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> Worst outcome is the US attacks Cuba, Cuba allies with Iran, it turns out that Cuba has been stocking up on Iranian drones, and Cuba becomes a forward base fo

• maxglute 7mo ago
  The real thought experiment is ~600m people in central/south American within ~6000km, i.e. IRBM range of US gulf coast, where ~50% of US oil refinery and LNG plant production are. Now that Iran has validated mid tier power can cobble together precision strike complex, it's only going to be matter of time before relatively wealthier countries realize only way out of M/Donroe is to build conventional strike against US strategic infra. This stuff going to get commoditized sooner than later with competing mega constellation ISR. It's pretty clear building up conventional airforce/navy etc will simply get overmatched vs US projection and only credible deterrence is PRC style rocket force. There's a fuckload of places to hide 8x8 missile launchers in the Americas. E: 50% of PRODUCTION, not plants, as in a few plants responsible for 50% of US refinery / LNG production.
  • alsetmusic 7mo ago
    Downvoting a description of a technical solution for smaller nations based on actual evidence from existing conflicts is silly. You might not like the politics you perceive from someone using particular vocabulary, but the proof is there. The USA's supremacy has been challenged in a meaningful way (along with every other major military power). The strategies of the large powers will have to evolve.
  • gizmo686 7mo ago
    The problem for a would be attacker is that the US still has enough military power to give almost any country on the planet a very bad day every day for as long as the US cares to. Historically, the way to win against the US is to survive long enough for the US to get bored and leave. The last time that happened, it took us 2 decades to get bored.
    • maxglute 7mo ago
      The problem is they are not would be attackers, they're countries building up domestic defense that US would have to preempt ala Cuban missile crisis, and sustain preemption over entire continent, with each preemption legitimizing rational for more build up. Of course US can try to coerce INF for conventional in Americas, but commoditized conventional precision strike are conventional... and commoditized, it's the kind of product where specialized dual use components may need to be sourced... among millions of TEU traffic, but otherwise local industries can build, like Iran. There's also no global pariah status for proliferating conventional missiles for self defense and hence accessible to many players, coercion / enforcement would require trying to mow grass to keep capabilities out of 600m people...in perpetuity... tall task even for even US. Especially considering form factor of missiles... i.e. sheltered / hidden, they are not major battlefield assets like ships and planes that needs to be out to have wheels turned. Ultimately it's not about winning vs US, it's about deterring US from historic backyard shenanigans by making sure some future time when US is tempted, and US always tempted, it would risk half of CONUS running out of energy in 2 weeks. Like the Iran logic is extremely clear now, no amount of defense survives offensive overmatch, the only thing left is to pursue some counter offensive ability that can have disproportionate deterrence value. The thing about US being richest country is US has a lot of valuable things.
      • b112 7mo ago
        I think you underestimate how much of that 50% is just exports. And how much other plants can be scaled up quickly. And how the US can temporarily nationalize things, and ensure all the output goes domestic. Just a backroom threat of emergency, temporary nationalization, would ensure CEOs give the US priority. IE, they'd get to retain higher profits. What I think would really happen, is the rest of the world would suffer and run out of energy. Not the US.
  • AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
    > 50% of PRODUCTION, not plants, as in a few plants responsible for 50% of US refinery / LNG production. This is making a pretty big assumption that the long-term US energy mix is going to stay the way it is. The primary historical impediment to electric vehicles was high up-front cost, in turn driven by high battery costs. However: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-battery-cell-price https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-battery-cell-pric... We're soon to have electric cars (and trucks) that cost less ICE ones, on top of the lower operating costs. Which in turn cost even less when more solar and wind are added to the grid because the "charge more when power is cheap and less when it's expensive" thing lowers their operating cost even further and reduces the amount of natural gas you need in the grid because periods of lower renewable generation can be offset by deferred charging instead of natural gas peaker plants. Even without any purposeful efforts to do anything about climate change, the economics point to fossil fuels declining over time as a proportion of energy. Meanwhile the US administration flips parties every four to eight years and the next time they're Democrats they'll be trying to hasten that result rather than impede it. Which makes a long-term strategy of building the capacity to target petroleum infrastructure something that could plausibly be increasingly irrelevant by the time it would take to implement it.
    • zimpenfish 6mo ago
      > This is making a pretty big assumption that the long-term US energy mix is going to stay the way it is. It's the stated goal of one of the parties to keep or increase fossil fuel usage, isn't it? > Meanwhile the US administration flips parties every four to eight years Magic 8 Ball says "yeah, in the past, 2028 isn't looking good though" > next time they're Democrats they'll be trying to hasten that result Which will be blocked and/or immediately overturned by the current/next Republic Congress/Senate/SCOTUS/President.
      • bluGill 6mo ago
        It might be the goal - but there are a lot of other factors than just one party.
      • AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
  • dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
    You think the lesson from recent events is that these countries can challenge the IS militarily? Is this real?
• NoMoreNicksLeft 7mo ago
  > Being able to fly non-stop B-52 and B-2 sorties from home air bases with single-digit-hour flight times is a different thing entirely. I agree with you in principle, but I worry that the United States hasn't been stockpiling enough ordinance to keep that up for very long at all. We don't keep many munitions factories on a hot standby either.
  • jandrewrogers 7mo ago
    Of all the shortages the US military has, this is not one of them. They have an almost unlimited capacity to destroy fixed targets.
• protocolture 7mo ago
  >it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon. The bay of communism needs to be regularly watered with the blood of pigs or something.
• bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
  >If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland, it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon. I sort of think it maybe is an exaggeration, you're evidently of the opinion that the U.S happens to have enough battle ready troops with the requisite hardware positioned within a few hours of Cuba so that they can invade and flatten in the time it takes to fly from Miami to Havana? I don't know, but a Destroyer would take about 10 hours to get from Florida to Cuba. It seems your definition of invade and flatten is just dropping bombs, but that definitely does not handle the invade part of things, and it remains to be seen as to whether, with drones, being able to fly non-stop is the great technological advantage it once was. Some preliminary evidence from around the world suggests in a drone led conflict it confers the ability to have expensive hardware destroyed and pilots killed non-stop.
  • baq 7mo ago
    Assuming the scenario happened the first bombing runs would be over after 2h and would continue for the next 48h until amphibious assault fast response finishes landing, by which time it’s safe to assume there isn’t much left to defend (though rubble makes a horrible war zone for the attacking side). Cuba simply isn’t Iran. They’re a blockaded island with not much military experience. Iran is a huge mountainous country preparing for war for the last 40 years with first hand experience of getting blown up from above and from the inside by USA allies and surviving just fine.
    • jacquesm 6mo ago
      Yes, and then they will be welcomed with open arms, right?
      • baq 6mo ago
        I don't think they'd be welcomed at all is the point...
      • bluGill 6mo ago
        By at least some. The Americans I know who have traveled to Cuba (policy changes, it was possible a few years ago at least) report the people love Americans. Of course what you see as a tourist isn't reality but at least some is true.
• madaxe_again 7mo ago
  If Cuba bombed the US, the US would bomb shakes dice Antigua in retaliation.
  • ykonstant 7mo ago
    I read shakes dice as a Latin term and had a good laugh. "Ah, if they bomb us, we will retaliate on Ecuador shakes dice."
• integricho 7mo ago
  It is so rich hearing that America can attack anybody, but godforbid an attack on the "homeland" is an unforgivable act that will invoke nukes immediately.
  • unethical_ban 7mo ago
    No one said nukes, that a giant leap even from the most crazy non nuclear attack. No one said the US is acting smartly, either, but it should not be surprising that the US would react harshly to a neighbor sending rockets.
    • nevi-me 7mo ago
      To an otherwise defenceless country, it's really the same thing. Indiscriminately flattening buildings without notifying civilians to move, destroying industries, stealing their resources and reserves. Who can recover from this, especially a small nation? You might as well declare everything to be radioactive. So they'd react harshly even when they started it.
      • markdown 6mo ago
        > Indiscriminately flattening buildings without notifying civilians to move Boy they've really normalised this, haven't they? No, it's not okay to destroy civilian infrastructure and make people homeless just because you dropped a pamphlet 30 minutes before you did do
        • fruit2020 6mo ago
          Nothing happened to Israel for doing it. Have any level headed countries imposed any sanctions on them? Just condemning the leadership doesn’t count.
      • jemmyw 6mo ago
        Korea. The US bombed every building they could and at the end were dumping bombs because they'd run out of targets.
• misja111 7mo ago
  > If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland, it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon. Yes that would be a typical US solution. Let's liberate the Cuban people! By flattening them.
  • randunel 7mo ago
    Americans sure love their war crimes! Indiscriminately killing civilians is how they've gotten past, present and future terrorist attacks. I can't imagine the parents of the children they keep on killing (or maiming, or otherwise) standing by and watching. People wouldn't necessarily need to wait for their country's army to do something when they've got nothing significant left to lose.
    • Joker_vD 7mo ago
      Why, that's why you don't do genocide half-heartedly, you need to go all in, roll up your sleeves and really get down to work! Can't get a swarm of radicalized people if there is no people left to get radicalized.
    • deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    • data_maan 6mo ago
      To be fair, Iran is not pretentious either, killing a few thousand people because they dared to protest. There are no good guys in this conflict.
      • tovej 6mo ago
        What was the reason for those protests? Was it perhaps economic hardship brought about by US sanctions? How much is the US liable for the suffering of the Iranian people? (A lot, is the answer) That doesn't excuse the Iranian regime, but the US is not exactly helping, is it.
        • 6mo ago
• watwut 7mo ago
  USA is good at bombing places. It just so happen that it usually looses the wars after that and usually creates a lot more probpems for itself in the long run. Taliban is back in power, having stronger grap on power then before. Meanwhile, everybody knows what happens to those who cooperate with USA - they get abandoned and betrayed.
  • jacquesm 6mo ago
    All this does in the long run is set the stage for another 9/11.
    • dfedbeef 6mo ago
      Literally. The US is run by people who can't see past their fucking noses.
      • nathan_douglas 6mo ago
        There are no incentive structures (besides possibly "posterity") to encourage anyone to see past their noses. In fact, hardly anyone at any level of any organization, public or private, is able to operate with a real longterm, sustainable outlook. They'd get shitcanned for trying to plan ahead, even if they were intellectually equipped for that.
      • akimbostrawman 6mo ago
        Correct but not in the way you think
    • dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
      With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically says that we should accept terrorists regimes to do what they want because if they don’t, they will commit terrorisk against us. That is not the right way to deal with bad actors.
      • tsol 6mo ago
• paganel 6mo ago
  > flattened How will the Americans do that? Nuclear bombs? Because it doesn't seem to me that they have the conventional arsenal to flatten a country like Cuba.
  • swiftcoder 6mo ago
    Cuba is a relatively small island, and (by area) it's mostly agrarian. Conventional bombing campaign on the industrial and urban centres would send them back to the Iron Age in a matter of days. Which is why this whole scenario is absurd, Cuban leaders aren't about to start a war.
• rjzzleep 6mo ago
  People way underestimate what kind of mental fortitude you have to have to fight an overwhelming enemy. That's not something a tourism oriented country like Cuba has. At least I massively doubt that. It lacks the ideology to fight such a war, since you have to be ready to die. That's why Yemen and Vietnam won, while Venezuela folded. This is also why US "culture" is so much more powerful as a weapon than the aircraft carriers.
  • Galanwe 6mo ago
    The willingness to fight until the end, whatever the cost, is not something you rate a priori. The thing with war is that once you have it for a certain amount of time, you create a generation of people whose kids died, wife died, neighbors and family died, you have nothing to loose anymore. There is a critical mass of casualties upon which you effectively create a population whose sole purpose, for generations, will be to resist and harm you, and that is not dependent on culture or whatever "tourism orientation" a country is labeled.
    • darkwater 6mo ago
      Yes, but if they can annihilate or get you to surrender from the beginning, there won't be such a generation.
      • psychoslave 6mo ago
        With incongruous premisses, one can conclude anything. How many cases of such a total annihilation/surrender goal have been attempted in human history, and how many actually achieved it?
        • darkwater 6mo ago
          I mean, the GP example about Venezuela and Cuba was totally on point. They are not at any degree comparable to the sentiment against the US and the west in general of some Middle-East countries. I mean, Palestinian are bound to hate to death Israel and the US for a couple generations more (and for good reasons). The same does not apply to Venezuela, even with all the Chavez/Maduro propaganda against the Evil Empire.
• kqr 6mo ago
  > Having difficulty projecting force from the air with fighter bombers launched from air craft carriers and refueling caravans from the Indian Ocean or Mediterranean Sea This is not to be underestimated. It is very rare to be able to project military power far from one's capital. That the US is able to do it at all is remarkable. We should not expect it to be easy.
  • venzaspa 6mo ago
    This is in large part because the US relies on their bases in allied countries at their grace.
    • ericmay 6mo ago
      We can remove them and do the isolationist thing as many have been clamoring for. Then we have no need for bases in Europe or the Middle East. Gulf States can figure out how to live with a nuclear armed Iran or one that has a repository of thousands of missiles to blow up gulf state infrastructure when they misbehave. We can remove the bases in Europe too, and when Russia invades Lithuania the Spanish and Germans can take care of it. Or perhaps these bases aren’t just in allied countries “at their grace”. These alliance systems don’t just solely benefit America.
      • protocolture 6mo ago
        I mean, theres meant to be intangibles, and some financial support. Most of the financial support got cut by doge and the rest would go with leaving NATO. The intangibles literally never eventuate. Australia tried to invoke ANZUS with East Timor and got brushed off, despite the various US facilities in Aus being sold to the australian voter as insurance that the US would help if requested. Honestly the US as a strategic partner is just a joke. its nothing but sigint. Lets not even start on AUKUS.
        • ericmay 6mo ago
          I don't disagree with you, but just pushing back on this high-and-mighty "we let you be here" sensibility from the OP. For some reason folks seem to have become convinced the opposite way from MAGA that these bases only serve American interests which is certainly not the case. Likewise the bases also don't only serve the interest of others, they allow us to have more flexibility in our objectives and responses to issues that we see.
• lawgimenez 6mo ago
  USA “flattened” and invaded Afghanistan but decades after Taliban is just back again. I don’t know, maybe it’s time for USA to just stop getting involved in wars.
  • Cthulhu_ 6mo ago
    For any country, really; wars cannot be won anymore unless you exterminate its inhabitants completely. At best you can force a regime change, but as Afghanistan showed, that's fragile and tenuous at best if it's not fully backed by the population.
    • dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
      Afghanistan and Iran are not the same. Afghanistan is filled with people that don’t know the Earth is round. Iranians or Persians are educated and largely do not support this regime at all.
      • flextheruler 6mo ago
        Do they support the governments that started this by blowing up 100s of children at their school? Give me a break, even the left-wing Iranians who hate the theocracy also hate Israel. Hell nearly all left-wing young people in the U.S. despise the Israeli government's actions and U.S. support of said actions and that's only for things that have happened in the last year.
        • dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
          Yes, they do actually.
          • flextheruler 6mo ago
            Please provide your source for opinions that are not generally accepted except among those with politically self-serving bias. A few seconds of research demonstrates that's false. https://mei.edu/publication/new-polling-highlights-iranians- https://mei.edu/publication/new-polling-highlights-iranians-... 67 percent opposed to even normalizing relations with Israel. 61 percent of support Iranian proxies or Axis of Resistance. 70 percent agreed their military presence makes them safer at home. We have no reason to believe any of these have decreased since the bombing campaigns have begun. While there are significant numbers of people who would protest the government and maybe attempt to overthrow it, there is no where near enough evidence to suggest it possible and the last half century has demonstrated this. We already supported a major ground campaign against Iran with the Iran-Iraq war that caused millions of deaths and ended in Iranian victory after 8 years.
• zimpenfish 6mo ago
  > After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution. Unless it's by a right-wing white male, obvs., in which case they get promoted / lauded / re-elected / etc.
• ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
  > it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon With what? The UK has already said we're not saving you this time. You're on your own now.
• stein1946 6mo ago
  > it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon But it is, the US is no position to flatten anything. Afghanistan? Lost Vietnam? Lost Ukraine? Lost Iran? will be lost And these are heavily embargoed 3rd world countries. In the first days of the Israeli-US war in Iran (a country under decades of embargo by the way) the US, Israel and vassals lost 60+ planes (plus who knows what else they are not reporting. Trump is not coming out of this, if he makes the grave mistake of sending troops to their demise this administration is done.
  • dragonwriter 6mo ago
    > But it is, the US is no position to flatten anything. The US is certainly in a position to flatten (with conventional force) anything in the Carribean, whatever failures it had in long counterinsurgencies where the logistics tail wrapped nearly halfway around the world. (And however badly it would probably fail in occupation in many of the places it could easily flatten close by, for that matter; flattening is much easier than occupying.) > Afghanistan? Lost Vietnam? Lost Ukraine? Lost Iran? Lost Ukraine? Ukraine hasn't lost and the US was never a direct belligerent in that conflict.
  • srean 6mo ago
    60+ planes !? Not disputing, just interested to learn more. It seems Iran offered little to no defense against bombing raids. This may have changed recently.
    • andruby 6mo ago
      I can only find references to 16 US planes lost (0 Israeli planes)
  • dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
    This is pure propaganda. It should be flagged as misinformation. There is no true to this complete nonsense that 60+ planes were lost. You can hate the US or have any opinion you want like the Ayatollah was great or whatever but don’t spread pure social media propaganda, please. Do you know how big of a deal losing 60 actual planes for the US would be? I would just say, if you are quite sure about all this then I think you might hit it big on polynarket.
• Cthulhu_ 6mo ago
  Why would they do that? They won't have any nukes (not after the Cuban missile crisis), and the island isn't big enough (plus closely monitored) to house any significant amount of weaponry. What would they shoot them at? It'd be superficial damage and / or civilian casualties at best, and the retaliation would be immediate and devastating.
• lenkite 6mo ago
  > If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland, Cuba is not stupid. They will attack the infamous Conquistador Torture Base on their soil and US ships that carry out high piracy of their trade vessels.
• ZeroGravitas 6mo ago
  > After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution. Yes remember when they invaded Saudi Arabia? That taught everyone an important lesson on the consequences of terrorism on American soil.
  • decimalenough 6mo ago
    The hijackers were Saudi nationals, but the operation was in no way sponsored by the Saudi state, which is a staunch US ally. Which is why the US proceeded to (attempt to) flatten Afghanistan instead.
    • jacquesm 6mo ago
      > Which is why the US proceeded to (attempt to) flatten Afghanistan instead. It seems to have made things better for the Taliban.
      • bluGill 6mo ago
        It is a very different taliban
      • cucumber3732842 6mo ago
        The current Taliban are an almost completely different organization despite there being continuity from then to now. A good comparison point is the church of England in 1520 vs 1620.
    • orochimaaru 6mo ago
      There wasn’t anything to flatten in Afghanistan. They were coming off a 20 yr civil war.
      • temp8830 6mo ago
        Proxy war. And that's an awful lot of years and billions spent on flattening nothing, don't you think?
• no_shadowban_6 6mo ago
  Whose homeland is the US?
• bluegatty 6mo ago
  "After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution." Ok, just follow through with the logic. If the US 'flatteNed' Cuba (like Gaza) in response to a few drones - it would 100% make the US 'The Evil Empire' and turn the world 100% against America as a neo fascist entity. The costs would be unthinkable, and probably the demise of the nation as a having a 'historical special place'. It would not ever fully recover, and the 'New World Order' would be something really hard to imagine. In reality - something else would play out .. I think the response would be disproportionate, but probably focused, but it depends on the 'populist effect' aka what exactly Cuba attacked, and how it was provoked. If the US attacked Cuba first, and responded with drones on a US military installation - I'll bet there is populist resistance to escalation. Event that tussle alone would look really bad on US, would guarantee the DJT regime probably 'last place' for all US presidents, people would be calling for 25th Amendment and for new leadership, even at the same time as they might even support strikes in response. It'll mean total political chaos until the Admin steps away, probably Congress/Institutions trying to put a 'bubble' around WH Admin.
  • geysersam 6mo ago
    > If the US 'flatteNed' Cuba (like Gaza) in response to a few drones - it would 100% make the US 'The Evil Empire' and turn the world 100% against America as a neo fascist entity. It has already happened. Even in west Europe politicians are discussing how to protect their nations from US imperialism. Every remaining alliance the US has is strictly quid pro quo, there's no trust left anywhere (Israel being the singular exception). Meanwhile 50% of the planet is completely fed up and can't wait to have China take over as leader of the international order.
  • dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
    The whole thing is stupid. The US wouldn’t flatten Cuba. Only leftists think the Cuban people support the communists. It’s like that Hasab Piker saying “the good Cubans are still in Cuba but the ones in the US that don’t like communism are crazy.” The reality is we would decapitate their regime, kill all their top brass, blow up their military installations, probably gave some collateral damages, and then in a year there would be reports, modern vehicles, and commerce.
• risc_taker 6mo ago
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• wiseowise 6mo ago
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• seanmcdirmid 6mo ago
  That’s MAD. It’s much more likely that we just blockade and invade Cuba than we nuke it. Even Trump isn’t crazy enough to start a nuclear war (I hope).
• fastasucan 6mo ago
  So you are saying the US has no problems with killing civilians; women and children?