A quick and scary observation

 There are a lot of things to analyze over the next while, but here's the first thing that scares me:

This war is the first time in a hundred years that a major and long cold war has truly gone hot.

In the early 21st century, there are four major cold wars. The US and China. The EU and Russia. India and Pakistan. Israel and Iran. India/Pakistan's had some terrifying flareups, but they always backed down from the brink. Obviously Ukraine is a kind of proxy war for Russia to expand near the EU's territory. If the Taiwan invasion happens (and it will, probably soon), it would be an ominous blow that cuts into the US's sphere of influence around East Asia and will only embolden China to claim more territory.

But none of them flared into direct conflict. There is a general consensus that too much is at risk for a cold war to ever go hot. At stake in the original Cold War were half a billion lives at least, and if enough WMD's were fired, an atmospheric poison could ignite that killed many more. If there are four separate cold wars, then at stake are far, far more lives than half a billion.

The difference with Israel/Iran is that Iran is the only one of these eight powers to not have nuclear weapons, and if Iran did, it would likely be much more willing to use them than any of the others.

But that said, you do not take a cold war hot without the gravest seriousness. A seriousness that Netanyahu clearly lacks. We'll get into Netanyahu's motivations another day, but in the meantime, just know this: Netanyahu authorized this operation in November 2024. What was he waiting for?

The answer, I'm afraid, is only too obvious.

War is an inevitable part of the human experience. When international norms break down, so do the guarantees that countries will remain secure. Therefore, there's a paradox that can't help occurring. Countries can only reestablish their security by initiating a war by surprise before their opponent does. And even if that's not true, there's almost never been an example of countries and leaders who think it isn't.

Not since Germany and England fought in the trenches have two major rivals met on the battlefield in a total war. If the precedent is set for one of these cold wars to go hot, the world's security is destabilized to likelihood that others will too.