Category Archives: Foreign Policy

April 25, 2026 · 9:08 AM

Simultaneously True #1: Iran Thoughts

I’ve been wanting to start a blog series for a while with short posts about things that are able to be simultaneously true. For a ton of different reasons, people tend to lump several ideas together, either in their own thinking, or their assumptions about your thinking, that don’t actually have to go together. This series is about trying to point out the false dilemmas and false corollaries, and some of the reasons people seem to get stuck with them. I’ll start with something nice and incendiary: the current US/Israel war with Iran. As with the Iraq War, proponents of the war often felt the need to bundle certain beliefs with that support, and opponents of the war often felt the need to bundle other beliefs with their opposition.

So here’s a list of a few things that are able to be simultaneously true:

  1. The Iranian regime is a brutal and oppressive regime that has gleefully murdered its own people, and the Iranian people would be better off if the current regime took its appropriate place on the ash-heap of history.
  2. War is always a dice-roll, that while sometimes successful in achieving its primary objectives, almost always comes with huge unintended consequences.
  3. There’s a reason why the Constitution vests the power of declaring war in the Congress and not the President. If a President feels war is needed, he/she should make the case to Congress, and Congress should decide on it.
    • Congress should also get in the habit of impeaching and removing Presidents who drag the country into Congressionally unauthorized wars of choice.
    • And yes, I would have been fine with Congress applying that to past Democratic Presidents who have launched Congressionally wars.
  4. While I’m generally opposed to starting wars for non-defensive purposes, it is something that is explicitly within Congress’s purview to do, if they decide war is in the best interests of the nation. That decision however, was never intended to be put in the hands of one person.
    • I think that had he wanted to, the Trump administration might have been able to successfully make the case to Congress for the war. There are very real strategic reasons why a war might have been the least worst option at some point.
  5. The Iranian regime has been engaged in periodic hostilities with the US and many of its neighbors throughout most of my lifetime.
  6. That doesn’t mean that the US President was authorized to start a new war without needing to seek Congressional support.
  7. There is still a real chance that the Iranian regime could still fall, but there’s also a very real chance that they can inflict enough pain on the US to force us to back down. Neither side is winning so far, at least by any real definition of the term.
  8. The US/Israeli operations at the start of the war were tactically brilliant. Using the Iranian regime’s security state apparatus to help track and target regime leaders was impressive.
  9. Tactics and Strategy aren’t the same thing, and while the US/Israeli side has had some tactical brilliance, the war so far has been a strategic embarrassment.
    • Like the complete and utter lack of planning for securing the Strait of Hormuz, even going so far as decommissioning some of our last remaining minesweeper vessels only a few months before the war began.
  10. Even if the US wins the war, and the Iranian regime crumbles, there will likely be long-lasting economic damage caused by this war and the disruption to global trade.
  11. The downside risks of this war spiraling further out of control aren’t fully appreciated or priced-in by the market yet. If the Iranian regime falls, but decides to pull the Samson option, it could yet kill a lot of people and do a lot of hard-to-quickly-repair damage to the global economy.

I could go on, but I think this sort of illustrates the point. You can oppose the war, without becoming a “Tanky” and acting like the Iranian regime is good, and that it would be good for the world if they won. You can oppose the war, but still hope that if it continues being fought, that the Iranian regime falls and gets replaced with something less brutal to its own people and neighbors. You can support the war, but still realize it’s being incompetently executed by a President that is clearly out of its depth. You can hope that the Iranian regime gets replaced as a result of this war, and still think that Congress should impeach the President for dragging us into it without Congressional authorization. Etc.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Foreign Policy, Government, Politics, Simultaneously True

May 29, 2014 · 8:09 AM

Symmetric Myopia on Ukraine

[Note from almost 10yrs later — I don’t believe in deleting old posts, even if I find my old views somewhat embarrassing. I’ve definitely come around to strongly backing the Ukrainian side after Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022. At least this blog post wasn’t entirely stupid, but in case anyone digs this up in 2024, I’ve grown up a bit in the last decade. ~Jon 1/12/2024]

I wanted to comment on an interesting case of symmetric myopia I’ve been noticing regarding the situation in Ukraine.

Basically, I’ve noticed that both pro-Western and pro-Russian partisans tend to suffer from a very similar bias. They assume that supporters of their cause in the Ukraine were 100% legitimate grassroots opposition to tyranny, while the other side is 100% bought-and-paid-for toadies of external forces. For example:

  • Pro-Russian view of the EuroMaidan protests in Kiev: most if not all of the anti-Yanukovich protest movement was a CIA-sponsored effort to overthrow the rightful government of Ukraine to replace it with a pro-western puppet government that will place a hostile military alliance (NATO) right on Russia’s doorstep. If there were any legitimate gripes, they shouldn’t have been handled by violently storming government buildings in Kiev and western Ukraine, but through the democratic process. Use of violent force against opposition protesters may have been regrettable, but they were using violence too to storm government buildings.
  • Pro-Russian view of events in East Ukraine: On the other hand, the reaction in East Ukraine, to a Pro-Russian is a organic, locally-driven grassroots protest both to the illegal actions of the EuroMaidan movement, not some sort of attempt by Russian special forces to annex the East. If their actions are a little on the militaristic side, they’re just mimicking the EuroMaidan tactics of occupying government buildings using violence, and trying to force extra-legal governmental change. If removing the president in a way that wasn’t allowed by the Ukrainian constitution is ok, holding a referendum on autonomy/secession should be ok too in their mind. If Yanukovich’s forces firing on violent protesters storming government buildings in Kiev was evil, how is using the military against violent protesters in Donetsk not also at least somewhat evil?
  • Pro-Western view of the EuroMaidan protests in Kiev: To the pro-Westerner, claims of US involvement in trying to destabilize Yanukovich and support his ouster are just crazy paranoid excuses being used by a cynical Kremlin to undermine what were almost entirely organic, locally-driven, grassroots protests against corruption and tyranny. Using force and acting outside the bounds of the Ukrainian constitution were ok, because it was a fight of liberty and western values against tyranny and corruption. Even though more extreme elements of the Maidan movement did use violence to storm and seize government buildings, they were doing so for a pro-democratic cause. The people really were yearning for a move to integrate more with the West and participate in modern society, and this whole situation shows why so many in the EuroMaidan want and need NATO militarily protecting them from Russian aggression.
  • Pro-Western views of what’s happening in Eastern Ukraine: This is Russian maskirovka plain and simple. Putin wants to annex large parts of Eastern Ukraine, and he’s using Russian agents and special forces (“little green men”) to prep the groundwork for an outright invasion and occupation. Sure, he’ll wrap himself in claims of protecting Russians, but only a small fraction of Eastern Ukrainians or Crimeans in that poll back in February wanted to outright be annexed by the Russian Federation, so obviously, this isn’t a grassroots movement, but “astroturf” acting as cover for an illegal invasion/occupation. Using military force on these “terrorists” is legitimate and good because they’re obviously either traitors or foreigners. If they wanted more autonomy, they should’ve worked through the democratic process, and not stormed government buildings and taken extralegal measures.

I may not entirely be able to pass Bryan Caplan’s “Intellectual Turing Test” with these comments, but I think they’re at least somewhat close to the mark. So, what’s my point? It’s just that both the simplistic Pro-Russian and the simplistic Pro-Western views are likely wrong. Ukraine is a strongly divided country, with a very wide range of opinion. Both the EuroMaidan and eastern separatist groups are probably both a mix of genuine grassroots opinions and foreign pot-stirring. There’s plenty of evidence that the US had some hand in supporting the overthrow of Yanukovich, but acting like this was entirely-US driven is obviously bunk. On the other hand, acting as though there’s no reason anyone could legitimately be pro-Russian without being bought and paid for is also absurd. If the pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine are entirely just a Russian plot to annex the East, and reform the USSR, Russia sure is taking its sweet time following-up on things. That causus belli excuse Putin needed that was provided by the anti-Russian killings in Odessa was almost a month ago, and still no real sign of Russia having any desire of crossing the borders.

I guess my reason for bringing this up is that the naive “our enemies are pure evil and our allies white as snow” propaganda going around the internet is only likely to lead to more violence, more escalation, and a very bad ending for the people of Ukraine. That may benefit extremists, war profiteers on either side who’ve been jonesing for a Cold War 2.0 ever since 1990, and domestic politicians trying to get a good old fashion Two Minutes Hate going to distract from the screwed-up domestic politico-economic situation, but that’s not going to lead to anywhere good for the supposed objects of our sympathy (the Ukrainian people).

Acknowledging that neither side has a monopoly on good or evil, and that both sides have both legitimate gripes, and have both severely overstepped legal bounds, is IMO a key to starting to defuse the situation and find a solution that minimizes further loss of life, and gives the average person in the Ukraine the best possible deal. To be stable in a country so evenly split, that deal probably looks like less “winner takes all democracy” and more federalism/decentralization of power. But that isn’t going to happen so long as people insist on being blind to the faults of their own side, and acting like their “enemies” are entirely foreign-grown.

2 Comments

Filed under Foreign Policy