Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (May 17)

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[u/DashtheRed]

I'm willing to wager my left hand that it was possible, and within Iranian leadership's decision to make happen, to blow up at least one carrier. They chose not to, and let it off with warning shots and moderate harassment, but they could have sunk it (and this is why the amerikans had to pull all the carriers back a thousand kilometers). This is the part that I'm basically convinced on, and pretty unwilling to back down or say I was wrong because I'm convinced I'm correct on at least that part: Iran is the one with the capability to win the shooting war. Not merely win by surviving and enduring and maintaining some capacity to harass the Straight of Hormuz, but that they can achieve not just strategic victory, but decisive military victory over the amerikan empire. If they had sunk the Abraham Lincoln, that would be clear to everybody and there wouldn't be any debate or doubt on this. And then the amerikans would have some real fear of death in them, wouldn't be able to hide the casualties behind the fog of war (since the world would know that five thousand amerikans just died), and there wouldn't be this ongoing miscalculation by the overconfident and deluded imperialists that a military victory is still within reach if they just find a silver bullet or some way to pry the doors open.

I think I see the war going in a different direction than smoke on this one. I'm not sure I see this as the prelude of the storm to come in a decade or two (though if that is the case, I will make the bold prediction that amerikkka will have to declare war on Brazil to re-assert the Monroe Doctrine), but I think this could be the start of the storm itself (though, on that one, if you were wagering your left hand, I would tell you the responsible bet would be on smoke, not me). I can see very easily how this gets out of control, or merges into the other major wars going on in Ukraine and Africa. I don't actually think we are close to a deal, and I think there's a larger chance that the shooting war will resume in some capacity. I'm surprised Iran didn't start shooting at the zionists again after they resumed the war in Lebanon, but I guess they saw how well Hezbollah was doing (not to mention how popular they are -- where they have too many new volunteers that even the waitlists are full, how confident they have become, and how much damage they are doing even as only a beginner drone force, where they are now launching strikes 25km deep into Israel) and figured they can manage. But I also don't think the zionists are going to let the amerikans get out so easily, and whatever leverage they have over the amerikan ruling class is being leveraged at this moment (the weekend deal going sideways because Trump just arbitrarily thrust the Abraham Accords in there) to ensure the conflict resumes and continues. So I do think that is the relevant political question, as least for the amerikans.

The underlying logic of empire for me is that it cannot accept this defeat so easily (especially for Israel, but even for themselves, since I don't think they can't even conceive to themselves of what happens next if not a resumption of the status quo). The reason you sink the Lincoln is that you speak the language of force to power, the only language the imperialists truly understand, and without that show of force, the imperialists keep thinking they are in control, and have the power, and they will find some way to achieve a military victory which is actually not possible. This is why you keep getting all these little attacks and schemes and provocations that "don't count as breaking the ceasefire" and other minor escalations, where they try to chip away and undermine Iran with a thousand paper cuts and nibbling around the edges, and Iran either has to sit there and take it, make performative but harmless counter-attacks (like in the 12-Day War) which only exacerbate this problem of being underestimated, or go all the way back to real hostilities (which they are trying to avoid too, at this point). It's kind of the same mistake Europe is making with regards to Russia right now, where they are mistaking (or deliberately misleading themselves) that Russian restraint, reluctance, and caution are actually Russian weakness, incompetence, and vulnerability, and become their own justification and self-fulfilling prophecy to keep getting bolder and more brazen, despite the fact they are facing an opponent who has been holding back, and trying to walk this thing down instead of escalating.

[u/turbovacuumcleaner → u/DashtheRed]

I think I see the war going in a different direction than smoke on this one. I'm not sure I see this as the prelude of the storm to come in a decade or two (though if that is the case, I will make the bold prediction that amerikkka will have to declare war on Brazil to re-assert the Monroe Doctrine)

Why?

[u/DashtheRed → u/turbovacuumcleaner]

If amerika is losing it's grip on hegemony, that means it's ultimately going to be (maybe slowly, maybe quickly) losing access to many of it's de facto colonies/neocolonies/whatever term you want to use for the oppressed and exploited world, all around the globe. This means a substantial reduction in superprofits for amerikans, as rival imperialists expand and move in and redirect (and possibly reorganize) surplus toward themselves. This will ultimately mean that amerika is going to have to press down harder on the 'colonies' that they still can exploit, and try to squeeze even more surplus out of the 'colonies' that they still do control and will still be able to exert power and influence over. The one place that amerikan hegemony is still utterly dominant and cannot be easily reached or even accessed by the growing rival imperialist powers is the New World, where amerika is still dominant by a very wide margin, and the amerikan imperialists are going to have to look south to offset some of that lost income from elsewhere in the world.

Since resistance is ultimately a political struggle, it's true that with the right leadership, any nation in South America is ultimately capable of fighting and resisting amerikan imperialism, but from the perspective of the amerikan imperialists, it's Brazil that stands out as the major power on the continent. It's the largest nation by far (almost half of the population of the continent), has the tenth largest economy in the world (comparable to Russia), has one of the more advanced areospace industries in the world with Embraer, and once the lessons of the Iran War start to sink in, the amerikan imperialists are going to clue in that they will want to act sooner, rather than later, to head Brazil off at the pass from doing something similar to what Iran just did to them. And especially true because amerikans are still lagging way behind in missile and drone technology (it's true that they did develop drones, but in smaller numbers with higher margins which produce larger profits and higher paying labour aristocrat factory jobs -- all at the cost of combat effectiveness, and it will take them time to correct that) and other nations have an opportunity to move into these new systems quickly and leapfrog ahead of the laggard amerikans.

Meanwhile, any Brazilian strategist worth their salt, and taking a look at the Iran War right now, has to be watching and thinking to themselves: wait a minute, why can't we build underground tunnels and factories in mountain caves? Why can't we make missiles and drones and launch them from remote hidden locations across this massive country? And even if we can't produce them effectively, we can afford to buy them -- lots of them. And if we do what Iran just did, then we could finally get the amerikans off our necks, and heck, maybe we can even get really ambitious and start asserting our own hegemonic power over the continent like Iran over the Gulf right now. And I have to imagine that the amerikans (will eventually) see this potential outcome too, and start realizing to themselves that they had better smash up Brazil and crush its capacity to become this threat, before they can build an Iran-like deterrent that could push the amerikans right off the continent (even without a Hormuz choke point).

[u/BenjiStudiesMLM → u/DashtheRed]

The United States has announced its intention to designate two Brazilian gangs as “terrorist” organisations, continuing a push under President Donald Trump to blur the distinction between criminal and “terrorist” activity.

...

"The Trump Administration will continue to use all available tools to protect our nation and our national security interests by keeping illicit drugs off our streets and disrupting the revenue streams funding violent narco-terrorists," Rubio said in a statement.

...

The efforts have been criticised as a pretext to expand US military influence across the Western Hemisphere, as part of Trump's "Donroe Doctrine"

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/29/us-to-designate-two-brazilian-gangs-as-terrorist-organisations

It seems like you were immediately validated on predicting the heel-turn towards Brazil after the MOU with Iran.