Iran War

[Sheilbh]

Hasn't that been the purview of Russia, China, and their fellow travellers?

Yeah - also Latin American and Asian thinkers and politicians. A fair few Europeans (especially French) too. I have a bit of an old school third worldist view - I even specifically went to Bandung to visit the conference museum when I was on holiday in Indonesia (because I'm a nerd ) - so I'm not unsympathetic to a multipolar world.

But I also think what you think about it kind of doesn't matter - it is just reality. The single biggest fact driving this, and I think the central fact in our world is China. The "West" represented two thirds of global GDP in 1990, it's now about or just under a third - it's not our world anymore, which I think is a cause of a lot of our morbid symptoms. But I don't for one second mourn the demise of the 1990s, I think it was, to nick a bit of Auden, a low, dishonest decade.

Whether we are, as a world, capable of building something new and more enduring - and a more just, democratic distribution of global power - is uncertain but we're going to have to try because that's the world that's coming.  I think that is the challenge and I think Western countries need to be in a position to advance their own interests but also engage with the rest of the world as equals, who also have their own interests which we need to take account of and work with as equals.

[DGuller]

This was impossible to foresee.

It's like Iran closing the strait.  How could one predict that?  You'd have to know what Iran did in the past to guess that and no one can predict the past.

In order to foresee problems with China, you have to be some incredible genius that knows fiendishly complicated things. Like that China exists and it may have some interest in shipping.

To be fair, fighting the last war is a very common mistake in war planning.  For all his faults, Trump didn't overlearn from the past wars.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

over the years I've heard lots of people pining for multipolarity tbh. They couldn't wait for US hegemony to be over. Well, here it is and it'll be a wild ride

Hasn't that been the purview of Russia, China, and their fellow travellers?

It were usually lefties. Far lefties, but those are indeed fellow travellers of the Russians, Chinese, north Koreans or islamists. Sometimes all of them at once.
As for the usual suspects on the right: was less of thing until orban and then putins Ukrainian holiday.
Now it's all over the place

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I don't think it is that people are earning for a multipolar world as much as it is the United States voluntarily abandoning the advantageous position it had internationally, and now everyone else is doing their best to adapt to the new reality.

over the years I've heard lots of people pining for multipolarity tbh. They couldn't wait for US hegemony to be over. Well, here it is and it'll be a wild ride

Well if they are Euros, I just want to point out they have structured themselves as something similar to the Holy Roman Empire or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and we have seen how those stood up to a cutthroat world of ruthless power politics in the past.

Yes, but you really need to be aware of why that setup is as it is. The small countries would never had stood for a system in which they can be always overruled by the big 3 (now 5). This is Europe, where nations are old and have grievances. As opposed to the US where nations didn't exist, states were young and you had a clear slate. And even there it wasn't easy.
But yes, in current circumstances the setup is problematic

[Legbiter]

How will China respond if their shipping is blockaded on a continuing basis?

They arrange for all inbound merchant traffic to be China-flagged and dare the burgers to start a war with them?