Long War Analyses

I used a previous long analysis by Rosemary Kelanic earlier. She’s back again—followed by an equally lengthy response from another analyst. But they’re very readable and cogently reasoned:

Rosemary Kelanic @RKelanic

Wars reveal information about countries’ relative military capabilities and interests. That’s one of the most important insights from the bargaining model of war.

Iran believed before the war that fighting the U.S. would strengthen its bargaining position -- and Iran was correct.

This war has revealed that Iran wouldn’t topple after Khamenei’s death, that Iran is highly resolved, and it can inflict damage across the Gulf at low cost, indefinitely.

It revealed that Iran can gain massive leverage -- and perhaps even collect “tolls” -- from controlling shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

By contrast, the war has *hurt* U.S. & Israeli bargaining power compared to where it was before the Geneva talks in February. That means we’ll get worse terms now than if we’d accepted Iran’s proposal then.

Why is the U.S./Israel position worse?

Decapitation strikes failed to induce Iran to surrender (always an unlikely prospect), nullifying the U.S./Israeli theory of victory by day 3. No new plausible theory of victory has emerged, and it’s doubtful one will. That hurts the U.S. position.

Trump has proven highly sensitive to oil market swings, and even *removed sanctions* on Iranian oil. As @edwardfishman noted, Iran gained more sanctions relief from closing Hormuz than through any diplomatic means, including the JCPOA. The disruption to oil markets, and Trump’s concern about them, also hurts the U.S. position.

Now that the war has bogged down into an attrition battle, where Iran can impose costs with cheap means like drones and missiles and Israeli interceptors seem to be running low, the U.S. and Israel are on the losing end of the damage and casualties curve. Costs and casualties will get worse, not better, over time, and that further hurts U.S./Israeli bargaining leverage.

This possibility is what Danny Davis says has been “greenlit” for this weekend.

Trump is now considering, frankly, foolhardy military gambits, potentially to seize Kharg, islands in Hormuz, or perhaps the highly enriched uranium trapped somewhere under rubble in Iran. These would be significant escalations putting U.S. troops on the ground. None are likely to end the war, and all would likely cause U.S. casualties.

In the business lingo, Trump’s BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) is way worse -- not least because of the shadow of Afghanistan.

The U.S. forces being surged to the Middle East (2 MEUs plus some airborne units) are comparable to what George W. Bush used to invade Afghanistan in the autumn 2001.

What started out as a limited mission to topple the Taliban and capture Osama bin Laden, who instead escaped through the Tora Bora mountains, evolved into a ground campaign that eventually ballooned to over 100k U.S. troops in 2011.

I personally don’t see any way that we could ever get 100k troops into Iran.

The clear imperative here is for Trump to deescalate, credibility costs be damned. This war is existential for Iran but not for the United States, Iran will keep fighting with cheap means like drones, and it will eventually outlast the U.S. just like the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

That, or Iran could fracture into chaos, creating refugee flows and breeding terrorism for decades to come. (Terrorism isn’t an existential threat to the U.S., but we shouldn’t be creating the conditions for it.)

Trump doesn’t like backing down, but that is what needs to happen here, and stat, before ill-fated escalation leads to more needless deaths.

And not to be callous, but the economic damage to the world and to you and me will escalate.

Here’s the response. I’m guessing that Policy Tensor is a protege of Philip Pilkington in some way:

Policy Tensor @policytensor

Seconded for the most part. Let me add a few notes.

— There are three theories of air power. We know Douhetist terror bombing has never destroyed the will of the enemy to fight. Decapitation has now failed. As long as the US remains ‘up in the air’ there is only one path to avoiding strategic defeat: winning the interdiction war to disarm Iran.

— The interdiction theory of victory is ‘analytically attractive’ because it empirically testable in real time. If Iranian strike tempo is dwindling to zero, the US is winning; otherwise it is losing outright.

— The all-important interdiction war is going very poorly. I look at the attached map every day from ACLED, the gold standard of conflict data (https://acleddata.com/iran-crisis-live…). Iranian strike tempo shows no sign of dwindling.

To the contrary, depletion of interceptor inventories and the use of heavier missiles has dramatically increased the effectiveness of Iranian missile strikes, as we are seeing in the strikes on Israel.

— The Iranians’ interdiction/counterforce campaign has been surprisingly successful. At least 10 radars have been destroyed, partially blinding US forces and interceptor systems. US bases in the region have been largely evacuated, forcing the US to use European bases.

— There have been some big kills [against USrael]. Two dozen heavy drones and a half a dozen manned aircraft have been lost to Iranian fire/accidents, not clear which, including an F-35. A mighty carrier group has been put out of business.

— Iran enjoys escalation dominance. This was confirmed when Trump had to walk back his ultimatum. Iran has a very powerful threat at the top of the escalation ladder: the O&G infrastructure and water desalinization systems in the gulf are both under Iranian fire control.

— Iran holds horizontal escalation options in reserve. The Houthis have their ‘fingers on the trigger.’ That is a deterrent to keep the Saudis out of the war, and may be used at any time to expand the war and impose greater costs on the West.

— Iran retains a firm grip on the Hormuz weapon. No serious military option to retake Hormuz exists as long as the interdiction war is not won. No matter where you land the marines, they will be fully exposed to Iranian fire, including artillery fire. US force protection requirements, ultimately a function of casualty intolerance, mean that the Kharg idea etc are just not going to fly.

— The United States is at a crossroads. Either it swallows this military humiliation and accepts a ceasefire largely on Iranian terms, or it must send in ground forces to in a bid to retake Hormuz and restore US military prestige.

— If the US chooses a negotiated ceasefire, Iran will emerge as a regional hegemon with the Hormuz weapon firmly in its hands; and, having defeated the US in a high-intensity conventional war, as a great power in the international system.

— If the US chooses to escalate to a ground war, the war will last for years. This is because both force protection and the overriding objective of fire suppression will drive ever greater commitment of ground forces.

I disagree. I don’t believe Americans will stand for another endless war.

But the US cannot win the ground war under any circumstances because the division math. This means that the choice facing the aggressor is between accepting strategic defeat now at limited costs, or later at far, far higher costs.

— So the United States has already suffered a catastrophic military defeat. The multipolar world was a hypothesis until last month. Now it is a demonstrated military fact. It has obtained due to the diffusion of military technology. The US monopoly in precision-strike is now gone. Deterrence in Asia is now dead. This cannot but fail to have far-reaching geopolitical consequences, which I will lay out in detail in a forthcoming interview on @MultipolarPod with @admcollingwood later today.