It turns out that Trump’s plan to help ships go thru the Strait was ended when both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait refused to let the US use their airspace or US bases in their countries to launch attacks.
The reason is obvious—Iran has repeatedly said that if the war restarts they will hit the Gulf States much harder than before, going after oil infrastructure in particular.
America has proved it can’t protect its Gulf allies. It’s low on interceptors, and what they have goes to Israel. Even with interceptors attacks get thru.
Bases have gone from defending countries to being liabilities. Being American allies drew the Gulf states into a war that devastated them. The Sauds and Kuwaitis have nothing to gain from letting the US launch attacks from their territory. The lesson was painful, but it has been learned.
This also puts an end to the idea that countries can’t deny the US. They just did, as did Spain.
The US Empire is dead. Officially dead. It does not come back from this because the new way of war centered on drones and missiles means that it is impossible for the US to protect its allies.
Likewise the US can no longer guarantee free navigation. This has been obvious for a couple years: if they couldn’t even defeat the Yemenis, they weren’t going to stand a chance against any real nation.
It’s over.
Again this doesn’t mean the US isn’t still a Great power, especially regionally. It can still shove around weak countries which aren’t willing to bear the heavy cost of standing up to it, like Venezuela.
But as time goes by the missiles and drones will spread from China, Russia and Iran to everyone else. Aircraft carriers will be forced way back, reducing sortie tempos, and blockades using ships will become harder and harder. Probably the best way to do a blockade against a far away country will be drone carriers, but even they will be vulnerable to counter-strikes.
This is also going to be a huge problem for the American military industrial complex: their weapons suck. No one is going to want to buy them. The key weapons needed are missiles, drones and air defense and all of those are cheaper and in many cases better from other suppliers.
At this point without data centers the US wouldn’t have essentially zero GDP growth. The stock market is being held up by a few major internet firms who are engaged in a massive circle jerk of financing their customers purchases. Chinese AI is behind American, but 95% cheaper, open source and will converge on the same general abilities, but better for real world tasks involving robots, autonomous vehicles and so on.
If you need to buy something you don’t want to get it from the US. Odds are China has it for less and at least as good, possibly better.
The world doesn’t need American goods. Everyone’s going to move off oil as fast as possible and it’s China that sells that stack. American weapons are crap. American alliances do nothing but give you a nuclear umbrella you can’t trust the US to deploy. Trade is increasingly moving off the dollar and on to the Yuan, so sanctions will work less and less well and in less than five years will be basically useless except against vassals.
All that will be left is a wasting ability to use a legacy 90s tech military against the weak, and that’s going away too.
The US Empire is cooked. America’s elites were handed one of the strongest hands in history and pissed it all away in three generations. Truly late Roman Empire levels of incompetence.
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