The Trump regime's ill-advised foray in Iran is a massive strategic blunder on all levels. I know, I know. Captain Obvious speaks. But aside from the clear and present problems it has created, it demonstrates in painful detail how the United States can't actually lock down control of a situation just by walking into the room.
The shenanigans of Bush 43 did the same thing. His daddy just got lucky with the first Gulf War. Junior threw us into two quagmires with his administration's military responses to the crimes of 9-11-2001. But in both of those cases, the wrong thing to do at least had widespread popular support for the move into Afghanistan, and some degree of acceptance for the foolishness in Iraq. We enjoyed an illusion of progress in both cases, with casualty figures to US forces that fell far enough below Vietnam standards to quell widespread protest at home.
Never underestimate the soothing power of being safe from the danger that you support sending other people to face. If there had been a draft for either Afghanistan or Iraq, appropriate-age American citizens would have turned out in flash mobs.
In the current situation, with a regime run by 12-year-olds whose military experience mostly consists of war movies and fevered religious fantasies, the people in power lurched forward with all the restraint and forethought of an angry drunk who just heard something he didn't like. They happen to have one on staff.
The power of the United States from the 1950s onward depended on very careful image control. We faltered in Korea, and face-planted in Vietnam. Behind our adversaries in both cases stood powerful backers in the form of the USSR and communist China. The real powers in the world decided that it wasn't worth starting World War III over some turf battles in eastern Asia, but that it was okay to squander the lives of soldiers and luckless civilians in the vicinity just to feel each other out. Unlimited war would have destroyed the world. Limited war merely served to illuminate the limitations of the power of the United States. We saved face by remaining a fearsome engine of destruction on a global scale, for all that we couldn't defeat the military equivalent of swarms of gnats on the micro level.
So much of making the world a better place consists of holding off a devastating conflict while our species slowly matures and genuinely learns to play nicely with each other. Some people believe that we are so deeply flawed that it will never happen. Not with an attitude like that it won't.
We face particular danger now because forces behind the current regime genuinely believe that World War III will bring Jesus Christ back to punish the wicked and reward the faithful. Nuclear holocaust isn't a deterrent. There's a strong suicidal element to religions based on the idea that things only get good after you're dead in this world and gloriously restored in the next one. "Gone on to a better place..." Get out the sack cloth and ashes. Start whipping yourself in penitence. Do any of them really believe that shit? Do any of the performatively pious disciples of prosperity gospel really want to plunge with us poors into the fiery hell of global war? I don't know. Highly insulated people who can fulfill their every material desire with a text or a phone call can get pretty crazy.
In summary: The power of the United States has depended in large part on flashy weapons and swagger. We do have some highly trained, deadly mofos on the payroll. However, once they're committed in one place, they aren't available to commit somewhere else. Our forces are designed to be able to fight conventional militaries on two fronts, but conventional warfare is on the way out. Threats are evolving rapidly in the form of numerous, low-cost weapons that can filter through defenses tailored to fewer, larger attackers. On one hand, you have to move with the times and update your defense capabilities. On the other, the constant pace of the arms race should make us question the idea of killing each other over control of our tiny little island in space.
As a species, we're pissing away time and resources. How much petroleum has gone up in smoke in the past three weeks, when the regime came into office in part on the idea of increasing global supply? Set aside for the moment the fact that we should have been weaning off of petroleum for the past 50 years. We didn't, and we need it while we work on getting away from it now. But the boneheads in charge are blowing it up and simultaneously demolishing our stature worldwide in lasting ways. We will have far less say in global affairs going forward, because we have proven as a people that we lack the capacity for deep thought and mature action. We let these assholes have power.
Maybe we needed this to begin the many aspects of reckoning that we have been running away from since the 1860s. Hell, it's been longer than that. But the 1860s will do. Every issue remains valid. Progress has been rolled back. Illusory gains revealed as false. We stand revealed. Bluster won't save us. We can't retreat to our former stances, because they have been undermined. We can only go forward, demonstrating through consistent action that we have learned better and will do better. So we're probably fucked. I don't want to believe that, but I have to throw it out there to see how it ages. I've wanted to be wrong about my view of the future for my entire adult life. I'm still waiting for an improvement substantial enough to make me regret not having kids. Things have definitely jumped in the wrong direction for that since 2015.
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