6 ms·

Or perhaps they will learn they are outmatched, lack the resources and technological capabilities to compete, and deterrence will have been established.

biker142541 6mo ago
History would suggest otherwise; rarely is this ever the case.
- marcosdumay 6mo ago
  You seem to be implying that there is a long history of countries starting wars against the USA?
  - gzread 6mo ago
    More like the USA starting wars against countries, and those countries not immediately surrendering, to which the USA is shocked.
    - falcor84 6mo ago
      I think that there's a more general issue here with the US and the West in general having a mindset built up on playing Risk and Civ, which considers the foreign country as a whole as their opponent, whereas in practice, the adversaries are a multitude of individuals, for almost none of whom a surrender is the rational choice, especially (as sibling comments pointed out) when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate.
      - testaccount28 6mo ago
        to be clear: your claim is that the us military is misinformed because key constituents have played too many board games? does hearing it back like that make it seem absurd to you as well?
        falcor84 6mo ago
        Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game). And no, it doesn't make it seem absurd to me. My argument is that Western strategic thought (with games being a codification thereof, rather than the source of) generally considers countries as mostly atomic actors that can be defeated - the history of European warfare being filled with "gentlemanly" surrenders followed up by peace treaties, with guerrilla warfare being a very rare exception. On the other side, the reality in the East is that a state's collapse doesn't end the conflict, but just prolongs it. The army doesn't surrender, it goes home with its weapons and reconstitutes as insurgents. I can't actually think of a single proper surrender of an Eastern country ever, except for Japan in 1945.
        dragonwriter 6mo ago
        > Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game). It is actually several physical board games, the oldest of which is older than (and unrelated to) the computer game [0], as well as being a series of computer games that are basically digital board games. [0] Well, except for the computer game based on it and its expansion, which, because of the other computer game, had the long-winded title "Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization".
        pyuser583 6mo ago
        Finland comes to mind.
        falcor84 6mo ago
        As an example of an Eastern country? Well touché, I suppose you're historically correct, but what I had in my mind for this distinction is not the line in the middle of Europe (between the First World and Second World), but that between Europe and Asia. Sorry if I miscommunicated.
      - marcosdumay 6mo ago
        > when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate If you are atheist is becomes rational to surrender to the people that are invading your house and killing your friends at random?
        falcor84 6mo ago
        Yes. Absolutely. If there are invaders who are killing everybody around me and telling me that they'll stop and generally let me be if I surrender and agree to live in a democracy, I expect that I'll be very inclined to accept. Maybe afterwards, if I see it's not working out, I may still consider guerrilla resistance down the line, but I don't see the benefit of fighting and most likely dying just for the sake of defiance, and to then allow any survivors a chance to continue in their resistance for another decade or so, until eventually they might be able to start rebuilding a nation from the rabble. In what world is surrender, keeping our lives and infrastructure, not a more rational approach? EDIT: To be clear, while I occasionally have pacifistic thoughts on pretty spring days, I'm not arguing for pacifism here - fighting is absolutely rational when you have a clear path to victory, but if you don't, then I think it's just an absolute waste of human lives.
        WalterBright 6mo ago
        Fighting is rational when the alternative is being killed. FDR made a big mistake announcing that he was going for unconditional surrender. This resulted in Germany fighting to the bitter end. Hitler dragged it on to the last few hours - he knew what was going to happen to him when the war ended.
        watwut 6mo ago
        It was not mistake. Nazi dragged because they had to due to own ideology. But allies had to achieve clear military victory, because of WWI aftermath. Germany did not believed it lost, it believed it was betrayed and wanted do-over. No surrender thing was to prevent next round with WWIII as Germans feel like betrayed again.
- quietbritishjim 6mo ago
  History doesn't necessarily make it clear when a war might have started but didn't because of some specific factor. Mainly you see the wars that did happen. (It has a strong survivorship bias in the sense that a war "survived" history if it went ahead for real rather than being considered and decided against.)
pjc50 6mo ago
Iran has always known that the US is a higher tech nation, but you should not just expect them to surrender on that basis.
- deburo 6mo ago
  That's not what deterrence means. From google: the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences. It's meant to avoid conflict altogether, say with China and Taiwan.
  - swat535 6mo ago
    Iranian here, you're assuming sanity. That doesn't work when your opponents pray for death and see martyrdom as victory. This is genuinely how Shia extremists think. They have nothing to lose and will sacrifice everything and everyone for their cause. They don't care about Iran or Iranians or prosperity of the nation.
    - elzbardico 6mo ago
      Every country that has a opposition diaspora says the same stuff you're saying here. For what is worth, you could be from a family of Savak secret police members. And frankly that's not how it looks to me.
      - rendang 6mo ago
        Every country's diaspora claims their country is ruled by Shia Muslims?
        kochikame 6mo ago
        No, he or she is saying that even Americans who have moved overseas could be heard to complain about the "fascist" authoritarians in power in the US now. They would sound functionally identical to an Iranian emigrant talking about Iran; only the details would differ
varispeed 6mo ago
You miss the fact that many adversaries will not act rationally.
- baxtr 6mo ago
  Especially when they're optimizing for afterlife.
  - breppp 6mo ago
    The fact that many Iranian officials optimize stealing millions from the state, means they aren't optimizing for the afterlife
    - baxtr 6mo ago
      Fair point. It seems to be a weird mix of people who optimize for afterlife and a mafia that lives their best life now.
  - keybored 6mo ago
    This thread is talking about how the adversaries will attack America based on the current events that Iran is counter-attacking Israel and American bases since Israel and America invaded them illegally. Lots of smugness about the supposed irrationality of the adversaries considering that backdrop.
  - elzbardico 6mo ago
    A big part of the US involvment in the current war is driven by Christian Zionists, that literally believe that there needs to be a fucking end-of-the-times war in the region so Christ comes back.
- iso1631 6mo ago
  Yes, if it was acting rationally the US Would not have spent billions trying to blow up an 80 year old man while massively increasing the price of oil and fertiliser globally leading to economic instability But the US has not acted rationally. It hasn't since January 2021.
dlisboa 6mo ago
Very few countries lack the technological capabilities to produce these kinds of drones. What most countries don't have is, for lack of a better term, the resolve Iran has shown. Venezuela could have built drones and resisted just the same, but it's internally divided enough that it was possible to strike a deal with an inside faction and have a coup from within.
nerfbatplz 6mo ago
The Iranians just hit an F35 with a proverbial box of scraps they put together in a cave. The Chinese military must have experienced collective euphoria when they saw that.
- 9cb14c1ec0 6mo ago
  To be clear, that F35 was being incredibly careless, flying low in broad daylight. All the stealth features of an aircraft are useless if you can look at it with your own eyes. In any conflict with China, F35s would not be flown that way.
  - nerfbatplz 6mo ago
    To be clear, Trump announced that the US had destroyed Iran's air defenses, missiles and missile launch capabilities. Trump also said that the US enjoyed air supremacy over Iran and were flying when and where they wished. Maybe one of these days we'll see a B-52 take off with JDAMs and not JASSMs but probably not, kind of scary to try and drop gravity bombs on a country that your stealth fighters can't fly over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohttYlvFvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohttYlvFvU
    - breppp 6mo ago
      B-52s takeoff with stand-in weapons when attacking Iran, as their air defense is largely destroyed https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/23/b-52s-launching-from-raf-fairford-with-jdams/ https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/23/b-52s-launching-from-r...
  - iso1631 6mo ago
    You're holding it wrong? How many cheap-ass drones could you buy for the cost of one F35. 100k? A million?
    - breppp 6mo ago
      None of these reached Israel from Iran this war, so maybe their superior quantity is not enough
don_esteban 6mo ago
There is a huge difference between 'deterrence' in the sense of deterring a country from taking aggressive action it might have otherwise considered, and 'deterrence' in the sense you are using here (surrender without fight, we are so much stronger than you).
elzbardico 6mo ago
Iran can establish deterrence with asymetric means and let's not forget, that contrary to what most americans think, Iran is not a backward hell hole like Somalia or Afeganistan. For a third world country we could say they have a competent R&D infrastructure, with a good number of STEM graduates every year (with roughly half of them being woman, which shows they are casting a wide net for talents). They also have a lot of leverage points in their geography, in the fact that the US is at a historical low point in its military capabilities. US and Israel strategy seems to be to completely destruct Iran's economy, but the problem is that this is a game where they can also shoot back.

biker142541 6mo ago

History would suggest otherwise; rarely is this ever the case.

marcosdumay 6mo ago
You seem to be implying that there is a long history of countries starting wars against the USA?
- gzread 6mo ago
  More like the USA starting wars against countries, and those countries not immediately surrendering, to which the USA is shocked.
  - falcor84 6mo ago
    I think that there's a more general issue here with the US and the West in general having a mindset built up on playing Risk and Civ, which considers the foreign country as a whole as their opponent, whereas in practice, the adversaries are a multitude of individuals, for almost none of whom a surrender is the rational choice, especially (as sibling comments pointed out) when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate.
    - testaccount28 6mo ago
      to be clear: your claim is that the us military is misinformed because key constituents have played too many board games? does hearing it back like that make it seem absurd to you as well?
      - falcor84 6mo ago
        Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game). And no, it doesn't make it seem absurd to me. My argument is that Western strategic thought (with games being a codification thereof, rather than the source of) generally considers countries as mostly atomic actors that can be defeated - the history of European warfare being filled with "gentlemanly" surrenders followed up by peace treaties, with guerrilla warfare being a very rare exception. On the other side, the reality in the East is that a state's collapse doesn't end the conflict, but just prolongs it. The army doesn't surrender, it goes home with its weapons and reconstitutes as insurgents. I can't actually think of a single proper surrender of an Eastern country ever, except for Japan in 1945.
        dragonwriter 6mo ago
        > Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game). It is actually several physical board games, the oldest of which is older than (and unrelated to) the computer game [0], as well as being a series of computer games that are basically digital board games. [0] Well, except for the computer game based on it and its expansion, which, because of the other computer game, had the long-winded title "Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization".
        pyuser583 6mo ago
        Finland comes to mind.
        falcor84 6mo ago
        As an example of an Eastern country? Well touché, I suppose you're historically correct, but what I had in my mind for this distinction is not the line in the middle of Europe (between the First World and Second World), but that between Europe and Asia. Sorry if I miscommunicated.
    - marcosdumay 6mo ago
      > when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate If you are atheist is becomes rational to surrender to the people that are invading your house and killing your friends at random?
      - falcor84 6mo ago
        Yes. Absolutely. If there are invaders who are killing everybody around me and telling me that they'll stop and generally let me be if I surrender and agree to live in a democracy, I expect that I'll be very inclined to accept. Maybe afterwards, if I see it's not working out, I may still consider guerrilla resistance down the line, but I don't see the benefit of fighting and most likely dying just for the sake of defiance, and to then allow any survivors a chance to continue in their resistance for another decade or so, until eventually they might be able to start rebuilding a nation from the rabble. In what world is surrender, keeping our lives and infrastructure, not a more rational approach? EDIT: To be clear, while I occasionally have pacifistic thoughts on pretty spring days, I'm not arguing for pacifism here - fighting is absolutely rational when you have a clear path to victory, but if you don't, then I think it's just an absolute waste of human lives.
        WalterBright 6mo ago
        Fighting is rational when the alternative is being killed. FDR made a big mistake announcing that he was going for unconditional surrender. This resulted in Germany fighting to the bitter end. Hitler dragged it on to the last few hours - he knew what was going to happen to him when the war ended.
        watwut 6mo ago
        It was not mistake. Nazi dragged because they had to due to own ideology. But allies had to achieve clear military victory, because of WWI aftermath. Germany did not believed it lost, it believed it was betrayed and wanted do-over. No surrender thing was to prevent next round with WWIII as Germans feel like betrayed again.
quietbritishjim 6mo ago
History doesn't necessarily make it clear when a war might have started but didn't because of some specific factor. Mainly you see the wars that did happen. (It has a strong survivorship bias in the sense that a war "survived" history if it went ahead for real rather than being considered and decided against.)

pjc50 6mo ago

Iran has always known that the US is a higher tech nation, but you should not just expect them to surrender on that basis.

deburo 6mo ago
That's not what deterrence means. From google: the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences. It's meant to avoid conflict altogether, say with China and Taiwan.
- swat535 6mo ago
  Iranian here, you're assuming sanity. That doesn't work when your opponents pray for death and see martyrdom as victory. This is genuinely how Shia extremists think. They have nothing to lose and will sacrifice everything and everyone for their cause. They don't care about Iran or Iranians or prosperity of the nation.
  - elzbardico 6mo ago
    Every country that has a opposition diaspora says the same stuff you're saying here. For what is worth, you could be from a family of Savak secret police members. And frankly that's not how it looks to me.
    - rendang 6mo ago
      Every country's diaspora claims their country is ruled by Shia Muslims?
      - kochikame 6mo ago
        No, he or she is saying that even Americans who have moved overseas could be heard to complain about the "fascist" authoritarians in power in the US now. They would sound functionally identical to an Iranian emigrant talking about Iran; only the details would differ

varispeed 6mo ago

You miss the fact that many adversaries will not act rationally.

baxtr 6mo ago
Especially when they're optimizing for afterlife.
- breppp 6mo ago
  The fact that many Iranian officials optimize stealing millions from the state, means they aren't optimizing for the afterlife
  - baxtr 6mo ago
    Fair point. It seems to be a weird mix of people who optimize for afterlife and a mafia that lives their best life now.
- keybored 6mo ago
  This thread is talking about how the adversaries will attack America based on the current events that Iran is counter-attacking Israel and American bases since Israel and America invaded them illegally. Lots of smugness about the supposed irrationality of the adversaries considering that backdrop.
- elzbardico 6mo ago
  A big part of the US involvment in the current war is driven by Christian Zionists, that literally believe that there needs to be a fucking end-of-the-times war in the region so Christ comes back.
iso1631 6mo ago
Yes, if it was acting rationally the US Would not have spent billions trying to blow up an 80 year old man while massively increasing the price of oil and fertiliser globally leading to economic instability But the US has not acted rationally. It hasn't since January 2021.

dlisboa 6mo ago

Very few countries lack the technological capabilities to produce these kinds of drones. What most countries don't have is, for lack of a better term, the resolve Iran has shown. Venezuela could have built drones and resisted just the same, but it's internally divided enough that it was possible to strike a deal with an inside faction and have a coup from within.

nerfbatplz 6mo ago

The Iranians just hit an F35 with a proverbial box of scraps they put together in a cave. The Chinese military must have experienced collective euphoria when they saw that.

9cb14c1ec0 6mo ago
To be clear, that F35 was being incredibly careless, flying low in broad daylight. All the stealth features of an aircraft are useless if you can look at it with your own eyes. In any conflict with China, F35s would not be flown that way.
- nerfbatplz 6mo ago
  To be clear, Trump announced that the US had destroyed Iran's air defenses, missiles and missile launch capabilities. Trump also said that the US enjoyed air supremacy over Iran and were flying when and where they wished. Maybe one of these days we'll see a B-52 take off with JDAMs and not JASSMs but probably not, kind of scary to try and drop gravity bombs on a country that your stealth fighters can't fly over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohttYlvFvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohttYlvFvU
  - breppp 6mo ago
    B-52s takeoff with stand-in weapons when attacking Iran, as their air defense is largely destroyed https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/23/b-52s-launching-from-raf-fairford-with-jdams/ https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/23/b-52s-launching-from-r...
- iso1631 6mo ago
  You're holding it wrong? How many cheap-ass drones could you buy for the cost of one F35. 100k? A million?
  - breppp 6mo ago
    None of these reached Israel from Iran this war, so maybe their superior quantity is not enough

don_esteban 6mo ago

There is a huge difference between 'deterrence' in the sense of deterring a country from taking aggressive action it might have otherwise considered, and 'deterrence' in the sense you are using here (surrender without fight, we are so much stronger than you).

elzbardico 6mo ago

Iran can establish deterrence with asymetric means and let's not forget, that contrary to what most americans think, Iran is not a backward hell hole like Somalia or Afeganistan. For a third world country we could say they have a competent R&D infrastructure, with a good number of STEM graduates every year (with roughly half of them being woman, which shows they are casting a wide net for talents). They also have a lot of leverage points in their geography, in the fact that the US is at a historical low point in its military capabilities. US and Israel strategy seems to be to completely destruct Iran's economy, but the problem is that this is a game where they can also shoot back.