Now that the tenuous ceasefire between the United States and Iran has broken down and mutual strikes have resumed, Washington seems to be spiraling back into a conflict that most analysts, and the public, regard as a fateful blunder.
Some commentators have interpreted the Iran war as a turning point in U.S. foreign policy, marking the end of its military primacy. To some extent, this diagnosis actually overstates the ultimate significance of the Iran war, while understating its continuity with the United States’ failed conflicts over many decades and the lessons we should draw from them generally.
The Iran war should instead be seen as simply the latest demonstration that the United States’ attempts to coerce other—even vastly weaker—states through military force are remarkably ineffective. We must slay the oddly persistent myth that military power, in itself, offers abundant leverage to alter the behavior of other states if the U.S. is going to avoid similar blunders in the future.
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