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Online
Tony Cavanaugh
@TonyCavanaugh1
Novelist, Screenwriter, Film & TV Producer
Sydney
Joined February 2012
1.9K Following
418 Followers
2K Posts
Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas
https://t.co/Z26gh6zZKs
Who to follow
Daniel Pilkington
@djpapilko
Just books and random thoughts. I would have been considered good looking in the 1950s. These tweets are my own
Anna Daniels
@annadtweets
Lucky’s Mum, Janelle, on Bluey! Guest presenter on ABC TV’s Back Roads. From Rocky, living in Sydney. Love to champion country Aus! @officialblueytv
Sean Cotcher
@noireallygiveup
Loves reading, cooking and my family.
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
1914 (oil,canvas) Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland.
https://t.co/AJCrWLS9Kb
There’s no overstating how extraordinary this Atlantic article is, given the author and the outlet.
As a reminder Bob Kagan is:
- The co-founder of Project for the New American Century, probably the single most imperialist Think Tank in Washington (which is quite a feat)
- A man who spent his entire life advocating for American military interventions, especially in the Middle East, and a vocal advocate of the Iraq war. He started advocating for intervention in Iraq before 9/11, which speaks for itself...
- The husband of Victoria Nuland, an extremely hawkish former senior U.S. official (a key architect of U.S. policy in Ukraine, with the consequences we all witness today)
- The brother of Frederick Kagan, one of the key architects of the Iraq surge
In other words, we ain’t exactly looking at some sort of anti-imperialist peacenik. This is quite literally the guy Dick Cheney called when he needed a pep talk.
And the man is writing in The Atlantic, the most reliably pro-war mainstream media outlet in the U.S. (also quite a feat).
So when HE writes that the U.S. “suffered a total defeat” in Iran that has no precedent in U.S. history and can “neither be repaired nor ignored,” it’s the functional equivalent of Ronald McDonald telling you the burgers aren’t great: it means the burgers really, really aren't great.
Extraordinarily (and somewhat worryingly, for me), his arguments for why this is such a defeat are virtually the same as those I laid out in my article “The First Multipolar War” last month (https://t.co/tbnOpdYqux).
Here they are 👇
1) Vietnam/Afghanistan were survivable, this isn't
He agrees that this war - and the U.S. defeat - is fundamentally different in nature from previous U.S. interventions.
Where I wrote that the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan didn’t change the equation much in terms of power dynamics (“in the grand scheme of things, the giant walked away with little more than a bruised ego”), Kagan writes that “the defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America's overall position in the world.”
And when I wrote that “it’s painfully obvious that the Iran war is of a qualitatively different nature” from these, he writes that “defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character.”
Same point.
2) Iran will never relinquish Hormuz and uses it as selective leverage
When I wrote that Iran has turned “freedom of navigation” on its head by establishing “a permission-based regime” through the Strait of Hormuz, Kagan arrives at the same conclusion: “Iran will be able not only to demand tolls for passage, but to limit transit to those nations with which it has good relations.”
He also agrees that “Iran has no interest in returning to the status quo ante,” when I myself cited Iran’s parliament speaker Ghalibaf in my article, saying: “The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status.” Same point and virtually the same words.
3) Gulf states will have to accommodate Iran
He agrees that most Gulf states will have no choice but to accommodate Iran, effectively making Iran into a, if not THE, dominant regional power.
Kagan writes “the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran.”
On my end, I wrote that “the Gulf monarchies will eventually have to choose between two security propositions. One where they stay aligned with a distant superpower that [can’t protect them]. The other proposition being: make peace with the regional power that just proved it can hit [them] whenever it wants.” Which is not much of a choice…
4) Military impossibility to reopen Hormuz
Kagan writes that “if the United States with its mighty Navy can't or won't open the strait, no coalition of forces with just a fraction of the Americans' capability will be able to, either.”
On my end, in my article I cited Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius: “What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful US Navy cannot?”
The exact same argument.
5) Global chain reaction
Kagan agrees that this is a global strategic failure that fundamentally changes the U.S.’s position in the world. As he puts it: “America's once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties… America's allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.”
You’ll have guessed it, I wrote essentially the same thing: “Think about what it says if you’re Saudi Arabia, quietly watching your American-built defenses fail to protect your own refineries. Or any European country now facing the worst energy shock since 1973, caused not by your enemy but by your ally, and realizing that said ‘ally,’ supposedly in charge of ‘protecting’ you, couldn’t even protect Israel’s most strategic sites - when it’s the country with which it’s joined at the hip. I’m not even speaking about China or Russia who are seeing their worldview being validated on almost every axis simultaneously.”
6) Weapons stocks depleted, credibility shattered
Kagan: “just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight.”
Me: “America’s most advanced weapons systems are much more vulnerable than previously thought - not theoretically, but in actual combat.”
Kagan: “America's allies… must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.”
Me: “The U.S. security guarantee has been empirically falsified in real time.”
-----------
So, yup, Bob Kagan and I agree on nearly everything. I need a shower 🤢
Reassuringly though, we still differ on a few fundamental aspects.
First of all, arguably the most important one, the moral aspect. In typical neocon fashion, his article contains not a word about the human cost of this war - not the 165 schoolgirls, not the devastation inflicted on Iranians during 37 days of bombing, not the toll this war is taking on the entire world through its devastating economic consequences (the economic devastation on ordinary people worldwide is referenced only as a political problem for Trump). For him, this is purely a strategic chess problem, morality and people don’t figure in his mental map.
For me, the moral bankruptcy of this war isn't separate from the strategic failure - it is the strategic failure. Much like Gaza can only be a failure because of its sheer abjectness.
Secondly, there is not an instant of reflection in the article on how we got there. Which is unsurprising because he personally, alongside his wife, his brother, and every co-signatory of every PNAC letter, spent a generation pushing for exactly this kind of confrontation. The man spend 30 years advocating for military dominance in the Middle East and hostility towards Iran, thereby forging them as an adversary and facilitating this very war that he now says has “checkmated” America.
I know introspection has never been the neocon forte but at some point you have to stop setting houses on fire and then writing op-eds about how surprising the smoke is.
Last but not least, we differ on what should be done. This is the funniest part of Kagan’s article - showing that the man is decidedly beyond salvation. On one hand he calls this a “checkmate” by Iran, and a U.S. defeat that can “neither be repaired nor ignored,” yet an the other hand his solution for it is… surprise, surprise… a bigger war still!
He writes that what’s to be done is “engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold.”
The arsonist's solution to the fire is a bigger fire ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For my end, this was the conclusion of my previous article:
"There is almost a Greek tragedy quality to U.S. actions lately where every move taken to escape one’s fate becomes the mechanism that delivers it. The U.S. went to war to reassert dominance - and proved it could no longer dominate. It demanded allies send warships - and revealed it had no real allies. It waged forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran before this moment came - and instead forged the very adversary now capable of meeting it. It started the war in part to have additional leverage over China - and handed the world the spectacle of begging China for help. The prophecy was multipolarity. Every American action to prevent it reveals it instead."
I wouldn’t change a word. The only thing that's changed since I wrote it is that even the arsonists now smell the smoke.
Src for the Atlantic article: https://t.co/ItED9WS9Kn
![RnaudBertrand's tweet photo. There’s no overstating how extraordinary this Atlantic article is, given the author and the outlet.
As a reminder Bob Kagan is:
- The co-founder of Project for the New American Century, probably the single most imperialist Think Tank in Washington (which is quite a feat)
- A man who spent his entire life advocating for American military interventions, especially in the Middle East, and a vocal advocate of the Iraq war. He started advocating for intervention in Iraq before 9/11, which speaks for itself...
- The husband of Victoria Nuland, an extremely hawkish former senior U.S. official (a key architect of U.S. policy in Ukraine, with the consequences we all witness today)
- The brother of Frederick Kagan, one of the key architects of the Iraq surge
In other words, we ain’t exactly looking at some sort of anti-imperialist peacenik. This is quite literally the guy Dick Cheney called when he needed a pep talk.
And the man is writing in The Atlantic, the most reliably pro-war mainstream media outlet in the U.S. (also quite a feat).
So when HE writes that the U.S. “suffered a total defeat” in Iran that has no precedent in U.S. history and can “neither be repaired nor ignored,” it’s the functional equivalent of Ronald McDonald telling you the burgers aren’t great: it means the burgers really, really aren't great.
Extraordinarily (and somewhat worryingly, for me), his arguments for why this is such a defeat are virtually the same as those I laid out in my article “The First Multipolar War” last month (https://t.co/tbnOpdYqux).
Here they are 👇
1) Vietnam/Afghanistan were survivable, this isn't
He agrees that this war - and the U.S. defeat - is fundamentally different in nature from previous U.S. interventions.
Where I wrote that the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan didn’t change the equation much in terms of power dynamics (“in the grand scheme of things, the giant walked away with little more than a bruised ego”), Kagan writes that “the defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America's overall position in the world.”
And when I wrote that “it’s painfully obvious that the Iran war is of a qualitatively different nature” from these, he writes that “defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character.”
Same point.
2) Iran will never relinquish Hormuz and uses it as selective leverage
When I wrote that Iran has turned “freedom of navigation” on its head by establishing “a permission-based regime” through the Strait of Hormuz, Kagan arrives at the same conclusion: “Iran will be able not only to demand tolls for passage, but to limit transit to those nations with which it has good relations.”
He also agrees that “Iran has no interest in returning to the status quo ante,” when I myself cited Iran’s parliament speaker Ghalibaf in my article, saying: “The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status.” Same point and virtually the same words.
3) Gulf states will have to accommodate Iran
He agrees that most Gulf states will have no choice but to accommodate Iran, effectively making Iran into a, if not THE, dominant regional power.
Kagan writes “the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran.”
On my end, I wrote that “the Gulf monarchies will eventually have to choose between two security propositions. One where they stay aligned with a distant superpower that [can’t protect them]. The other proposition being: make peace with the regional power that just proved it can hit [them] whenever it wants.” Which is not much of a choice…
4) Military impossibility to reopen Hormuz
Kagan writes that “if the United States with its mighty Navy can't or won't open the strait, no coalition of forces with just a fraction of the Americans' capability will be able to, either.”
On my end, in my article I cited Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius: “What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful US Navy cannot?”
The exact same argument.
5) Global chain reaction
Kagan agrees that this is a global strategic failure that fundamentally changes the U.S.’s position in the world. As he puts it: “America's once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties… America's allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.”
You’ll have guessed it, I wrote essentially the same thing: “Think about what it says if you’re Saudi Arabia, quietly watching your American-built defenses fail to protect your own refineries. Or any European country now facing the worst energy shock since 1973, caused not by your enemy but by your ally, and realizing that said ‘ally,’ supposedly in charge of ‘protecting’ you, couldn’t even protect Israel’s most strategic sites - when it’s the country with which it’s joined at the hip. I’m not even speaking about China or Russia who are seeing their worldview being validated on almost every axis simultaneously.”
6) Weapons stocks depleted, credibility shattered
Kagan: “just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight.”
Me: “America’s most advanced weapons systems are much more vulnerable than previously thought - not theoretically, but in actual combat.”
Kagan: “America's allies… must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.”
Me: “The U.S. security guarantee has been empirically falsified in real time.”
-----------
So, yup, Bob Kagan and I agree on nearly everything. I need a shower 🤢
Reassuringly though, we still differ on a few fundamental aspects.
First of all, arguably the most important one, the moral aspect. In typical neocon fashion, his article contains not a word about the human cost of this war - not the 165 schoolgirls, not the devastation inflicted on Iranians during 37 days of bombing, not the toll this war is taking on the entire world through its devastating economic consequences (the economic devastation on ordinary people worldwide is referenced only as a political problem for Trump). For him, this is purely a strategic chess problem, morality and people don’t figure in his mental map.
For me, the moral bankruptcy of this war isn't separate from the strategic failure - it is the strategic failure. Much like Gaza can only be a failure because of its sheer abjectness.
Secondly, there is not an instant of reflection in the article on how we got there. Which is unsurprising because he personally, alongside his wife, his brother, and every co-signatory of every PNAC letter, spent a generation pushing for exactly this kind of confrontation. The man spend 30 years advocating for military dominance in the Middle East and hostility towards Iran, thereby forging them as an adversary and facilitating this very war that he now says has “checkmated” America.
I know introspection has never been the neocon forte but at some point you have to stop setting houses on fire and then writing op-eds about how surprising the smoke is.
Last but not least, we differ on what should be done. This is the funniest part of Kagan’s article - showing that the man is decidedly beyond salvation. On one hand he calls this a “checkmate” by Iran, and a U.S. defeat that can “neither be repaired nor ignored,” yet an the other hand his solution for it is… surprise, surprise… a bigger war still!
He writes that what’s to be done is “engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold.”
The arsonist's solution to the fire is a bigger fire ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For my end, this was the conclusion of my previous article:
"There is almost a Greek tragedy quality to U.S. actions lately where every move taken to escape one’s fate becomes the mechanism that delivers it. The U.S. went to war to reassert dominance - and proved it could no longer dominate. It demanded allies send warships - and revealed it had no real allies. It waged forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran before this moment came - and instead forged the very adversary now capable of meeting it. It started the war in part to have additional leverage over China - and handed the world the spectacle of begging China for help. The prophecy was multipolarity. Every American action to prevent it reveals it instead."
I wouldn’t change a word. The only thing that's changed since I wrote it is that even the arsonists now smell the smoke.
Src for the Atlantic article: https://t.co/ItED9WS9Kn](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HIBa-IQacAAr9O1.jpg)
Let us all not forget that Maggie Oliver claimed,(15 seconds in) Gordon Brown sent out a circular in 2008 telling police officers not to prosecute the grooming gangs, Keir Starmer was chief prosecutor also at that time. They & Harriet Harmen have history!
@SenSchumer Very important Chuck, stay focussed on the real issues. Forget all that cost of living stuff, the Epstein stuff; fake news mate. It's all about the aliens.
Myra Hindley appointed as Minister for Children and Families 🥴
Quick check on the Hungarian inauguration
One of my most popular articles ever included a long extract from a powerful closing speech by barrister Rajiv Menon during a Palestine Action trial in January. In the end, the jury refused to convict the six defendants.
Menon is now on trial for that closing speech – for reminding the jury that they had a 350-year-old right in law to follow their conscience in reaching a verdict, even if it meant defying a direction from the judge to convict.
Paradoxically, Menon joked in his speech that, because of that earlier legal principle, the judge, unlike his counterpart in 1670, could not lock them, the jurors, up were they to choose to follow their consciences.
Instead, the judge is seeking to lock up the barrister. Does 2026 qualify as an improvement on 1670?
It is believed that this is the first time a barrister has been tried for comments made to a jury in his closing speech. That should serve as a potent reminder of just us how authoritarian the current political moment is, and of how quickly long-established legal rights are being dismantled to protect British collusion in genocide.
Read my article – and the part of the speech for which Menon is being tried – here: https://t.co/RyDHG3Iz81
A new favourite artist, Florine Stettheimer, the detailed worlds she crafted are so animated and stylish in their candour.
Probably China's greatest achievement: they ended the free market in the U.S.
In the 1930s up to 600 Chinese settled in Vienna, Austria. One of them was Yeh Jon Tchen from Zhejiang who opened one of the first Chinese restaurants in the city - the Shanghai Speisehaus on the Meidlinger Hauptstraße. https://t.co/Ll3hpVXxzg
Ciao, Paolo! Don't do anything I wouldn't do!
AI 1970s Italian Crime movie clip: Midjourney 8.1 + Nano Banana Pro + Kling 3 Omni. Made on @Kling_ai
@FareedZakaria @NewYorker @praddenkeefe A spectacular book and a great example of how a brilliant author can explore a story to find so many themes and ideas, all the while writing a gripping page turner. Couldn't put it down
Böyle böyle sinemayı sevdik.
Les Dimanches de Ville-d'Avray (1962)
You've probably seen APA Hotels everywhere in Japan—over 900 properties with that orange-and-black logo. What you might not know: the budget chain places books in guest rooms denying the Nanjing Massacre, written by the founder himself.
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