Comment by littlestymaar
3 days ago
> We have absolutely zero credible evidence of tends of thousands of child deaths.
Unfortunately we have.
> Don’t start stupid wars
This was indeed an insanely stupid move from Hamas.
> Hezbollah (and Iran) has been rational
Idk if I'd call that rational: they were afraid of going war against Israel and they mostly tried to appease it. Only do discover that appeasement doesn't really works well against expansionist superpowers.
> they were afraid of going war against Israel and they mostly tried to appease it
Fear can be rational. Rational fear measures costs and benefits. It's balanced by grimmer trigger strategies [1], e.g. disproportionate retaliation.
> appeasement doesn't really works well against expansionist superpowers
Correct. Israel isn't a superpower.
(Even so, you only don't appease an adversary if you know you can win. If there is no possible world in which you win, the correct move is to drop the organised response to preserve resources and go guerilla. Part of the reason for maintaining peacetime readiness is so that you have the option of grim triggering.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_strategy
> Israel isn't a superpower.
On the middle east scene, the balance of power is so lopsided in favor of Israel that I stand with this qualifier even though I use it in a way that isn't the most common way (as a “global superpower”, which Israel isn't)
> Even so, you only don't appease an adversary if you know you can win
Winning can take many shape, you don't have to be able to eradicate an opponent to be better off than if you tried to appease him and lost everything. For instance even if Ukraine were forced to accept a peace deal that involve losing all of the occupied territories, they would be far better off than if Zelensky caved before the invasion.
There's no doubt that the outcome for Nasrallah wouldn't have been worse had he declare open war on Israel directly after Oct 7th. The problem is that he though he had a lot to lose, when instead given Israel's long term plan he could only have improved his position.
> the balance of power is so lopsided in favor of Israel that I stand with this qualifier even though I use it in a way that isn't the most common way
You use it in a way that renders it meaningless. If Israel is a superpower so is Iran, and at that point we’re talking about one nuclear-ambitious superpower encircling a nuclear superpower, a situation that historically justified a whole lot more than bombing buildings.
> he though he had a lot to lose
He was wrong and got killed. Same as Sinwar. The difference is Hezbollah learned quickly; Hamas took longer.
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