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Comment by MidnightRider39 | Hacker News Reader

Starting the war with Iran was definitely a pretty stupid decision, even at this point of it. In a couple of years it will look like the beginning of the end for the US hegemony.

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No it won't, that's merely fantasy projection (a personal desire for the US to suffer for what it's doing). US hegemony ended with the rise of China's economy into superpower status over the past 10-15 years. There was no scenario where the relatively brief US hegemony from the late 1980s to the late 2000s was going to continue no matter what the US did. China was always going to build a military to match its economic might. That military will gradually project globally.

US hegemony lasted for a mere ~20 years. Today it does not possess hegemony, China is able to stand-off fully with the US both economically and militarily (at least in Asia).

Iran is a regional conflict. It will matter less than the Iraq war and occupation did.

Maybe. But the Iran conflict also ties in with the Ukraine war, which is an assertion of Russian power into that US-Europe/China duopoly. And it's happening at the same time as the former alliance is breaking.

It's possible that it will be a regional conflict the way the Serbian/Austro-Hungarian conflict was regional. Or the way people pretended that the Germany/Sudetenland conflict was regional.

I don't wish to catastophize. But I also think it's important to realize that this does have the potential to become much worse very suddenly. That doesn't make the decisions easy, but they shouldn't be easy.

Nonsense. China remains unable to project power much beyond the first island chain. They're building fast and that will change in a few years but as of today their conventional military capabilities remain very limited and defensive. When was the last time a Chinese carrier strike group deployed to the Middle East?

If US hegemony is total, why is there no oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz?

Why does the US economy rely so heavily on chips manufactured in Taiwan, and on components, products, and services provided by China?

The difference between the US and China is that China understands that carrier strike groups are not the modern definition of hegemony.

There has never been any such thing as "total" hegemony, so that's a strawman argument. The US doesn't get much oil from the Strait of Hormuz and so while starting another war with Iran was a stupid move, the consequences are largely someone else's problem. I agree that depending on other countries for strategically critical manufacturing was a bad move. Fortunately that's now being rectified but it will take some time.

https://www.semiconductors.org/chips/

China's attempts at hegemony have largely consisted of making loans on bad terms to corrupt developing countries and then trying to foreclose when they don't pay. This has not worked.

Starting the war with Iraq in 2003 was definitely a pretty stupid decision, and at the time some pundits predicted that it was the beginning of the end for US hegemony. But now a couple decades later the US is still looking pretty hegemonic. US hegemony will end some day, but we should be skeptical of predictions about timing.

Let’s revisit this comment in 2030. Iran is very different from Iraq in many ways.

For the 2003 Iraq war, US managed to goad 48 countries to get involved [1] For the 2026 Iran war, it looks more like the US was goaded itself. The current coalition consists of Israel and a dozen of Middle East countries providing bases to stage the war. If you squint, it is still looking hegemonic but nothing like what was 20 years ago.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Iraq...

This take is extremely arrogant. You can make the argument that shuffling the deck like this will lead to unexpected outcomes but claiming one way or the other to know the outcome is just silly.

If anyone feels sure they know what the next several years has in store regarding Iran they are just demonstrating their own ignorance. I’d expect more people here to be cognisant of the Dunning Kruger effect.

I obviously don’t know what the future has in store for us.

But I’m pretty sure that any imaginable outcome of this war will be bad for the US, at a time where they are withdrawing from global politics to concentrate on national politics.

IMO worst case this will lead to a massive civil war in the US and best case to a devaluation of US military might (aka their army will be less respected/feared). Or anything in between.

We can revisit this comment in a couple years and laugh about how wrong i was though

This war is like going to the dentist for a root canal. No one likes it, OTOH none of neighboring countries want a second "north Korea" as their neighbor. Time will tell.

Like going to the dentist for a root canal when it's your neighbors that actually needs one and you can't afford it because a significant portion of your income is already paying down debt, the problem is getting worse, and you just decided to make less money this year

It's like going to a hardware store for a root canal. The goal might be laudable, but the execution and results are just as important.

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