No not control it, certainly not. I get the feeling they might think they could though, and mobilize towards that goal. I don’t necessarily think they’d win, but I just think they’re prepared to launch head-long into it and it’ll make a huge mess for everyone no matter how it really goes.
And yeah as soon as anyone hits the red button, the entire calculus changes (and also likely the planetary ecosystem along with it).
Yeah especially if this info about the US knowing about the attack and intentionally playing dumb as a distraction bears out, then it’s possible they’ve already drawn their line in the sand and there’s no going back now. But who knows, TACO amirite?? 
Likely. I think we’ll see a lot of drones and big missiles and carpet bombing type stuff before any boots hit the ground, if even at all.
I don’t disagree; it certainly wouldn’t be a walk in the park the way Desert Storm was portrayed as, but all the middle east excursions so far have felt pretty phoned-in and half-assed, like they never really had a good enough reason to full-on invade anywhere, just station a bunch of troops to conduct police actions and target the specific and relatively small groups (while naturally casualty-ing huge numbers of otherwise un-involved civilians, of course).
Those felt like they were invasions sold as being based on the pretext that there were some dangerous people in an otherwise neutral country that had to be rooted out, or the state apparatus as a potential threat with enhanced capabilities (chemical weapons, well-organized individual bombers etc).
I worry that the actual state launching actual clear-as-day attacks (justified though they may be in reality) would be such a juicy pretext to not just send in some troops to occupy, but to really start crazy bombing at a new scale we haven’t seen yet. If they consider this a full WW2 level mobilization, I’m not saying they would win, but at least the conflict is going to be way bigger and more intense and direct than anything we’ve seen in a long time outside of the eastern bloc.
Again, it would be a huge shit-show no doubt, and very possibly unsuccessful, but I think the cost to human life will be on an entirely different scale than we are used to in the last 30-odd years (which has already been catastrophic, obviously).
And of course on top of all that, just about everybody involved is nuclear equipped, so anyone that’s feels they are losing too badly could always just…
I mean good on em and all, but this does feel like it would disrupt commerce enough for the empire to make up an excuse to roll in. If they really haven’t become fully equipped* yet, it seems like it would likely go pretty bad for everyone involved.
I wonder more and more every day if it isn’t just the “unofficially-nuclear-equipped rogue state that has made it clear they will take everyone else down with them” thing.
Shit, they probably have the footage for real, they only just need to scrub off the IOF logos on the killers.
Totally agreed, that’s all I’m getting at. I don’t think they’re gonna win, I just think they’re gonna try real hard and leave a lot of people dead (and a small group of people very rich) like usual.