force Iran out of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and then Yemen. Unless Mr. Trump plans to send large numbers of troops to do that, and then have them stay on to make sure Iranian influence does not return, he can hope for regional stability only by focusing on first bringing the Middle East’s wars to an end. Then he would have to set aside his high hopes that “maximum pressure” can successfully deal with Iran on regional issues. Accepting those truths would not eliminate Iran’s influence, but it could set limits on it and provide time for the Arab world to recover and rebuild — which ultimately is the best way to check Iranian power.”
“As for Iran, it doesn’t need to flex its muscles. It just needs to wait for the Trump administration to fully appreciate the balance of power in the Middle East. As Mr. Trump’s mirage of an Arab order evaporates, a stark reality emerges: There is no credible Arab challenge to Iran’s regional influence, nor is there any prospect of reducing it with American threats and bluster.”
If you wanted to drive the EU, Russia and China together, this is the way to do it. In the Great Game, this is a fool’s move. You give all your major opponents common ground to work together, no matter if they can’t stand each other. There are incentives for all these parties to cooperate, mainly the transfer of US geopolitical power to themselves. If you thought Iraq '03 was bad, just wait.
Speaking of John Bolton, Melania may have just had one of his Deputies fired today:
“(Mira Ricardel’s) potential departure would leave national security adviser John Bolton without one of his key allies in the administration, a deputy who has also shared his penchant for bureaucratic infighting.” -CNN
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What about the last 20 years (charitably) of Republican foreign policy has led you to believe that these people are not, in fact, fools?
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Yes.
Regrettably, even if the other major powers were to unify against the USA (a highly doubtful thing; Russia and China may cooperate in the short term, but the EU won’t), they’d still be outgunned.
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We can but hope. Ricardel is bad even by Trump appointment standards. Reputedly everyone in the NSC dislikes her except Bolton.
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I’m not talking about a shooting war here. That would be madness. Economically, however, there are possibilities. To hasten the decline of US power is a powerful incentive…
The fact that the US has not imploded. Low bar I admit.
The scary thing is that Macron is already quietly positioning the EU in that regard. If he gets his way with a European Army, it could easily in time come to rival the US’. Trump doesn’t understand that the US prior to WW1 and WW2 was basically a fringe nation (a curiosity, really). It took decades of undercutting cheap knockoffs of European industrial concerns to get to where we were during that period. And that advantage has basically vanished all that’s left is our military might. So Trump and company better be careful. All it’ll take is one wrong event to make European bureaucrats to turn into would be warhawks of their own.
2016 figures:
The Saudis have overtaken Russia since then, and the USA has added another $100 billion or so.
The EU can deter Russia or abuse the global south, but it isn’t up to facing the US.
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Not now but ten years from now? I can see it happening. It just takes the right events to tick off the average person in Germany or France to vote in an authoritarian party willing to go all in. That’s the thing that keeps being missed here. It’s not today you have to worry about, it’s the tomorrow that you or your kids will have to face. I don’t want to see any more would be empires form. And giving Macron or whomever replaces him in the coming years an excuse to do just that isn’t a good idea by any stretch. So maybe Trump and company should dampen down on the whole “rah rah we’re the best” crap.
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Long before Kavanaugh was a blip on the radar of most Americans, Judicial Crisis Network had already begun spending to secure the path to the next Supreme Court seat, announcing a multi-million dollar ad buy on the day Kennedy announced his retirement.
Following its tried and true playbook to help marshal support for conservative nominees to the federal bench, JCN launched its first ad backing Kavanaugh by name within minutes of the announcement of his nomination — before President Trump even finished speaking.
Well, fuck…
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“The incident reportedly frightened audience members, with many believing that the outburst was the precursor to a shooting.”
“Richard Scherr, a contributing sportswriter for the Sun who was in the audience, shared a video of the aftermath on Facebook, which shows audience members standing and looking toward the balcony.”
“I’ll be honest, I was waiting to hear a gunshot. I thought, ‘Here we go,’”
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No gunfire, no body count, so I guess it doesn’t really count anymore, right? /s
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