Your father made you quit school in the middle of the eighth grade, to work in the cotton fields. But farming was becoming increasingly unprofitable in the 1920’s. Soon, everyone in your family looked for some other way to earn a living.
As car ownership spread, you saw the increasing demand for auto repair services, so you and one of your brothers taught yourselves how to fix Model T’s and keep them on the road.
When World War II came, you were not eager to join the army, but you knew the danger our country faced. When Uncle Sam called, you did your duty. Soon, the Army discovered your mechanical skill and put it to good use. After D-Day, as the Army moved across France and into Germany, you and your platoon followed just behind the front lines, repairing the tanks, keeping the trucks on the road, and making sure the jeeps remained serviceable.
You understood that, whatever the personal cost and sacrifice, we had to defeat the Nazis.
In a time of danger and crisis, you did what you had to do, to defend our country and our way of life, and to make sure I grew up in a free society.
America’s ailing one-trick pony: Trump’s excessive faith in military power is squarely within the US tradition
Count the obliterated targets. Tally the corpses of senior leaders. Behold America’s military prowess. By any measure, Iran has taken a pummelling. Yet threats of more US strikes are yielding no concessions. Donald Trump’s threats, including bombing Iran into the Stone Age, have sounded empty since early March. Yet he keeps repeating them. Threatening a failed tactic over and over again and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.
It is rightly observed that America has a greater margin of error than any other power. The US has the world’s most powerful military and is flanked by vast oceans to its east and west and benign neighbours to its north and south. But such blessings can induce lazy thinking. Decades before Trump’s Operation Epic Fury, America picked up the habit of confusing its military superiority with an ability to impose its will on faraway lands. The only thing that is novel about Trump’s Iran war is the immediate obviousness of its bankruptcy.
Epic Fury is no departure from American tradition. When Trump was a young man pulling strings to escape military service in Vietnam — a privilege he shared with other future US presidents, including George W Bush — the Pentagon announced regular “kill ratios” of the number of enemy dead versus American. The Tet Offensive in early 1968 was heralded as a major US victory since so many Vietcong insurgents had been killed. In reality, Tet delivered a crushing political defeat to America since it conveyed the enemy’s iron will.
The Pentagon did not see it that way. Pete Hegseth, the US “secretary of war”, is a very different figure to Robert McNamara, the then secretary of defence. But his playbook is similar. In crude terms, success is judged by how many things and people America can blow up. Hegseth’s favourite words are “precision” and “lethality”. The similarity between Lyndon B Johnson’s Operation Rolling Thunder and Trump’s Epic Fury is almost exact. Just as LBJ used carpet-bombing of North Vietnam to prod elusive concessions in negotiations, Trump’s missile threats are wasted on Iran. As the Taliban used to say during the two-decade US military operation in Afghanistan: “America has the watches, we have the time.” The Taliban regained power five years ago.
Trump seemed to grasp the limits of America’s one-trick ponies better than most US presidents. His denouncement of Bush’s Iraq war was a key propellant of his 2016 hostile takeover of the Republican Party. The irony is that he is now riding that pony into the same old quicksand. Trump can run the gamut of America’s greatest hits in the same interview. One moment he is proclaiming mission accomplished as Bush did at an early stage of the Iraq war. The next he is dangling peace with honour, as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger branded America’s retreat from Vietnam. When his blood is really up he demands second world war-style unconditional surrender.
But his only way out is via sustained diplomacy on multiple fronts. On Monday he called off the next wave of strikes on Iran scheduled for Tuesday. He wanted to give the Pakistan-mediated talks another chance. At the forefront of Trump’s mind is that he must do better than Barack Obama did with his 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Nowhere in his mind, apparently, is the recollection that it took Obama’s negotiators 20 months to nail it down. The idea that much less knowledgeable US officials could do better in a few days is delusional. That Obama could have pulled off a serious agreement without once threatening to bomb Iran is inconceivable to him.
The lesson from Epic Fury is the same one that Obama drew from Iraq. Diplomacy should always be the first resort. There is no need even to mention US military power, still less to brag about it daily. To paraphrase a maxim, the military that fights best is that which fights least. The comforting take is to blame Epic Fury on Trump’s unique recklessness. But he is no aberration. Once you screen out his uniquely self-defeating verbal incontinence, you discern a Washington traditionalist. His approach is the reductio ad absurdumof one lost US war after another preceded by strings of victories on the battlefield.
As the world googles Thucydides and digests the emerging G2 China-US reality, the question is whether Washington is capable of reinventing itself. Better informed US figures than Trump are calling on him to “finish the job” in Iran. Had they learnt from the recent or distant past, they would be revising their advice. But that would require thinking. Good strategy is the product of intellectual humility. Trump’s lack of it puts him in plentiful company.
A Trenchant Analysis of the Difference Between Brute Force and Power
Tomorrow, we are told, Trump will meet with his military advisors to talk about Iran. Now, ladies and germs, I am no Nostradamus, but let me say this: In a world of great uncertainty, one may confidently predict that (1) Pete Hegseth and his buffoons will bomb Iran some more, (2) Iran will respond by bombing some U.S. military bases in the Middle East, (3) Iran will probably launch some terrorist attacks in the United States, and (4) in a few days’ time, we’ll be further from a resolution than we are today.
Meanwhile, Lydia Polgreen (graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, veteran reporter, and now New York Times columnist) offers up as astute an analysis of violence versus power as one is going to find.
Trump Has Done More Than Misjudge Iran
In January, Stephen Miller gave a blustery and revealing interview to the CNN journalist Jake Tapper. Flush with the triumph of the military raid to abduct Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, Miller was taking a victory lap. America was done being the world’s nice guy, footing the bill for a global order that no longer served its interests. From now on, he said, the gloves were off. America would act boldly and with unapologetic force to impose its will on the world.
This was seemingly the purest expression of Donald Trump’s theory of power, spoken by perhaps the most hard-line member of the administration. Indeed, America is the most powerful nation the world has ever known. Its economy is, by most measures, the world’s largest, and its currency dominates global markets. Above all, it commands the most advanced military on the planet, fueled by expensive, high-tech wizardry and the derring-do of its special forces.
It was with this pugnacious certainty that the Trump administration barreled into a reckless, unprovoked war against Iran more than two months ago. Trump clearly thought it would be a showcase of American might, unshackled from what Miller called the “niceties” of international law and powered by ruthless “kinetic” action, to borrow a favorite word of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Despite losing its leader and many other top officials, Iran has mounted a formidable response, inflicting widespread damage on America’s regional allies and military bases. By seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has grasped something akin to an economic nuclear weapon, sending fuel prices soaring and prompting shortages of key goods in many parts of the world.
“We live in a world,” Miller told Tapper, “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” The painful fallout of the Iran war provides an eloquent rebuttal. But the Trump administration has done more than misjudge American force and the wherewithal of its adversary. It has fundamentally misunderstood what power is, conflating it with the capacity to inflict violence when the two are, in truth, opposed.
Miller’s chest-thumping recalls one of the most ancient and influential texts about war, Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War.” Across eight detailed books, it tells the story of an epic fight between two rival hegemons in the Mediterranean, Athens and Sparta. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” the powerful Athenians tell the citizens of Melos, a neutral Greek island, ordering them to submit or be slaughtered.
This declaration is often cited as an ur-realist iron law of might equaling right. But there’s an irony that often escapes those who cite the line, perhaps because they didn’t read the whole text. If they had, they’d discover that the Melians were not powerless victims but cleareyed prophets. “And what is this but to make greater the enemies that you have already, and to force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of it?” the Melians asked their attackers.
Unmoved, the Athenians laid siege to the city, slaughtering all its men and enslaving its women and children. But the triumph at Melos was a false victory. Drunk on the violence they mistook for power, the Athenians blundered on to a far riskier gambit, an invasion of Sicily. The Athenians, initially divided on the war, were eventually persuaded by leaders who believed that the Sicilians were weak and corrupt. They were sitting ducks, unable to defend themselves against so fearsome a foe. It would be an easy victory bringing Athens greater glory.
But strength was not enough. The timbers of Athenian ships, enforcing a long blockade, rotted; supply lines dried up. The Athenians, increasingly short of money, had to impose new taxes to fund the war. Finally, in a fierce battle at Syracuse, they were routed. It wasn’t the end of Athens’ hegemony, but it was the beginning of the end. Eventually, Sparta took its place as the Mediterranean’s pre-eminent power.
It is not hard to see the parallels to America’s situation. Like the Athenians, the Trumpians saw their romp in Venezuela as a sign of their irrefutable power. And like the Athenians, they overreached — attacking an enemy they underestimated with muddled motives, uncertain support at home and no clear plan for victory. Entranced by their own capacity for violence, they thought their power to effect their will was limitless.
Their strategic mistake rested on a misreading of power. In 1970, the philosopher Hannah Arendt published a slim book, “On Violence.” In it, Arendt argues that violence is not a form of power but its opposite. Written amid America’s failing war in Vietnam, the book was partly critiquing the calls for violence among left radicals who opposed the war. Yet reading the book in recent weeks, I was struck by how resonant it is for the American predicament in the Persian Gulf.
Power, Arendt argued, is collective, consensual and relational. Violence, by contrast, is instrumental and coercive, its strength evaporating the moment the threat is evaded or withdrawn. “Violence can always destroy power,” Arendt wrote. “Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.”
We see this dynamic playing out in the stalemate with Iran today. For all America’s military prowess, its endless ability to inflict violence, including Trump’s barely veiled threat to use a nuclear weapon, Iran has not capitulated. Its brutal theocratic regime may be widely reviled by its own people, but in the face of obliteration many Iranians have rallied around their government. Years of economic isolation wrought by sanctions have honed the country’s survival skills.
Trump has been reduced to playing down Iranian attacks on American destroyers trying to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, calling them “a trifle.” Evidence has emerged of widespread damage to American military bases across the Gulf, turning barracks and mess halls into heaps of rubble and ash. The war has already cost $29 billion, according to the Pentagon, in what is surely a huge underestimate. And American intelligence officials have reportedly concluded Iran could endure the blockade for months.
Trump’s support back home, meanwhile, is in free fall. In poll after poll, large majoritiesof Americans say they oppose the war, do not understand its purpose and deeply dislike the havoc it is wreaking on their pocketbooks. Seeing the political peril ahead, Trump has urgently sought an offramp, promising an imminent deal even as he issues empty threats of total annihilation and baseless claims of total victory. Few seem to believe him.
“All governments rest on opinion,” as the Federalist Papers famously declare. Yet Trump has been unable to persuade Americans to accept a modicum of suffering to achieve his strategic aims. For all his defiant projection of unbound command, the war has revealed extraordinary weakness at the core of his presidency, the true puniness of his power.
This weakness is hardly limited to the war. When Trump tried to use violence to prosecute his harsh deportation agenda in Minnesota, he was defeated by the relentless efforts of a coordinated, nonviolent civic opposition, which rallied public opinion against him. The vast operation in Minneapolis has been almost entirely abandoned, the presence of federal agents in the state dwindling from thousands to hundreds of agents, not much more than before the operation began.
Many of Trump’s attempts to rule through the different force of executive orders have met a similar fate — be they imposing tariffs, slashing government spending or building opulent monuments to himself. In the court of public opinion and even, at crucial moments, at the Supreme Court, Trump keeps losing his fights. Perhaps it is no surprise that Miller has been awfully quiet of late. His entire theory of power, and perhaps Trump’s presidency, is in peril.
Yet America, unlike Athens, faces no Sparta. Its only credible rival for global hegemony, China, has shown little interest in foreign adventurism. Instead, it has set about strengthening its power in an Arendtian fashion: through the accumulation of willing allies rather than coerced vassals, using trade deals, foreign investment and diplomacy. These are precisely the tools that the United States once used to great effect to build its power and wealth.
The Trump administration, however, has shown nothing but contempt for the patient work of building durable power based on consensus, preferring the blitzkrieg of violence. Last week’s long-awaited summit in Beijing underscored the divergence. “Our two countries should be partners rather than rivals,” China’s president, Xi Jinping, pointedly said. For the beleaguered Trump, the scale of defeat must have been unmissable.
Yesterday, I posted Robert Kagan’s interview on PBS Newshour. This morning, the talking heads are still talking about Kagan and his analysis of Trump’s dismal choices in Iran—and the high likelihood of a significant and lasting American defeat.
In The Atlantic, Kagan wrote,
Checkmate in Iran: Washington cant reverse or control the consequences of losing this war.
It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the world, because they were far from the main theaters of global competition. The initial failure in Iraq was mitigated by a shift in strategy that ultimately left Iraq relatively stable and unthreatening to its neighbors and kept the United States dominant in the region.
Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be “open,” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.
President Trump likes to talk about who has “the cards,” but whether he has any good ones left to play is not clear. The United States and Israel pounded Iran with devastating effectiveness for 37 days, killing much of the country’s leadership and destroying the bulk of its military, yet couldn’t collapse the regime or exact even the smallest concession from it. Now the Trump administration hopes that blockading Iran’s ports will accomplish what massive force could not. It’s possible, of course, but a regime that could not be brought to its knees by five weeks of unrelenting military attack is unlikely to buckle in response to economic pressure alone. Nor does it fear the anger of its populace. As the Iran scholar Suzanne Maloney noted recently, “A regime that slaughtered its own citizens to silence protests in January is fully prepared to impose economic hardships on them now.”
Some supporters of the war are therefore calling for the resumption of military strikes, but they cannot explain how another round of bombing will accomplish what 37 days of bombing did not. More military action will inevitably lead Iran to retaliate against neighboring Gulf States; the war’s advocates have no response to that, either. Trump halted attacks on Iran not because he was bored but because Iran was striking the region’s vital oil and gas facilities. The turning point came on March 18, when Israel bombed Iran’s South Pars gas field and Iran retaliated by attacking Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest natural-gas-export plant, causing damage to production capacity that will take years to repair. Trump responded by declaring a moratorium on further strikes against Iran’s energy facilities and then declaring a cease-fire, despite Iran’s not having made a single concession.
The risk calculus that forced Trump to back down a month ago still holds. Even if Trump were to carry out his threat to destroy Iran’s “civilization” through more bombing, Iran would still be able to launch many missiles and drones before its regime went down—assuming it did go down. Just a few successful strikes could cripple the region’s oil and gas infrastructure for years if not decades, throwing the world, and the United States, into a prolonged economic crisis. Even if Trump wanted to bomb Iran as part of an exit strategy—looking tough as a way of masking his retreat—he can’t do that without risking this catastrophe.
If this isn’t checkmate, it’s close. In recent days, Trump has reportedly asked the U.S. intelligence community to assess the consequences of simply declaring victory and walking away. You can’t blame him. Hoping for regime collapse is not much of a strategy, especially when the regime has already survived repeated military and economic pummeling. It could fall tomorrow, or six months from now, or not at all. Trump doesn’t have that much time to wait, as oil climbs toward $150 or even $200 a barrel, inflation rises, and global food and other commodity shortages kick in. He needs a faster resolution.
But any resolution other than America’s effective surrender holds enormous risks that Trump has not so far been willing to take. Those who glibly call on Trump to “finish the job” rarely acknowledge the costs. Unless the U.S. is prepared to engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold; unless it is prepared to risk the loss of warships convoying tankers through a contested strait; unless it is prepared to accept the devastating long-term damage to the region’s productive capacities likely to result from Iranian retaliation—walking away now could seem like the least bad option. As a political matter, Trump may well feel he has a better chance of riding out defeat than of surviving a much larger, longer, and more expensive war that could still end in failure.
Defeat for the United States, therefore, is not only possible but likely. Here is what defeat looks like.
Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz. The common assumption that, one way or another, the strait will reopen when the crisis ends is unfounded. Iran has no interest in returning to the status quo ante. People talk of a split between hard-liners and moderates in Tehran, but even moderates must understand that Iran cannot afford to let the strait go, no matter how good a deal it thought it could get. For one thing, how reliable is any deal with Trump? He all but boasted of replicating the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by approving the killing of Iran’s leadership amid negotiations. The Iranians cannot be sure that Trump won’t decide to attack again within a few months of striking a deal. They also know that the Israelis may attack again, as they never feel constrained from acting when they perceive their interests to be threatened.
And Israel’s interests will be threatened. As many Iran experts have noted, the regime in Tehran currently stands to emerge from the crisis much stronger than it was before the war, having not only retained its potential nuclear capacity but also gained control of an even more effective weapon: the ability to hold the global energy market hostage. When the Iranians talk of “reopening” the strait, they still mean to keep the strait under their control. Iran will be able not only to demand tolls for passage, but to limit transit to those nations with which it has good relations. If a nation behaves in a way that Iran’s rulers don’t like, they will be able to exact punishment merely by slowing, or even threatening to slow, the flow of that nation’s cargo ships in and out of the strait.
The power to close or control the flow of ships through the strait is greater and more immediate than the theoretical power of Iran’s nuclear program. This leverage will allow the leaders in Tehran to force nations to lift sanctions and normalize relations or face penalties. Israel will find itself more isolated than ever, as Iran grows richer, rearms, and preserves its options to go nuclear in the future. It may even find itself unable to go after Iran’s proxies: In a world where Iran wields influence over the energy supply of so many nations, Israel could face enormous international pressure not to provoke Tehran in Lebanon, Gaza, or anywhere else.
The new status quo in the strait will also occasion a substantial shift in relative power and influence both regionally and globally. In the region, the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran. As the Iran scholars Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh wrote recently, “The Gulf Arab economies were built under the umbrella of American hegemony. Take that away—and the freedom of navigation that goes with it—and the Gulf states will ineluctably go begging to Tehran.”
They will not be the only ones. All nations that depend on energy from the Gulf will have to work out their own arrangements with Iran. What choice will they have? If the United States with its mighty Navy can’t or won’t open the strait, no coalition of forces with just a fraction of the Americans’ capability will be able to, either. The Anglo-French initiative to police the strait after a cease-fire is a bit of a joke. French President Emmanuel Macron has made it clear that this “coalition” will operate only under peaceful conditions in the strait: It will escort ships, but only if they don’t need an escort. Yet with Iran in control, the strait is not going to be safe again for a long time. China presumably has some influence over Tehran, but even China cannot force open the strait by itself.
One effect of this transformation may be an expanding great-power naval race. In the past, most of the world’s nations, including China, counted on the United States to both prevent and address such emergencies. Now the nations in Europe and Asia that depend on access to the Persian Gulf’s resources are helpless against the loss of energy supplies that are vital to their economic and political stability. How long can they tolerate this before they start building their own fleets, as a means of wielding influence in an every-nation-for-itself world where order and predictability have broken down?
The American defeat in the Gulf will have broader global ramifications as well. The whole world can see that just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight. The questions this raises about America’s readiness for another major conflict may or may not prompt Xi Jinping to launch an attack on Taiwan, or Vladimir Putin to step up his aggression against Europe. But at the very least America’s allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.
The global adjustment to a post-American world is accelerating. America’s once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties.
When preparing a witness to testify, one standard piece of advice is this: “If opposing counsel asks you a question in the form of ‘Is it possible that …’ your answer is that ‘Anything is possible.’”
Meaning that anything is metaphysically possible.
With that thought in mind, is it metaphysically possible that something will happen inside Iran than will produce a new set of rulers that will agree to terms Trump can accept? Yes, it is, because anything is metaphysically possible.
Or, is it metaphysically possible that, one fine day, whoever is in charge in Iran will start believing Trump’s delusional blustering bullshit threats and surrender to Trump?
You know the answer to that question.
Do Sensible People Plan Their Affairs Based on Assumed Future States That are Metaphysically Possible but Vanishingly Unlikely to be Real?
You know the answer to that question, too.
So, How Will the Iran War Actually be Resolved?
Kagan thinks Trump will not send ground troops into Iran, and he is almost surely right.
Kagan thinks escorting ships through the strait isn’t going to work, and that appears to be right.
It’s likely that Trump will try some more air attacks. It’s overwhelmingly likely that additional air attacks won’t budge Iran’s negotiating position.
That leaves these possibilities: One, Trump lets the situation fester as the world sinks into economic depression. Two, Trump has to give up, let Iran keeps the nukes, and let Iran keep the Strait of Hormuz.
Why, Then, Do Sensible People Have So Much Trouble Grasping the Nature and Likely Duration of the Iran War Catastrophe?
Evidently because, as it turns out, cognitive normality bias is one hell of a tenacious sucker.
Finally, Here’s an Nice Little Thought Experiment
A miracle occurs tomorrow, and your preferred candidate becomes President next week. Say Pete Buttigieg. Or say whoever you like.
How does our new fantasy President resolve the Iran crisis?
I agree that we should make ethical judgments about issues of public policy. And I even agree that there is a time and a place to hurl slogans and jeremiads. But I also hold the—apparently eccentric—view that ethical judgments and jeremiads are best preceded by trying actually to understand a complex situation.
Let us agree, at least for the sake of this discussion, that the majority opinion in the recent Supreme Court case on the Voting Rights Act was wrongly decided, deeply flawed as a matter of law, and reflected all manner of ethical shortcomings on the part of the Republican majority.
That still leaves a lot of questions. One would be whether there is any moral/political/practical difference between 1) gerrymandering a lot of Black Louisianans into a weirdly shaped congressional district, as was formerly thought to be required by the Voting Rights Act, see below, versus
2) dissecting the city of Memphis into thirds, and then putting each third into a majority White district, as the Tennessee Legislature did last week.
A contrasting voice—and one very much worth listening to—is that of Mara Gay, a biracial woman, distinguished journalist, and member of the New York Times Editorial Board.
I commend this video to your thoughtful attention.
Teddy Roosevelt’s view of negotiation was “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Orange Mussolini’s idea is to speak bigly, threaten things that cannot or will not actually do, and leave your adversary no doubt about how desperate you are.
Facing MAGA 