It's not quite settled. GDP can increase much more, inflation eats away at the debt, &c. But I am not sure cutting the military makes sense, unless you believe the US should retreat from Asia, NATO, &c.
> I don't think this is true at all. It's value is a result of being the reserve currency of the world and as a result a lot of things being denominated in USD. The financial system will lose so much if the dollar devalues significantly that that's a bad outcome to almost everyone, not just the US.
It's precisely true. That's what fiat currency effectively is. The USD is just one of many reserve currencies. The dominant one certainly, but it's just one currency held in reserve by banks, hence reserve currency.
> The US has never controlled the strait.
Sure, but neither does Iran. Just to be super clear.
> The biggest win for Iran is that it has asserted being able to block it. The US can block any ships going to and coming from Iran's ports. It cannot and has never been able to guarantee safe passage through the strait. That last fact is Iran's biggest win of the conflict as it has now shown that even when the US goes full scale war, it can still shut off the strait for all intents and purposes.
US isn't at full-scale war, also to be clear. Yes Iran can block the passage of ships. But the US blocks the passage of ships too. What I find interesting here though is this specific comment:
> The biggest win for Iran is that it has asserted being able to block it.
The US and learned people such as myself already knew Iran could block the Strait and the passage of ships. This is only news to the general populace who has not been following Iran's years-long buildup of missile, drone, mine, and other capabilities. In other words, did you not know this was happening? That would explain why you are not understanding why this had to be done as soon as possible.
> The other miscalculation is that while you might have air superiority, it should be clear by now that the US can't win from the air alone. And Iran might have known/gambled that the US wasn't willing to commit to a ground offensive. As bad as it sounds to be bombed whenever your enemy wants, from a strategic point of view I think this makes sense. Horrible for the population but the regime doesn't care.
I don't disagree with you besides calling this a miscalculation.
> Uh no. The US lost quite a bit of respect I think for this intervention.
Ultimately nobody in the US really cares.
> We need to see what a final cease fire might look like but the whole world is essentially asking what the hell this whole endeavour was for. The whole world is paying higher gas prices and in a lot of other countries especially south east Asia there is a much bigger dependency on Middle East oil. Those people aren't happy about this at all. It might not even be higher prices but outright shortages. And wait for food prices to shoot up because of more expensive fertilizer for example.
Right, and again this misunderstanding is precisely the problem. Iran is working toward at least these 3 things:
Nuclear weapons, double/triple/quadruple existing missile and drone and other capabilities as mentioned above, and expansion and further utilization of proxy forces to destabilize other Middle Eastern countries.
When the "rest of the world" is wondering what is going on or what this endeavor for, somehow they are missing that those 3 things mentioned above will not be tolerated. Since the world is unwilling (incapable) of solving this problem, the US has decided to solve that problem and now the rest of the world must just accept those consequences including higher prices.
> In the end I think it comes down to one simple assumption. You seem to be convinced that with enough military spending the US can force a country to do what it wants. I think that that's not possible at all (see Russia and the Iran conflict right now) let alone at a cost that any country can bear. The US clearly is already struggling to pay for it all.
We're not really struggling though. We should be weary of the debt being so high, but plenty of western or western-aligned nations have high debt too. It's not that the US needs to spend more to force a country to do what it wants, that just happens anyway for the most part, but it's to build out the capabilities necessary to shore up defenses. Look at US military spending as a percentage of GDP and compare that to other nations.
> Every US household knows this, they have to do it every month.
Household budgets don't work the same as government budgets.