Suggestion - instead of email, perhaps you can monitor which comments are favourited frequently and then curate the highlights from it? (I frequently do this when something is really insightful / useful to me). Making it easier to "favourite" a comment would also help here (currently it is an unnecessary 2-click process).
The stated Russian military goals are the "liberation" of the Donbass region and to enforce Ukraine's neutrality (i.e prevent it from joining any military alliance inimical to Russia). With the second goal, there is also the hope that future Ukrainian governments may not be as hostile to Russia as the current Ukrainian leaders and future Ukraine-Russia relations may be normalised as it was in the pre-Zelensky era. Deliberately targeting civilians, with a genocide in mind, makes that highly unlikely.
Note that for the Israeli-right, genocide is the goal because their zionist ideology is based on the settler-coloniser philosophy, and the population of the Palestinian muslims currently outnumber the Israeli Jews (when you include Palestinians that are refugees too, who have a "right to return"). The Palestinians also have a higher birth rate than the Israelis. This is a huge obstacle to the one-state solution - even the Israeli moderates on either political spectrum fear to make Palestinians Israeli citizens (which is one way of ending the conflict) as they fear Israeli Jews would then become a minority. The Israeli-right's solution to this is to make the Palestinian muslims a minority in their own land. (Akin to what the settler-coloniser Europeans did in Canada, USA, Australia etc. with the native population - this is corroborated by a UN probe that says Palestinian children and Babies were ‘special targets’ of Israeli killings - https://www.rt.com/india/642399-israel-gaza-babies-targets/ ). Moreover, as the Israeli-right are mostly religious fundamentalists and have already amended the law declaring Israel to be a Jewish state, they are also resolutely opposed to making Israel a secular state. Thus, in their political vision of Israel, only Jews can ever be a first-class citizen, while non-Jews are always meant to have lesser political rights.
> I think there are complex factors at play that prevent an actual total annihilation attack on the tail, even though it seems like it should be well within capabilities.
It's not about military capabilities but the political repercussions. NATO cannot supply enough weapons to Ukraine till they shift to a war-time mode. Moreover, they cannot allow Ukraine to use their territory to attack Russia, which is needed for successfully executing such an operation. (They have been "experimenting" in this area by ignoring Ukraine's drone intrusions into their airspace, as the drones move towards Russian assets). And you also have to ensure that you don't push the Russians into a corner as they are a nuclear weapon state.
With Iran, it is true that the Americans do have the capabilities to launch such an attack successfully. However, American allies - Iran's neighbours - fear that they will be caught in between the attack and bear the brunt of Iran's retaliatory attacks, specifically on their industry (oil and gas).
Thus, in both cases, it is mostly politics that holds them back.
For me, the most interesting bit of the article is this tid-bit:
> To survive in contested environments, the Army must transition from a centralized hub-and-spoke sustainment model to a decentralized network of smaller, dispersed, mobile, and signature-managed nodes. Sustainment elements must be capable of relocating with the same frequency as maneuver battalion tactical operations centers, while distributed caching of fuel, water, and ammunition across concealed locations should replace the current reliance on large, centralized supply dumps. This transformation must be paired with deliberate investment in camouflage, concealment, and deception tailored to sustainment operations.
That sounds very much like how the current Iranian military and para-military organisations are with their underground bunkers, warehouses and tunnels, with the ability to make independent command decisions in the absence of orders from central command. Even Iran's proxy, Hezbollah, is somewhat modelled similarly and that is why Israel's attack on Hezbollah's leadership (the pager bombing) hasn't had the impact that the Israelis hoped for - they are still bogged down fighting them in Lebanon.
The South Koreans are opposed to any provocation - any military operation will immediately start a war and the South Koreans know that they will bear the brunt of it. Whether the South Koreans are involved or not, they will still be blamed and targeted as they have a military alliance with the US. Having emerged from an economic crisis, South Koreans are also very wary of a war setting them back again. And, like the previous Korean war, China and Russia will also likely get involved.
Russians and Chinese have a lot of investment in North Korea - North Korea opens ‘world-class’ tourist resort - https://www.rt.com/news/620717-north-korea-resort-tourism/ ... and they also contract a lot of North Korean to work in their country (ofcourse, it is more akin to the bonded labourer system).
And yet, they are very wary and afraid of unification due to the impact it may have on their economy. A unified Korea may become a "developing nation" again.
It's not the South Koreans per se that they have a problem with - it's the presence of the US military in South Korea that is seen as the real threat to North Korea. So if the South Koreans honestly want to repair their relation with the North Koreans, they will, at the very least, have to ask the Americans to leave. But the Americans will not leave because they have a hostile relation with the North Koreans, and they believe their presence in South Korea is the only thing preventing the North Koreans from throwing a few nukes at them. China and Russia will also not allow the North Koreans to repair their relations with the South Koreans unless they have guarantees from South Korea that they will be mindful of Chinese and Russian security concerns (which, in realpolitik terms would require South Korea to cut of ties with the US military and becoming "neutral").
Yeah, I wish more people contributed to Netsurf and it gets the momentum it needs to compete with Blink, Gecko and Webkit. So many divided efforts in this area - there's Ladybird, Flow, Servo, Goanna. Even just improving Webkit and making it truly multi-platform (it isn't available for Windows, and the Linux version is apparently not as performant) would greatly even the field.
Have we come full circle now with China inspired by American Capitalism to create their own model of it, that now inspires the Americans to imitate the Chinese?
> Is your view that nothing can be done about the extortion?
Not really - see my other comments. I do however feel Iran would be justified in imposing a toll on countries that are hostile to it. Whether Iran can successfully do so is a different debate. In international law, often "might is right" approach gets away with a lot of things. If Iran finds the right political and military pressure, it could be partially successful.
> This would remain the case even if the US or others violated it;
Yeah, but laws are useless if it can't be enforced right? Trump claimed the US has first right's on Venezuela's oil. Apart from Venezuela, which other country has challenged that and promised to help them fight the Americans?
The US is a rich, developed country that is not fully dependent on the middle-east for oil. India is one the top importers of oil in the world and it is a developing country. Like for Iran, the stakes are very different for India vis the west or even China.
And note that the point the author was making was that India (for example) won't be alone in challenging Iran. It would soon become -a coalition of countries against Iran. Poor and developing countries, whose economy may be impacted would just be as much against the toll as the richer nations (as they have more to lose). And while some countries may be loathe to invoke a military challenge, they can retaliate economically - if everything Iran imports faces a Tariff, because of the toll, the revenue from the toll becomes meaningless for Iran's economy while costing it diplomatic goodwill of others too.
Iran's plan is ambitious. But it will be very challenging to pull it off without upsetting a lot of countries. Ideally, I think Iran should only impose a toll on countries that don't have good ties with Iran or don't trade with it. It should also exempt poorer nations, keeping in tune with its Islamic ethos.
> since they just need to threaten to destroy ships.
Here, you are assuming that those threatened will do nothing. Why? Even when India, for example, had some issues with piracy, they started sending their warships to patrol the route. That's the point the author makes - it will be difficult because if Iran is challenged, it needs to have the political will and military power to fight those who challenge it. You can't fight the whole world.
They do treat it as a "cost of doing business" as they do hedge between making a bigger profit through such violations vis the possible fine. But enforced fines like these serve as a warning that the government / regulator / judiciary are serious about enforcing laws and upholding rights. That precedent does discourages such actions because they know future violations will invite similar actions (the punitive fines may be worse for repeat violations) thus making the risks higher. The counter to that is political lobbying, if it is cheaper than the fines, and is also treated as another "cost of doing business".
A few days back, Google reCaptcha suddenly showed me a QR code and asked me to scan it with my mobile to "verify" I was human. I was taken aback, and at first thought my system / browser had some malware that was messing with the Captcha ...