The details don't matter because neither side actually wants peace right now. At the beginning of the SMO you saw the same thing: every country that wanted to profile themselves internationally seemed to be promoting their own peace talk initiatives.

Everybody knows neither side of the conflict can force the other to give in to their demands right now. Just like with Ukraine, everybody will keep talking about being open to 'serious' peace negotiations.

I'd imagine they could do a lot of that with drones now. Given that the straight is narrow, I'm sure they could find a way to launch and control these drones from land. That doesn't really solve the problem of getting ships through the strait. But the US probably doesn't need to endanger a whole fleet to attempt to destroy Iranian mines.

This whole saga has once again underlined how desperate and detached from reality the Europeans are. It had to come down to a last minute marathon session to come to the obvious realisation that touching those assets would completely destabilise Belgium and leave them on the hook for billions more than the total of those assets?

I don't have any real romanticized notions about the EU, but this had me feeling like I was losing my mind. How willing some EU countries were to throw under the bus one of its founding members and the host country of many EU institutions.

How could guarantees from the EU for Belgium ever have been believable? The whole reason they want to touch those Russian assets is because they don't have the money for Ukraine. So why would they suddenly have the money to bail out Belgium? It's completely incredulous.

All because it would have endangered the political career of von der Leyen to break the rules to force through Eurobonds. So instead, let's try to break the rules in an objectively worse but convenient way because you only need a qualified majority. Truly, the german mind is incapable of understanding the world around it.

When it comes to rearming Europe, most of it has been plegdes to do so. Even if they actually succeed in securing funding, it could easily take a decade plus to produce and integrate new weapons and personnel.

So much could change in those years. Trump will be gone and who knows what the state of the US will be afterwards. Cuts to social safety nets to fund defense is going to cause massive and constant political instability in the EU.

Even if you assume that a resumption of conflict is inevitable, it wouldn't be the worst thing to freeze it for a few years if you're Russia. Neither the EU nor the US is likely to become much more of an effective actor in those years.

Aren't all those tariffs supposed to start again in about two weeks? Or at least the beginning of July?

Imagine the price of oil skyrocketing and all those tarrifs going into effect around the same time. What chaos that would create. Or is a war with Iran the off-ramp for those sanctions. I'm sure the Europeans would gladly join in a war on Iran in exchange for lifting of tariffs.

How is Iran China's 'second most important ally'? The Iranian economy is not that important to China, nor is their strategic cooperation particularly deep.

Hell, the Saudis are probably more important to China, yet they're not really allies either.

Yeah, I'm not going to pretend to know the daily reality of companies in China but we do have something similar in my country for companies with over 50 employees and I wouldn't say it is that significant in terms of workplace democracy. The least charitable reading would be that China is doing something similar but a bit broader.

Still all good things, but to pretend that this is basically China pressing the communism button is silly.

Yeah, if you repeat enough times that you're willing to send troops it becomes a matter of your own legitimacy. Whether you really wanted to actually do it in the first place, now you have to.

Which is the real danger of these statements by Macron. You're creating a red line for yourself and hoping the other side blinks first.

It is true that the European elite is loyal to the US, but more importantly they are completely dependent on the US. At the same time the Europeans are enthusiastic participants when it comes to Ukraine, moreso than the US.

The US has always held the position that the aim of military aid is to strengthen Ukraine's position at the eventual negotiation table. But the Europeans for a long time believed the goal to be a total retreat by the Russians.

Because of those fantasies, the Europeans have jumped in head first. Now the mood has soured and the Europeans are starting to realised that they have wagered the stability of their entire system on the outcome of this war. Hence those comments Macron has been making.

I hope that all this talk of sending troops to Ukraine is part of a process of Europe accepting the reality that they played themselves. Hopefully the Americans can reign their dogs in before they do anything stupid.

Obama could never.

If anything big was going to be announced we'd probably already have heard rumours. If Hezbollah is going to make move, they wouldn't announce it first.

When it's the US/West doing something there's all this room for 'nuance' but when it is Bad Country it's suddenly clear-cut good vs evil.