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You forgot the 5th actor - Russia - which is benefiting hugely from the collapse of NATO, the loosening of oil sanctions, the huge hike in oil prices, and the way the US was persuaded to expend a ridiculous percentage of its conventional missile stockpiles on a pointless project.

Ukraine is doing its best to minimise Russian oil exports, and that's certainly having an effect.

But strategically, Russia is a huge beneficiary of this mess.

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Oh, also China who benefits from US deterrence being relocated from APAC and buried into Iranian dirt
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Really, any rival state-level actor benefits from seeing America squander its currently limited supply of high-end munitions and put months of stress on its airframes, warships, and people.
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... & sells drone parts to any and all participants. You need drones? You know who to call!
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I agree with most of this, but: The collapse of NATO is not yet in evidence.
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It depends where you draw the line. The extended players include:

1. Russia (as you say): I think this war of choice virtually guarantees a settlement of the Ukraine war along the current borders. At some point Europe will need to ease their energy crisis with Russian oil and gas. Well done, everybody, the system works;

2. Europe: like the GCC they are finding US security guarantees and the NATO protection racket aren't what they were sold. Pax Americana was an illusion. I've elsewhere predicted this is going to lead to arms and tech nationalism within Europe. It's actually a race between fascism taking over Europe and Europe divorcing itself from the US and I suspect fascism is currently winning; and

3. China: the biggest wineer of all this. China is still receiving Iranian oil exports. In fact, the US "punished" Iran by lifting oil sanctions, allowing Iran to sell oil to China at market rates instead of below market (because of the sanctions). Again, well done, everybody; and

4. Asia: this has exposed their weakness of imported oil, particularly Thailand, Vietnam and the Phillipines. I would not be surprised if this war of choice is the turning point that leads to a China-cenetered Asian security compact.

In one year, the US has essentially torn up the entire post-1945 rules-based international order, which it designed for its own benefit.

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In other words, all the ingredients for WW3. Lets hope we can somehow avoid that.
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> I suspect fascism is currently winning

I think this war is actually pushing many away from fascism. Trump was the reference for a lot of the European right and this is showing people he was terrible and, by extension, embarrassing them all.

Heck, Orbán is currently running an electoral campaign as "the candidate of peace".

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The post-1945 rules-based order was already a slow motion train crash that most of the West remained in denial about until Putin wiped his behind with it in the 2014 invasion of Crimea. To pretend that Trump is somehow breaking an otherwise intact system at this point is fanciful.
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The post-1945 order was dead after the NATO's war in Yugoslavia in 1999, and the subsequent recognition of Kosovo. At the very latest.

One coulld argue that it happened earlier, for example after the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, or after the annexation of East Germany.

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>"The post-1945 rules-based order" - it was always one rule for me another one for thee
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Not sure how the US comes back from this.

Who will trust US treaties going forward?

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It'll partly depend on what internal housecleaning—or perhaps fumigation—and reform happens in the US.

While it is unlikely to occur, imagine the international effect if the US resoundingly impeached and removed of a lawless president, and Congress formalized a lot of international agreements into statute rather than delegating too much to the executive branch.

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Nah, this problem is systemic, and much older than the current administration. Or has everyone forgotten the "anthrax" in a test tube? The invisible WMDs? The fake news about soldiers tossing babies out of incubators? Setting up a web of lies and attacking is a foundational value of the United States.
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>Not sure how the US comes back from this.

It shouldn't. The responsible course going forward is a constitutional convention and the dissolution of the United States.

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I don't think we do. I think this is our Teutoburg Forest moment [1].

Part of the issue is there's no real opposition in the US to what's going on. The Democrats being the controlled opposition party aren't in opposition to the war (eg [2][3][4]). They just oppose the way it was initiated. In other words, they have a process objection not a policy objection.

I've seen lamenting over Harris losing the elction (as well as more than a few doing "stolen election") about how the world could be different. But US foreign policy is uniparty

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest

[2]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/8/kamala-harris-says-...

[3]: https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/lea...

[4]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/hakeem-jeffries-wo...

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> The Gulf States just want to maintain the pre-war status quo. Saudi Arabia in particular just wanted to contain Iran. They're less vulnerable to the Strait being closed but it's still a problem politically as the US and Israel are bombing other Muslims. The Gulf states are learning the the US security guarantee ain't worth shit but they can't break away from being US client states with their own unpopular regimes probably collapsing without US arms. But in a prolonged conflict some of them may collapse anyway, particularly Bahrain and even Iraq.

Saudi and the UAE don't want the pre-war status quo, they want America to bomb Iran back to the stone age so it can't continue missile or launcher production.

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Yep, all sounds right to me
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