that constrain the opposition from attempting state destruction.
The point of modern war is not to destroy the ephemeral concept of the enemy state, such that, say, America, could claim to have won out against an invasion successfully if all of its nuclear weapons were destroyed, all of its air defenses were neutralized, all of its shipbuilding facilities were gone, and the engineers who could rebuild them were all dead, so long as a few guys in Iowa still declared loyalty to the stars and stripes.
If I am China, and I’m at war with the U.S., my end goal is not to deploy an endless stream of peacekeepers into Indiana while random guys with rifles take potshots at them for the next couple of decades and former engineering students devote their lives to building FPV drones. My goal is simply to do enough damage to the minds and machines that make the U.S. carrier fleet possible that my control of the Pacific is no longer an open question. At no point is “occupation” at all relevant to this.
In Iran, the reason why they stepped back from attempting regime change (which is absolutely worse for Iran than just losing air defenses) is that they realized that there was not enough support to win an occupation with boots on the ground, and the antigovernment protestors now have the initiative to push for that or not.
I would bet a considerable amount of money that ‘protestors’ are not going to overthrow the Iranian government. Like i said, the age of the plausibly deniable color revolution is done, and the role of these protestors, at most, was to serve as a setpiece to try to convince the American government and public that the war was justified and easily winnable.
In Ukraine, Russia definitely tried regime change, and lost. This is what the 3 mile long tank columns at Kyiv were about, why it was a 3-day special military operation. You can’t occupy territory in 3 days, (because Ukraine can just counter-attack) the only possible war aim is regime change as a fait-accompli. The fact that Ukraine did not collapse as a government is determined by basically the same factors as civil war.
Disagree—this is effectively a propaganda piece. You could argue that Russia believed that Ukraine was acting alone, and that a hostile-but-self-interested government could be scared into backing off if the status quo was threatened, but it became pretty clear after that that London and Washington are pretty significant players in deciding what they are and aren’t allowed to do. The shenanigans around the death of Ukrainian peace negotiator Denis Kireev at the start of the war, as a treaty was beginning to take shape, speak to this.
In any case, even the most lopsided portrayal of this doesn’t look anything like an ‘occupation’. The Russians moved some forces in in a shock and awe campaign targeted at the minds of Ukrainian leadership. That’s something vastly different than trying to conquer and hold territory.
I realized we are in the weeds. Since we both agree that states will be humbled, not destroyed, we should not see survivorship bias shape what sorts of states remain.
I also realized something else. In my mind, if acting rationally the strategic framework for the government confronting protestors is coextensive with the dynamics of political violence and occupation. The governments strategy options, goals, and constraints are basically the same, and so they should be taking many of the same sorts of actions, and they are basically continuums of the same thing. The fact that protestors often settle for small concessions is a reflection of their real strategic situation, and is a success for the protestors (they get their object), and sometimes also the government (they still exist)
The point of modern war is not to destroy the ephemeral concept of the enemy state, such that, say, America, could claim to have won out against an invasion successfully if all of its nuclear weapons were destroyed, all of its air defenses were neutralized, all of its shipbuilding facilities were gone, and the engineers who could rebuild them were all dead, so long as a few guys in Iowa still declared loyalty to the stars and stripes.
If I am China, and I’m at war with the U.S., my end goal is not to deploy an endless stream of peacekeepers into Indiana while random guys with rifles take potshots at them for the next couple of decades and former engineering students devote their lives to building FPV drones. My goal is simply to do enough damage to the minds and machines that make the U.S. carrier fleet possible that my control of the Pacific is no longer an open question. At no point is “occupation” at all relevant to this.
I would bet a considerable amount of money that ‘protestors’ are not going to overthrow the Iranian government. Like i said, the age of the plausibly deniable color revolution is done, and the role of these protestors, at most, was to serve as a setpiece to try to convince the American government and public that the war was justified and easily winnable.
Disagree—this is effectively a propaganda piece. You could argue that Russia believed that Ukraine was acting alone, and that a hostile-but-self-interested government could be scared into backing off if the status quo was threatened, but it became pretty clear after that that London and Washington are pretty significant players in deciding what they are and aren’t allowed to do. The shenanigans around the death of Ukrainian peace negotiator Denis Kireev at the start of the war, as a treaty was beginning to take shape, speak to this.
In any case, even the most lopsided portrayal of this doesn’t look anything like an ‘occupation’. The Russians moved some forces in in a shock and awe campaign targeted at the minds of Ukrainian leadership. That’s something vastly different than trying to conquer and hold territory.
I realized we are in the weeds. Since we both agree that states will be humbled, not destroyed, we should not see survivorship bias shape what sorts of states remain.
I also realized something else. In my mind, if acting rationally the strategic framework for the government confronting protestors is coextensive with the dynamics of political violence and occupation. The governments strategy options, goals, and constraints are basically the same, and so they should be taking many of the same sorts of actions, and they are basically continuums of the same thing. The fact that protestors often settle for small concessions is a reflection of their real strategic situation, and is a success for the protestors (they get their object), and sometimes also the government (they still exist)