There's really not very robust sources in the Anglophone world on this war. Best I've read is a book called Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe by a French scholar, avaliable here: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=D9F45E6B6E34D3D05EBB477305EC7102
Don't want to minimize the genocide one bit, since it's truly horrific, but the bloodiest 21st century war is the Second Congo War which had around four million deaths. Besides, the genocide in Gaza can hardly be called a "war" at all.
Perfectly captures the feeling of everything these days. Thanks for posting.
The possibility of the United States taking in China is non-zero, yes. But China is not Iran. You get into a hot war with China, you're fucked. China's air force right now has parity with the United States. Give it a few more years and China will have sixth generation fighters, America won't. China's anti-ship missiles and ballistics could destroy the entire US Pacific fleet and its bases with little effort. The United States lacks the will to pursue a war like this, and the global economy would implode.
And he's gonna lose as an independent, unless he runs as a Republican in which case he'll lose as a Republican
No amount of money in the world can get Eric "Mr. Türkiye" Adams to win the mayoral race running as a Republican in New York City. They could blow billions of dollars like Bloomberg during his 2020 run and maybe Adams would get 30%. His approval rating right now is 20%. Almost 60% of New Yorkers not only disapprove, 60% of New Yorkers think he should resign from office right now. No amount of money can make that ghoul win.
Guess that makes sense. Can't launch nukes if you can defend your own airspace in the first place.
If China's smart they'll give some heavy discounts.
They need a Persian fork of RedStarOS.
This is by far the most important thing Iran should be doing (outside of developing nukes, obviously). They need to buy every single air defense platform they can get their hands on, no matter the price. Glad to see there's some urgency there. If China has any sense at all, they'll offer them to Iran for something close to free so long as they share all the data of performance with them. It won't be long before those defense platforms are pitted against Israel's and the United States' most advanced jets.
Iran also needs to start building up an air force. A few SU-35s from Russia isn't going to cut it. They should look to what Pakistan did, and buy up a load of J-10s from the Chinese. It's a fourth gen fighter, but far better than what Iran is currently fielding, which is effectively not an air force at all. It would be great if they could purchase some J-35 (a fifth gen stealth fighter available for export by the Chinese, as Pakistan's got an order for a few dozen), but I'm not sure if China would sell them to Iran just yet.
Just to give you an idea of how woeful the Iranian air force is, their fighter jets primarily consist of the J-7, a Chinese built copy of the MiG-21 (from 1959), a few dozen F-14s (from the '70s), and some F-4s and F-5s (also American fighters from the 60s). They apparently finalized an order to purchase some Su-35s from Russia in 2023, and confirmed that the order is taking place in 2025, and they have the jet trainers, but we don't know how many they bought and they're not in service. This would be huge, because the Su-35 is a modern fourth gen fighter platform that has performed well in Ukraine. It's still a fourth gen fighter, so still gets shot down by Patriot batteries, but it can at least hold its own and would provide a significant boost to Iran's air force. They could at least fly them without having them immediately destroyed by the IDF, and would be able to run defensive sorties to shoot down Israeli drones and protect Iranian airspace.
Yeah it's better framed as an African world war, since there were a dozen nations involved in different fronts, with various different sides, insurgency groups, states with air forces, different phases, etc. It was a total shit show. I'm glad the third one didn't spiral out of control. The mineral deal the DRC signed with Trump is pretty awful but not nearly as awful as a full blown third Congo War at the scale of the second.