How negotiations actually work...

[u/Veshaad]

To the inevitable response from MAGA that Obama gave 'pallets' of cash...he released frozen Iranian assets. Meanwhile the current Iran conflict has directly cost $38 billion militarily and a currently projected $87 billion in extra gas and diesel expenses. Not to mention that the strategic oil reserves have been depleted to the point that experts warn that the caverns they're stored in could collapse.

[u/YoursTrulyKindly]

The US lost even more in military infrastructure around Iran, those bases and radar stations cost like many billions more.

[u/_jump_yossarian → u/YoursTrulyKindly]

and radar stations cost like many billions more.

And they're gone forever. Decades building up the region only to have a obese baby throw a tantrum and start an illegal war and Iran wiped out the bases.

[u/YoursTrulyKindly → u/_jump_yossarian]

Personally I think it's a good thing though. The US has no business threatening most of the world with military force. I have issues with the theocracy in Iran but they should be applauded for showing the empire has no clothes.

There is a good article about the "Third China shock" although it starts with talking about how the state owned weapon producers in Iran were able to win the war of attrition easily. They can produce much much more cheaply and plan further ahead than the expensive weapons produced by the privatized military industrial complex.

Ironically the formalized "Nato 3.0" for the multipolar world is planning to enforce this failing model on Europe, no more national state owned defense industry but every country produces parts, pays 5% GDP but the new defense industry is supposed to be geared towards "international investor" who will reap the profits from the new wars. Complete insanity.

[u/YoursTrulyKindly → u/[deleted]]

Uh I'm not really pro-Russia but their weapon manufacturing is state owned, not for profit military industrial complex. See my other comment. Russia is bleeding, but in the war of attrition is bleeding the west as well - simply because they can produce way cheaper and plan ahead. Something like half a trillion spend on Ukraine, in high tech weapons and other things from the west. And Russia is learning and modernizing drone warfare just as well as the western companies in the spending bonanza.

How the US empire now wishes to reorganize their warfare is to push the burden of paying, manufacturing and human lives to their vassal states, e.g. Europe, while they maintain technology and command and control. Like that is what they are actually saying out loud, see the sources in my other comment, it's just not reported.

Again, I'm really not a fan of Russia, but they aren't as weak as they are portrayed and neoliberalism has completely hollowed out the industrial capability of the west to do warfare.

[u/Deiskos → u/YoursTrulyKindly]

If they weren't as weak as they are portrayed, Ukraine would have fallen all the way back in 2022 with overwhelming russian victory. They were hoping for a quick in-and-out, two weeks adventure; instead they got high on their own supply overconfident, overextended, and had to perform multiple "gestures of goodwill" in the northern regions of Ukraine when they suffered casualties and outran their logistics, and are now stuck in the slog that is Eastern regions.

Which is, again, what I've said. They can only bully weaker countries. Once they meet anyone with similar strength, and Ukraine despite being smaller and weaker had had in 2022 an amount of tanks and artillery and AA systems comparable to that of russia, they try the usual shock and awe, meet resistance, and completely shit the bed.

[u/YoursTrulyKindly → u/Deiskos]

Well yeah true. Ukraine was well armed. But my point was about neoliberalism and I guess you could call it the enshittification of the military. In the war of attrition, states like Iran and Russia are paying cents on the dollar.

[u/Deiskos → u/YoursTrulyKindly]

I don't know enough about neoliberalism to say anything useful, so I didn't.

Iran/russia/china are also having easier time because they are cheaper countries so everything costs less, from labor to materials to simply having a bigger pool of meat for the meatgrinder to pull from because bumfuck nowhere, russia is so so so much worse salaries and standards of living and perspectives-wise than bumfuck nowhere, usa. You sign up for the sign up bonus, maybe survive a few months at the frontline, and your kid can escape the siberian nowhereswille they were born into, or at least have a better time living.