Hormuz Meets the Ghosts of Douhet and Ho Chi Minh

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Negotiations Are Great Examples of Constraints in Action.
Who Holds What Cards in the Hormuz Crisis?
- Remembering Giulio Douhet, Ho Chi Minh, Mohammad Mosaddegh, Robert McNamara and Muhammad Ali
Bombing Civilians Has Never Turned Them against Their Rulers.
- Command of the Air, 1921, by General Giulio Douhet (the father of air power)
  - Yes, Assault from the Air Is Unstoppable
  - Yes, Air Superiority Is Imperative
  - No, the People Won't Rise (The Douhet Myth)
  - Oh, and it's a War Crime.
  - Side Note: With "Precision Munitions," Mass Casualties Are a Technical Failure, not a War Crime
- McNamara Knew the Firebombing of Japan Was a War Crime
- The US Dropped More Munitions on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (7.5mT) than Everyone in All of WWII (2.1mT)
- Rope-a-Dope
  - Kissinger's Team Took a Hotel; the Vietnamese Group Rented a House
  - Ukraine Flipped the Tables on Russia
Choke Points
- Latin American Governments Turned Balanced Loan Portfolios into a Debt Crisis
- On Hormuz:
  - Modern Warfare Makes Protecting Hormuz Extremely Difficult
  - The Economic Effects of Shutting Hormuz are Huge
The Vietnam and Gulf Wars Were Avoidable
- Ho Chi Minh Approached Wilson and Truman to Create a Democratic Vietnam
- The CIA Overthrew Democratically Elected Mosaddegh
US Foreign Policy Is Stupid Way Too Often
Minding History Helps Reduce Stupid Foreign Policy Decisions (and more)

This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.