Prof. Michael Hudson : Why the US didn’t and can’t attack Iran

https://substack.com/@michaelhudsoneconomist

Larry Johnson today (Sonar23) has a good explanation of why Trump didn’t attack: the US has run out of air fuel and missiles. The air force doesn’t have enough fuel to mount a huge supply operation from Britain, Israel, etc., and not enough missiles to bomb Iran the way Trump would have liked to do. An air attack would have depleted air fuels throughout the world, as the US has been subsidizing the world supply with exports from the National Petroleum Reserve.

So the army said “No.”

Back in my Global Fracture (1978) I wrote that the only kind of war that “democracies” can afford is atomic war. I defined “democracies” as countries where voters would oppose any military draft (remember the student protests that brought President Johnson down, highlighted by the Kent State shootings). Without a land invasion, you can’t take control of a country no matter how much you bomb it.

So Trump is just left sitting there, while the trade paralysis is draining petroleum reserves – and NATO and the US are helping Ukraine send missiles to bomb  Russian oil refineries to intensify the global oil and gas squeeze.

The whole rest of the world will see by this autumn that the US adventure in West Asia has caused a world depression – thinking that it will come out ahead.

This has got to lead to a world revulsion that will end up isolating the US and its political puppets in Europe and Asia.