Goliath’s defeat: What Iran reveals about America’s future

The deal reached by the US and Iran seems likely to end their 107-day war. More than a mere conflict in the Middle East, the war has brought major changes to the US-led world order that is now more than half a century old. This article will look at the erosion of the US system of hegemony, changes to the balance of power in the Middle East, and fractures in the Western system of alliances. While wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan revealed the failure of the US’ strategic judgment, the 107-day-war in Iran is on a different level altogether. While this war, too, represents a failure of strategic judgment, it also demonstrated on the battlefield how the US’ hegemony and unassailable advantage in national and military power are being eroded. In 2018, during his first term in office, US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the international agreement that sought to regulate Iran’s nuclear program. Then, in late February of this year, in the second year of his second term, Trump joined Israel in a war against Iran. Over the course of more than 100 days of fighting, the US military was unable to force Iran to capitulate. If anything, it was the US that was under pressure from Iran, which seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit for 20% of the world’s maritime supply of crude oil. After protracted negotiations, the US reached a deal with Iran on Sunday to end the war. But the resulting memorandum of understanding is not likely to improve upon the JCPOA framework. Many both at home and overseas demand to know why the war was fought, and the Iran war will probably be added to the long list of US military failures along with the Vietnam War, the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan. After the quagmire of those three land wars, the US adopted the doctrine of surgical strikes in its war against Iran, seeking to bring the Iranian regime to its knees through naval and air power alone, without deploying ground forces. Indeed, Trump has been a faithful practitioner of the surgical strike doctrine, which was elaborated under President Bill Clinton. Since beginning his second term in office last January, Trump has launched military strikes in seven countries altogether (Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen). Military operations ostensibly aimed at wiping out drug smugglers continue in the Caribbean even now. The Trump administration seeks to swiftly end wars with cutting-edge precision weaponry without resorting to ground troops. The war in Iran represented a major e