Victoribus Spolia wrote:
Well, with the way the west fights wars and occupies countries nowadays, I would have to agree. But this is a question of potentials and taking over Iran could "potentially" be profitable. I do not think it would be difficult militarily and what we do after the initial conquest would determined the relative success of it as a colony.
1. After defeating Iran I would give massive tax breaks and even some subsidies for American venture capitalists to go in and "re-build" from the perspective of profitability. Such would likely rebuild the devastated regions and employ the populace much quicker than our current method and without having to charge Americans a ton of money. The U.S. would control the oil reserves which will secure the supremacy of the Petro-Dollar and re-stablize OPEC firmly under U.S.-Saudi control and that alone will give a boost to the American economy.
2. I would cast down the theocratic system in place and punish rebels with the utmost severity. I would open the country to Christian missionaries and maybe even subsidize their efforts under the "guise" of them doing training in "English" and "Western Thought." I would import Sunni muslim laborers en masse just to keep the Shi'a population on their toes and from having a singular mindset against their western overlords.
3. I would also invest in permacultural design systems to increase the poorer citizens' self-sufficiency and food output which will also make the land more fertile and the environment healthier and invest in Soccer stadiums, movie theatres, etc. You know, bread and circuses. This will help prevent such groups from being as prone to radicalization and will keep them healthy and happy.
4. I would also extend special citizenship rights to any Iranian woman who marries an American male citizen under the "guise" of improving their lot as Iranian women have been a disproportionately "oppressed lot", but in reality, this would be for giving incentive to American investors and soldiers while weakening the ethno-nationalist morale of the Iranians. Persian women are pretty hot after all.
"To The Victor Goes The Spoils."
5. This is reality would all be much cheaper and more effective than our current methods. These methods have worked before in the middle-east and will work again, and certain local rule by Iranians will be permitted as long as they report all decisions to the local governors who are U.S. natives.
6. The U.S. government will also own and offer its own tourist company giving discounted vacations to U.S. citizens to the Caspian sea region as long as they sit through a seminar on the business opportunities available in Iran....
Sounds great to me.
1. You don't seem to understand how either power nor venture capitalism works. Taking over Iran, a foreign country sledgehammered between Russia and China and that contains a large amount of nukes, would require an amount of coordination that no country is able to accomplish and a ridiculous of resources that the US simply does not have or cannot effectively distribute. Furthermore, effectively occupying and rebuilding Iran from such a large distance is just a pipe dream. The US would either have to decentralize control of Iran heavily or waste thousands of resources on it and in either scenario, the US won't control Iran for long since it simply cannot retain absolute control over a country thousands of miles away from it. The US can't even pull itself together, how the flying fuck is it supposed to rebuild and properly administrate a country that institutions that rival itself?
Second, venture capitalism is some magical boost to an economy that will make everything fine and good. Venture capital is capital invested in a project in which there is a substantial element of risk and often is found when starting a new business. It cannot start-up a dead economy or create one out of nowhere. You'd have to be an idiot to believe that or simply not understand the definition of venture capital to think such a thing.
The only way in which the US can rebuild Iran's economy is if it had a large amount of centralized control over it and if it employed mercantilist economic policies on it, protecting it from not just the world market, but also the US itself. In order to rebuild an economy you must protect the small local businesses in it so that they may grow and become the large corporations you see in the global market today. This means no trade with the US or at least intense tariffs. And even then, as we have established before, the US cannot fully control Iran because it does not possess the resources to preform such a feat.
2. You can't punish rebels since you don't have a strong hold on Iran. You can't even genocide the population since there would be too little troops there to even properly occupy it. I think you need to understand something about colonialism before and what would be modern colonialism now. Before, colonialism "worked" because the West had a clear technological and institutional advantage to the native people. Here, Iran is not just pretty much a modern country (on par with China at least in terms of modernization) but it also has the strong institutions necessary to protect itself and it's government and there is an equal technological advantage, at least where it counts. No soldier is going to wear 300 pounds of Iron Man TALOS armor, at least in the US.
I don't feel that I need to respond to the rest of your post. I already attacked the core bullshit of your post from it's beginning. Unless you can refute this post, then I will discuss your later arguments.
- By wat0n
- By JohnRawls