Michael Paarlberg

The success of the Protestant Reformation and of ChatGPT are for similar reasons

‘Decapitate and Delegate’: Trump Tests New Model of U.S.-Led Regime Change Will taking out the leaders of America’s enemies be enough?

“Decapitate and delegate” is an oxymoronic strategy since delegation requires unanimity among rival factions that are only held together by the strongman leadership you just decapitated

Scoop: Trump officials broker massive U.S.-Venezuela gold deal The arrangement shows the tightening commercial bounds between Venezuela and the U.S.

An estimated 90% of Venezuela's gold production is by illegal actors like the ELN and Tren de Aragua. Most of the profits go to corrupt military officials allied with them, but 20% of profits will likely end up in the hands of guerrillas and drug cartels. thefactcoalition.org/wp-content/u...

What are the chances that the driving force behind this is the “buy gold” scam industry that advertises on conservative media?

I bet this hits so hard if you’re eight, ie the modal age of those killed in his airstrikes

What Iran’s crown prince can learn from Venezuela

Machado's snub by Trump should be a lesson for Pahlavi: "As good of an organizer Machado is, she still ran up against the limits of hard power," I told @politico.com. "There was likely nothing she could do to convince Trump to invest troops that would have been necessary to put her into power."

The irony of Rubio’s mangled tribute to Chiang Kai-shek here is Trump’s National Security Strategy and its spheres of influence framework opens the door to China invading Taiwan

Under Pressure from Trump, Cuban Leader Calls for ‘Urgent’ Economic Change

Reforms and FDI are desperately needed, but investors have heard “Cuba is open for business” before, and got burned. Including some whom the govt didn’t want to pay back the returns on their investment and so invented bogus charges and arrested them.

I wonder when the Venezuelan and Iranian exile communities will realize they’ve been duped. I imagine after the initial euphoria of seeing a hated dictator captured or killed wears off, it will sink in that not only is the same regime in place, it has the full backing of the US.

He hasn't found Iran's Delcy Rodriguez, but he's found their Maria Corina Machado

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Good question. I don’t know.

Like the popularity of GoFundMe as an answer to Americans’ medical expenses, the popularity of ChatGPT as an answer to the inaccessibility of medical care says more about the US healthcare system than the technology itself

To put a finer point on this: I’m Korean American. I think the DPRK is a brutal and awful regime. I’d be happy to see it fall. I don’t demand the US go to war with North Korea, nor do I accuse anyone who thinks that’s a bad idea of being a communist or of hating Korean people.

I personally sympathize with any diaspora that has fled a repressive regime. I find their desire for regime change understandable. I don’t understand when diasporas feel entitled to demand their host countries expend blood and treasure to realize this desire for them.

A friend brings up the example of Serbia engineering Russia’s entry into WWI, an auspicious precedent

Can’t remember another time in history that an imperial power publicly admitted it lets a client state dictate its foreign policy

Thanks. Yes, still murky what’s happening on the ground. I’m sure many parties don’t want them to be messing up their plans.

Yes. Biden coordinated with US allies to give autocrats surveillance technology and a green light to repress their own citizens who are dissidents, as long as they could be labeled as pro-Palestinian protesters

If I were the new Iranian leadership, I’d offer to make the regime vocally pro-Israel and build a Trump hotel in Tehran. In exchange, the regime gets to remain in power and develop a nuclear weapons program. Then develop it to North Korea levels so it can’t be attacked after Trump leaves office.

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Iranians probably remember in 1991 when George Bush senior called on Iraqis to “take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside,” many did rise up, the US didn’t back them up, and tens of thousands were killed.

American Order: Palestine and Authoritarianism in the Arab World - Project on Middle East Political Science Dana El Kurd, University of Richmond According to David Lake (2018), the international order “is the product of incentives for state-to-state hierarchy, the interests of the dominant and subordinate s...

“To uphold the American-Israel relationship, the US has consistently relied on authoritarian alliances…

“Ties with the Israeli state have allowed regimes in the UAE, Morocco, and Bahrain to have access to surveillance technology and to launch initiatives for the development of repressive tools.”

By now it’s clear that Trump’s goal isn’t regime change but regime management, predicated on the persistence of a state security apparatus to carry out US demands. Lest we forget, this was also Biden’s goal: buttressing MENA dictatorships in the name of Arab-Israeli normalization.

Trump should have given a Medal of Honor to Delcy at the State of the Union

BOMBING TO WIN Air Power and Coercion in War Robert A. Pape

Pape is out in media noting that aerial bombing campaigns have never (not once) produced regime change in favor of the side doing the bombing

I wonder though how long the celebrations will continue when it becomes apparent that the same security forces are still in charge, and possibly making some kind of deal with the US, or just the Trump family.

The killing of Khamenei sparked celebrations, justifiably so given the tens of thousands his security forces killed in recent months.

Both the Venezuela and Iran attacks succeeded in knocking the Epstein files out of the news for a while. They killed or kidnapped individual dictators without ending the dictatorships. For the populations who have suffered under both regimes, including exiles, this is cold comfort.

The idea is not to overthrow Hamas but to maintain it as a constant but managed threat that is useful for domestic political purposes.