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I think you are overestimating both of their ability to execute.
I’m not saying there is not an enormous danger on the horizon depending on what happens. But as long as Trump stays in charge, maybe even as long as Musk stays in charge, their ability to do real damage will be limited somewhat by their incompetence and their many personal failings. The American system is so corrupt at this point that people can take control of vast elements of the output and power of the system even if they couldn’t pour water out of a boot. But that doesn’t always carry over to their ability to influence things outside of their little weakened environment. Tim Snyder wrote about it in “The Weak Strongman.”
I think a lot of tyrants like the idea of invasion until they realize how fucking expensive it is to move war equipment across water and that unless you have the actual Mandate of heaven and earth behind you so to speak, you won’t have competent people with you. Trump doesn’t have that, he didn’t win the popular vote or by a large margin which is what the mandate requires, half his voters hate Musk, and he’s driving away more smart people than attracting. Doesn’t matter how effective and coercive your spy network is, takes hearts and minds to win long term.
Yeah. Also, even with the best material and military forces in the world at your disposal, you can still completely fuck it up. The history of war is absolutely filled with empires who had all the advantages and still got clowned on because the leadership just made dumb decisions. And if your MO is similar to Trump’s or Putin’s, none of your trickery works anymore once you get outside of your own little corrupt orbit and have to cope with reality and skilled committed adversaries.
I dug up the actual article, because it says it better than I can: https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-weak-strongman
Yes. As an American I can’t help but think of how difficult and expensive the war on terror was to wage and how not only did we lose but we may have inadvertently help start a global jihad in the future we pissed off the Iranians so bad.
Not to mention how Germany failed to get the UK in WW2 and how without the literal mafia we’d have not taken Sicily and gained a solid foothold in Europe. Even China is hesitant to invade Taiwan and they wrote the fucking art of war.