War and profits for some within the industry is a stretch as a primary rationale here and my take is you are way too cy

Escalation of tensions are a result of reinserting sanctions that our departure from JCPOA allowed. Iranian leadership and population are feeling the bite of lost oil revenue. Best anyone can tell the benefit from withdrawing from JCPOA was to get a better renegotiation to include reining in of Iranian state sponsor terrorism, ballistic missile development and moving the 10-15 yr nuclear restrictions goalpost out further or to remove the terminate feature of the deal entirely. Trump either initiated the "we're out" because it was Obama's deal and he knows he can do better. Or the whisperer hawks saw that Trump could be swayed and convinced his ego that his deal would work and he would be hailed as the Greatest and only he could save the mideast etc.

No one is describing the acceptable or wanted endgame definitively. Want for war is lacking bipartisan support and the pentagon is not beating a war drum. Both sides have become cornered. Iran will not be cowered and their current play is to send signals of escalation to pressure the other JCPOA signatories to influence the US to change course. Their signals remain just that, being cautious and careful to not cross our declared red line. If required, I have no doubt Iran will engage us with hostility.

The red line (US casualty/ies) crossing will be the opening prelude to more combat but it will be only tit for a tat response. Offensive US Cyber action is already being reported. Israel will not play a lead or follow role whatsoever in any military actions by us. Trump's highlighting his "Oh my God 150 people might die,so I called it off at the last minute" is theater for him a PR stunt by a very vain man.

Direct threat to national security with JCPOA in place, was not ever questioned. Iran remained a problem and acted against our interests in the region. But a "direct" threat to national security, no! They were not going to block the straits, they were not going to attack Saudi Arabia or the UAE or Israel for that matter. A pain in our side? Sure. But not a dire threat. With the current situation, direct threat to the US will come only when many lives and major warfighting assets are lost as a tit for tat play runs into some poor decision making in response to actual or perceived threats. Like it or not, we own warfighters who carry out orders and do their jobs in support of our nation's best interest as determined by just one man who went off in search of picking a fight. Hopefully he is just play acting fighting.

My .02 dollar.

Responding under your questions which I've put in bold.

What impact did the withdrawal of the US from the Iran Deal have on the escalation of tensions, to the point we are now?
Certainly didn't help things. Regardless of any justifications the U.S. might have, Iran feels like it is in a state of siege (which is accurate economically).

Was the benefit to the US by withdrawing from the Iran Deal so great, that it was worth the possible (100% certain) raising of tensions in the Gulf?
Depends on how you perceive the benefit. IMO, preventing nuclear proliferation in any capacity is worth a great cost and steps should be taken early in preventing said proliferation even if said steps impose a cost at the time. An excellent example would have been North Korea. A war waged in the mid 90s to knock out North Korea's nuclear program would have been feasible and come at a minimal cost to both South Korean and American lives. Now? It's not even feasible.

Has this opened the door for military action by, initially Israel then supported by their ally the USA.
Unlikely IMO. Israel doesn't really have force projection capability to attack anything in Iran other than its ports (unless Israel wanted to use a nuke to hit Fordow etc.)


How does this become a direct threat to the USA?
Other than possible terrorist attacks on U.S. soil (which should never be ruled out regardless) it doesn't. Iran lacks any sort of force projection to threaten the mainland U.S. or even U.S. bases in the Saudi Arabia or Oman. In a war, Iran would lose most of its navy within 24 hours and would likely lose its entire navy and all access to the Persian Gulf or Gulf of Oman within a week. It's unlikely that the U.S. would lose any ships in such an exchange. Iran would lose its air force relatively quickly as well depending on how it chose to deploy those assets (days to weeks, maybe a touch longer). Iran's air defense network would likely be decimated and non-functional in about a month. With all the foregoing said, any sort of land war with Iran would be horribly bloody for American troops. Think Afghanistan in terms of terrain but with much better trained and equipped soldiers on the Iranian side.

Economically, the shipment of oil through the Straits of Hormuz is a problem. ~20mbpd flows through the straits and only the Saudis have any ability to divert some of that flow (they could theoretically divert ~6mbpd west to the Red Sea. Iraq could utilize more pipeline capacity going north through Turkey, perhaps 1mbpd. That still leaves a 13mbpd reduction in global oil production... virtually overnight... and that's before we talk about LNG. Oil could spike over $150/bbl no problem if the straits were actually closed to shipments.

Contrary to popular and widespread belief, this really wouldn't be that bad for the U.S. The U.S. production/consumption picture is very different today than it was ten or twenty years ago when the U.S. was heavily dependent on massive oil imports. The U.S. has actually oscillated with being an oil exporter recently and has been a refined products exporter for some time now. If current production trends hold, the U.S. will be a consistent exporter sometime in mid 2020. Goldman Sachs put out a research note back in 2016 that rising oil prices had actually become a net-positive for U.S. GDP (and the inverse was true as well). That case is only stronger today. In the event the Straits were closed, you'd see a huge gap between WTI and, say, Brent of $20+ difference easy. With sustained and elevated prices you'd see an enormous oil boom in the U.S. and with shale things really are "different" as a well can go from funding to production in less than 60 days (sometimes less than 30) whereas conventional oil projects have much longer time horizons.

If oil prices were levitated to somewhere in the $100-120/barrel range and there was a lot of unfulfilled demand globally you'd see a huge investment boom in the U.S, Mexico, and Canada.

That's not to say the U.S. would get off scotch free. The initial oil price shock from closing the straits would be economically catastrophic for Asia, especially China. This would make its way back to the U.S. through a variety of channels but the effects to the U.S. economy would be quite muted compared to most Asian economies.

The best way I could summarize the global economic effects would be like this: Asia would would break multiple limbs, Europe would be in a world of pain, and North America might break a finger.

I'm really hoping that the middle east goes kaboom because my mother-in-law owns 200 acres of mineral rights in Colorado and has signed a lease for oil and natural gas. If they drill and hit something, she will be filthy rich.

The NK artillery threat has always been exaggerated. Most of those artillery pieces are in a state of disrepair and the same was true in the mid 90s. ROK's military had just finished a large buildup, had overmatch on every metric except for number of soldiers, and (importantly) had been trained extensively in counter-battery fire by the Americans. North Korea has never invested much into logistics and this was even more true in the mid 90s. The artillery batteries would have had to rely on ammunition on hand which, for most of them, wouldn't have been much. In a full-scale war, NK would lose most of its artillery within the first 24-48 hours. South Korean civilian casualties would likely have been below 10,000. That's a tough number to stomach but you have to weigh that against what a North Korean nuclear strike on Seoul would look like today. Further, NK is now basically untouchable which has doomed millions of otherwise innocent people to live in a dystopian totalitarian police state for their entire lives.

Nothing is free, there are always tradeoffs. Bad things rarely fix themselves. Often the longer we delay making a difficult decision, the worse the outcome is.

What would China and Russia do during said military action? The NK military is not the concern.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Ok, so lets say you strike NK's nuclear sites (including a functioning nuclear reactor, lets ignore the shit show that would be) and you "only" lose 10,000 people in Seoul (3 times what the US lost in 9/11), what is to stop NK from just starting the program again? Maybe this time after they have beefed up their artillery on the border?

Let’s address Russia first and let’s remember we’re talking about the mid 90s. The Soviet Union just fell and Russia is trying to put itself back together. Its navy is mostly non-functional due to accumulated deferred maintenance and the Russian army is deployed in Chechnya fighting a horribly bloody war. Russia would be in no position to intervene.

China is a slightly different story but, again, we’re talking about the mid 90s. China’s military in the mid 90s was no different technologically or functionally than during the Korean War. From a training and experience perspective it was in far worse shape. Remember, the Chinese soldiers fighting in the Korean War were experienced having just fought the Japanese in WW2 and then a bloody civil war thereafter. Care to guess what 40 years of complacency does to military readiness? The Chinese would have to use human wave tactics to support North Korea but, this time, the technological gap they’d be facing would be even larger than what they faced during the Korean War. Further, the U.S. military was sharp having just fought the Gulf War (basically alone from a functional perspective). The Iraqi army was the fourth largest in the world at the time, battle hardened from the recent Iran/Iraq war, well trained, and (by global standards) well equipped. Far better trained and equipped than the Chinese military at the time? The result? The Americans steam-rolled the Iraqi Army in 96 hours. That wasn’t lost on the Chinese leadership. Fighting a combined US/ROK force in the mid 90s would have been a suicide mission. Plus, trade with the West was looking like a pretty lucrative proposition.

Doing it the way we did, SK casualties were significantly below 10,000.

I'm not sure if he is suggesting that we would have won WWIII easily or if he mistakenly believes that China would have rolled over if we invaded NK. China has made it abundantly clear they will intervene in NK. To the tune of around 400,000 dead and more than that wounded. We can't assume that a high casualty rate would make them reluctant. And allowing the US to invade NK without response would show too much weakness if they want to be a world power.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

For the record, I'm for intervention when it makes sense and when the benefits outweigh the costs. I was always against the second war in Iraq and I've been against a sustained presence in Afghanistan for well over a decade. Our military wasn't designed for occupation so don't do that. Destroy what you have to destroy and leave.

My last few posts have predicated a hypothetical strike by the U.S. in the mid-90s when the global balance of political, economic, technologic, and military power was decisively in favor of the U.S. That was as good as it was ever going to be for an intervention on the Korean Peninsula. I'm certainly not advocating for intervention now. Now the best we can do is bolster missile defenses in the area.

You frequently seem to have rose-colored glasses when it comes to not intervening. I suspect you would have been best friends with Neville Chamberlain.

Edit: and what are you going to do when the leader of North Korea (whoever it is at the time) starts threatening to bomb a city unless we provide them with economic aid? Rationalize providing that aid? If you don't think that's an eventuality you're delusional.

It's very tough to say how China would have reacted in the mid 90s. The circumstances then were very different than they are now. Another thing to consider is what would have happened to the internal NK power structure. My best guess would have been China intervening politically, threatening to intervene militarily, and essentially trading NK autonomy for a guarantee that it would not allow NK to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. Such a compromise would have looked strong domestically and bolstered China's image as a responsible and pragmatic world power.

The likely outcome of such a conflict would have been a negotiated settlement with the Chinese where North Korea was guaranteed its sovereignty and, in exchange, China guaranteed that North Korea would not acquire or produce nuclear weapons (basically China saying "if North Korea restarts their program we will use military force to end it.")

Keep in mind the Chinese aren't exactly happy about North Korea's nuclear program. In a hypothetical nuclear exchange between North Korea and the U.S. the flight paths between U.S. ICBMs and North Korea are uncomfortably close to the flight paths between the U.S. and very important targets in China.... so close that for all practical purposes the Chinese would have to assume they were also being targeted in such an exchange because, by the time you knew the target, it would be too late to react.

Edit to add: and say what you want about the body count. Call it a callous assessment, say I don't have skin in the game, whatever. The idea that humanity will somehow rise above the horrors of war is naive at best. Risks and tensions rarely just vanish out of convenience. It's more akin to a forest fire: you suppress the small fires and the forest grows thicker and thicker, full of more fuel than nature would otherwise allow, until one day a fire breaks out that you cannot contain and the losses are far greater than they otherwise would have been. Now instead of facing down artillery, Seoul has to worry about a nuke (multiple nukes actually).

You vastly over estimated China's control on NK. China knows if they push NK too far, the regime collapses and then they have to deal with millions of refugees. You yourself understand that China is not happy with NK's nuclear program. They know they are just as much of targets now as others.

China did not have the ability in the 1990s that you claim they have to control NK.

Oh yes they did and let's not mince words here: the Chinese have never been worried about a direct military threat from North Korea. NK's fortifications are all to the south. If China had used the element of surprise, Chinese troops and other assets literally could have arrived in NK via rail. China's displeasure primarily comes from the fact that key Chinese military installations (and large cities) are on the same flight path as Pyongyang for land-based U.S. ICBMs (granted there's a workaround to defuse this concern that anyone with half a brain can figure out).

Regarding a "refugee crisis" do you really think that Communist Party of China would be worried about dissuading refugees from entering China from North Korea? The Chinese aren't exactly big on human rights.

If what I'm saying about China is correct, why wouldn't they have intervened? Well, I suspect like the Americans under Clinton, they just didn't want to deal with it either. Had the U.S. intervened with the ROK it would have forced China's hand. The other possibility, and this is remote, is that a nuclear North Korea is part of a long term chess game the Chinese are playing with the U.S.

Again, regardless of how exactly it would have played out, the mid 90s were the best window we had to prevent nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula. There would have been a cost but it would have been far smaller than at any later date. To believe that we somehow "saved lives" by not intervening discounts the scale of a potential future conflict and the very real body count that piles up every year under a totalitarian regime (forced labor camps, execution of political dissidents, arbitrary execution, occasional famine, etc.)

...and to prompt a debate on that last sentence, no, I'm not suggesting said intervention would have led to a democracy or reunification of the Korean Peninsula. The most likely outcome would have been a puppet government without nukes controlled by the Chinese.

All things have costs, inaction included.

Allow me to rain on your revisionist history.


The nineties, mid or otherwise, was not an optimum time frame for starting a war on the Korean peninsula. The Balkan conflicts were ongoing throughout the entire decade with a significant NATO and US military air play ongoing there. There was no appetite to mix it up in another theater. Also, the Clinton team was being dogged just a bit with some scandals of sort. Not quite a good look to go off to war in Korea and wag the dog. By the end of the decade, our next war showed up with some collapsed towers, the Pentagon in flames and an airliner buried in the hills of central PA. This war continues exceedingly fitful with no end in sight. The nuclear stall tactic of the JCPOA may well have been the best course of action the world could have hoped for in the region.

If conflict is inevitable, so be it. The selectivity aspect to conflict however, is fraught with unforeseen consequences.

So how about some future predictive history? Shoot holes in it as you wish, please. I say containment and the nuclear genie strategy of the 20th century may yet give way to a different strategy to cope in the 21st century. The current pissin'and moanin' over NK and Iran and nuke weapons could amount to nothing down the road. Having a couple five nukes in your back pocket and using said nukes are actions separated by a huge whoah. The elective, kinetic, "me first" use of that nuke just may be the can that continues to get kicked down the road. A glowing earth is the ugliest of all pictures. The first and only user of a nuke in conflict has continued unchanged for near 74 years. The second user of a nuke in conflict has to ponder mightily his fate after said use. The world can easily negotiate affairs among the owners of nukes, frenemies or enemies. Users of nukes? Not so.

Serious question, have you studied game theory?

To simplify things, the Cold War was basically an iterative version of the Prisoner's Dilemma where there were only two players. Classical analysis would suggest exactly the outcome we've had: no nuclear exchange. When China became a third, non-aligned nuclear power in the late 1960s it chose a very clever strategy (likely because its strategic planners had studied game theory): it chose not to deploy their warheads but, instead, stored them at various hardened sites. It did this to prevent a two-person Prisoner's Dilemma from becoming an n-person Prisoner's Dilemma.

Similarly, India and Pakistan both purposely limited the range of their delivery systems when they joined the nuclear club in the 1970s (something Iran is very visibly not doing).

N-person Prisoner's Dilemmas are far less predictable than the classical two-person Prisoner's Dilemma and that's before you account for the fact that smaller countries and different political regimes would have different motives and different ideological red lines. The likelihood of an accident or a miscalculation also increases.

No I have not studied game theory. your explanation though I think I understand. My take is that miscalculations and accidents through an increase in the population of players only compound the pondering the next obtainer or second user must face. Switzerland will never own the nuclear warhead landing worry. There is no power in a nuclear weapon if it's use by you, whether accidental, purposeful, or miscalculated assures equal destruction back at you. I see Iran and Israel as equal 2. Just as India and Pakistan equal 2 and the US (with Brits and France) and Russia equalling 2 for a long time now. China lies in wait with stockpiled warhead leverage. their move to delivery will be as the 3rd or 4th user as required to assure advantage.

I just don't see Iran leaving their Israel regional targeting box. To do otherwise is too injurious. KJU knows he is toast as soon as he uses any distance nuke so he will never use. His game is only obtaining leverage to save face, retain control and get more access to resources. China will do anything to maintain a peaceful DMZ split peninsula.

The n player world is not quite that dangerous because of the prisoner pairing. The world less South America and Africa I see as paired up and unwilling to push a button first.

I've had this tab sitting open for a while and been meaning to respond. I'll do so piecemeal.

gofigure wrote:

No I have not studied game theory. your explanation though I think I understand. My take is that miscalculations and accidents through an increase in the population of players only compound the pondering the next obtainer or second user must face.

In the prisoner's dilemma there are two strategies, "cooperate" or "defect".

In a single iteration game, the most likely outcome is both defect. In a multiple iteration game the simple explanation is that both cooperate. In an n-player multiple iteration prisoner's dilemma, the best strategy is far less predictable especially if all of the players do not have the same incentives but, in general, the best strategy is to defect.


Ironically not true. In the declassified plans of war from both NATO and the Soviet Union, both sides targeted non-aligned non-nuclear powers as well, Switzerland included. This alone should indicated just how incorrect your assumptions are about nuclear war.



That's where you are both wrong and grossly ignorant when it comes to nuclear planning. Before I go forward, ironically, China was arguably the most worried about a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and USSR because it was known that both countries would target China (remember that relations between Russia and China were very different during the Cold War than they are now).

First you have the use vs retaliation calculus. The first wave of nuclear strikes between both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were designed to attack the other's nuclear assets. You have to remember the calculus for Israel vs Iran is very different than the calculus for U.S. vs USSR. In the latter case, both knew that their command and control infrastructure would survive a first strike and the same went for the other side. In the case of Israel, if a single warhead were successfully delivered by Iran it would not just wipe out Israel's C&C infrastructure but also a good chunk of the country.

You also bring up the word "accident" and this is far more serious than you know especially with small, regional players and less developed countries with poor internal security. First let's take the case of Iran and Israel. Let's say some dumbass in Iran accidentally launches an unarmed (pick your missile) on a westerly trajectory. If you're an Israeli military commander, what do you do? The total flight time, depending on what was launched, will be ~20 minutes. The launch won't be detected until a minute or two after the actual launch and it won't be verified for another minute or two after that (at best). Determining what was launched and where it is headed will take longer still. Your only choice if you're Israel is to launch on warning.

That's just a quick and simple potential "accident". There's so many other ways things can go wrong. You could have a rogue actor which is something that keeps military planners in India up at night (because Pakistan's nuclear security is very poor and Pakistan's own military is far from cohesive). We might see the whole "death to Israel... death to America" thing as propaganda and chest thumping here in the U.S. but it would be very dangerous to assume that there aren't elements within a nation like Iran (or Pakistan, or North Kora...) that want to lash out. Are we really willing to bet that Iran (or any future, small nuclear armed state) won't lose control over its own weapons?

That's a very dumb, risky bet to make. As an interesting aside, both the U.S. and USSR purposely kept their deployed warheads preposterously large (and thus heavy) long after both had developed miniaturization technology with the explicit purpose of making a warhead hard to steal. It wasn't until both felt that they and the other had adequately secured their nuclear assets that they started deploying miniaturized warheads (the exception to this were the MIRVs deployed on SLBMs)


Well, that doesn't seem to be the case. There's ample evidence Iran is developing long range ICBMs
https://www.nytimes.com/...t/iran-missiles.html


So there goes your notion of Iran remaining a regional player.



First, are we just going to say it's ok for a country like the DPRK to use nuclear weapons to blackmail the rest of the world into giving them "more access to resources" in your own words? Just go down that road:

• it's just some extra rice, it's not worth a war.
• it's just some extra oil, it's not worth a war.
• it's just some medical supplies, it's not worth a war...
• ....

Where do you draw that line and why do you assume someone like KJU would be "reasonable"? If you reward KJU, why wouldn't other states (like Iran) adopt a similar stance? Further, why do we assume that KJU would go out "peacefully" if domestic challenges to his power arose? He could conceivably view those threats as an outside attack and thus decide that if he was going to be ousted he might as well take someone with him.


Also, the prisoner pairing is very complex because of the various alliance structures. For example, Iran might sign a formal mutual defense treaty with Russia and thus assume that the U.S. wouldn't risk war with Russia to retaliate on behalf of Israel (hypothetical, Russia's own interests are orthogonal to Iran's).


There are just so many ways nuclear proliferation can escalate and go wrong. I can't believe I have to actually argue against nuclear proliferation. This should be a very simple argument but so many people have the casual attitude of "whatever, it won't happen". It's really disturbing and emblematic that people simply aren't willing to make hard choices and incur costs today to avoid much larger costs in the future.

WRT to a post cold war nuclear holocaust, I try to maintain a positive outlook. As such, if and when Switzerland is attacked with nukes then the entire globe is in a nuclear winter. We can all pack up and go home. God has surely abandoned us.

WRT to nuclear wars of sorts:
1. Pakistan v India nuclear war: It is their problem and their problem only. No putting the genie back in the bottle there. They will be forever rattling swords and playing to their own audiences. Losing control to a third party? Well that is why we have intel folks. I hope they haven't lost their touch.

2. Mid east Nuclear conflict: Specifically, Israel and Iran: Before trump, and with the JCPOA in place, Israel had until 2024- 2030 to worry about guessing the warhead type on an alert of any inbound. The JCPOA timing clause was a compromise in the hope that by then the old guard from 1979 revolution days would have died off without an equal western animosity replacement equivalent. The sentiment of death to Israel and death to America could easily have run it's course by then with a more modern and moderate transition to being a less belligerent nation with it's new found monies rolling back into the Iranian coffers. But now with Iran flexing it's let us leave the JCPOA (disregarding enrichment threshold) policy, yes Israel could soon be back in the unenviable position of having to launch nukes while guessing the nature of an inbound threat. Israel accepted that potential risk the day they joined the club. Such is life in the world of nukes for 74 years now.

3. Rogue nation or piddling nation attacks on our soil: Iran and NK: I will never be convinced that Iran or NK launching a nuclear tipped ICBM at us is a viable (as in reasonable and practical) threat. Whether they pursue it or not, no big deal. I shrug my shoulders and say to them "go for it, develop and then launch, see what good it will do you after you have absorbed our counter attack" Their pursuit of long range capability is only as future leverage and not for use. They are a regional players until proven otherwise. I will patiently wait for said attack sitting in my rocking chair on my front porch. A risk no doubt. The odds are very long of it happening. I am playing those odds. Call me dumb, but the price each country would pay is beyond what even a mad man would consider.

4. China nuclear war: They will never use their weapons first. Only in response. Just a gut feel.

5. And that leads to NK and KJU: To paraphrase DJT it is complicated there. Until regime change by China occurs, NK will remain a regional nuclear force to be reckoned with. KJU will never fully denuclearize. Blackmail works only if the second player pays. Sanctions stay, we go back to war exercises and war planning and wait for him to make the first dumb move. With time Japan will join the club of nuclear powers as the region's counterbalance and for their self defense.

I may be dumb, but near as I can tell Iran was the next guy up on the list of nuke wannabe's. JCPOA put them off the list for a while. Now they are leaning to get back on because of one man. I call that dumb.

Yes, more players and proliferation complicates, nothing new here. I salute the JCPOA signers and the diplomats as they work to halt that. Their effort was with tough choices and minimal costs. Conventional war to halt nuclear ambition is too hard and has too much incurred cost. Fuck prisoner dilemmas, the worlds dilemma is manageable checks to proliferation or unending conventional wars to halt.

Wrong and grossly ignorant of nuclear planning? probably. But 40 odd years ago I had 4 tactical torpedo nukes in my ASROC magazine. I prepared to use but always remained cautiously optimistic that the release authorization would never come. The above comments are of a man who maintains faith in the self preservation capacity of all mankind.