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ericmaylast Saturday at 1:54 PM3 repliesview on HN

It’s not a one-way street on principle. Italy could go do whatever it wanted. It’s a one-way street in capabilities to take action.

There isn’t anything stopping Italy, the sovereign state, from doing anything it thinks it could do. What is stopping it from bombing San Francisco (besides it not making sense whatsoever) would be that the US would physically stop the Italian Air Force and navy.


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johanvtslast Saturday at 3:34 PM

The US spend years building the UN and the system of international law and it benefits a lot from it. The US is like 4% of the world population and 2% of the area, but dominates pretty much anything you care to measure. It is really not in US interest to overthrow the current system. Its wild that the main threat to international order is coming from the US. Not just this latests development, but the talk of annexing Canada and Greenland, the undermining WTO and WHO etc. Read Hobbes, even the strong do not benefit from “jungle law”.

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kristopolouslast Saturday at 1:57 PM

The point is we should be adult enough in 2026 to have an international order that we can draw a line between our modern behavior and what we did in the bronze age.

If you think this kind of caveman-era diplomacy is the future And want humans to be a multi-planetary species then lol, good luck.

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monerozcashlast Saturday at 4:03 PM

It's also rather telling that nobody in Caracas seems to have really tried to stop the US from doing this, it doesn't take all that much to shoot down at least one helicopter.

You'd expect them to have air defenses on high alert 24/7 prepared to immediately respond to any US actions.

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