Pete Hegseth promises a quick and easy victory in Iran. Don't count on it. His "Department of War" is making strategic mistakes based on an obsolete philosophy.
'Now, with modern technology, a country can credibly threaten to inflict pain on the population from the start, or even after the end (when insurgents might also inflict pain back). Destroying the other military, as an objective, has become somewhat outdated.'
I think this is what the European pacifist left does not (or, I suspect, refuses to) understand about the necessity to adopt a more coercive approach towards Russia. Nobody thinks that the Russian army is able to steamroll straight to Warsaw. But the war in Ukraine has shown that it remains a force capable of inflicting unspeakable damage and loss of life even while enduring tactical defeat and WW1-level combat casualities. It is against *that* that Europe must arm itself, not against imperialist annexations or what not.
Another way in which this is operation rolling blunder: by carrying out the war as a caricature of US middle east interventionism with an extra dash of “America, Fuck Yeah!”, Hegseth and Trump have done exactly what the Iranians were expecting and arguably planning for, constructing their military logistics and command structure around surviving and responding to a massive air campaign. Iran seems also to have pre-planned out an escalation plan mapped exactly to each thing the US and Israel has done to them. The brute force campaign was already accounted for in their strategy. Hegseth, despite having been a major in the national guard, doesn’t seem to be able to think ahead and outsmart the Iranians.
“To be sure, there are certainly many targets that the Trump Administration would like to destroy via brute force: nuclear facilities, missile launchers, planes, ships, soldiers, officers—even Supreme Leaders.”
Is it in fact true that brute force directed at these military capabilities serves American interests rather than coercion? True, eliminating these capabilities eliminates an immediate threat (at least to Israel), but unless the Israel and America intend on periodically “mowing the grass” (a terrible, terrible euphemism for what this actually means), destroying nuclear sites or degrading other military capabilities doesn’t seem like the route to a stable, desirable equilibrium for the US. In the end, a negotiated solution will probably get the US closer to such an equilibrium, as well, incidentally, as creating the conditions for a broad middle class that might be capable of genuine, internally-generated regime change. Trump had an opportunity earlier this year and in the latter half of the 2025, when the Iranian regime seemed willing to negotiate a deal that would be better for the US than the JCPOA. That opportunity has been squandered, and the US has eroded its credibility as a negotiating partner by repeatedly bombing Iran in the midst of negotiations.
It’s also worth saying that the larger logic of this situation has made it so that the US may have to use brute force a lot more often than it would have had to before. Why? Because now any country that thinks it could cross the US has a strong incentive to develop its own nuclear program. These states will look at Libya, Ukraine, and Iran and see countries that have faced attack, whereas North Korea continues to stand unmolested. By undermining America’s credibility with respect to such nuclear deals, the chances that America will have to suppress these programs using violence has probably gone up, and the danger posed by nukes, which nonproliferation was supposed to address, has become more acute.
And what about the Gulf States? Their development strategies, based around natural resources and attracting tourists and high-skilled labour, have been shown to be extremely brittle. At the same time, despite having multiple military installations available for American use throughout these countries, the US has for the most part failed to protect them. (The only country the US has done a good job of protecting, eg, by expending its own interceptors on incoming Iranian missiles or drones is Israel.) I doubt these countries are going to be as eager to cooperate with the US going forward, especially since degrading Iranian capabilities means Israel is likely to emerge as the regional hegemon. (It should be noted that Israeli activities in the Gulf have already put these countries on alert and have opened up a rift with the US. See, for instance, the Israeli bombing of Doha, Qatar, in September 2025, which America failed to warn the Qataris about. And, to anticipate a possible rejoinder, I am not trying to defend Hamas—the leaders of Hamas deserved what came to them after the barbarism of October 7.)
The supposedly isolationist and pro-peace stance of this administration was always at odds with their obsession with machismo, military aesthetics and sadistic cruelty, as well as Trump’s continued boomer obsession with Israel and Iran. This contradiction alone made some sort of intervention inevitable and Trump’s penchant for flashy showmanship and owning the libs guaranteed that it would be needlessly bloody, sloppy and mostly pointless.
I didn’t think I wanted to hear anything about the war, but the Schelling passages are so good and make some important distinctions I had never considered before really clear!
I think this piece, like most analyses on the conflict, is overly concerned with the admin’s rhetoric, which has admittedly been inconsistent and confounding, but how about a bit more analysis on the actual operational successes and failures, because on that front, things are going well. Iran and its proxies have been utterly crippled.
Did not know about "compellent violence" before this, but it occurs to me that that is how one abuses an animal one doesn't know how to train. And in context...yeah.
Is this the part of substack living in an alternate reality, where ackshually the most successful military operation in modern history is a total disaster because something something grease those goalpost wheels?
Like is anybody physically capable of writing about this in a way where they don’t spend 90% of their words finding various ways to insult Trump and Hegseth? I get it, they are embarrassing, childish, unserious people. Breaking News at 11!!!
And? What about the entirety of the non-Trump and non-hegseth military? Generals? Pentagon planners? People that are actually experienced and competent and have been wargaming this for literal decades. Let’s just ignore them, they clearly don’t matter despite doing literally 99% of their work, because Trump said a stupid!
This isn’t analysis. And the strait of Hormuz is an issue, but I’m sorry I haven’t seen any objection to this that is not just “so we should just let dictators do literally whatever they want forever.” This war was inevitable, you can thank the IRGC for that, and dealing with the Strait was likewise inevitable.
If you think we could have nicely talked the IRGC into becoming a normal government, you’re a fool. Some things can only be resolved with force, because some people do not respond to literally anything else and cannot just be left to their own devices to do what they want indefinitely.
When the Strait of Hormuz issue ends up not being an issue in either a free Iran (🤞) or just another few weeks, I look forward to the next thing the pundit class decides was ackshually a huge failure.
There is a lot more at stake here than whether Hegseth and/or Trump call this a war, or whether they were hypocritical about something (spoiler: probably). Like seriously who gives a shit? THIS is the critical thing we need to be talking about? This is what’s at stake? Not the 90-million-odd Iranians who are cheering the war because they want to be free, not the girls that were killed in a rare but tragic error, not the 30k+ protesters killed by the IRGC two months ago.
No, the REAL issue is that… Hegseth did a hypocrisy!! You guys!!! Stop everything! Can you imagine, did you hear! Trump technically used the wrong before!!
Who are the unserious people again…? Is it the people desperately wishcasting a bad end to the 2-week old war so that they can drop some sick zingers in their next article? Sorry Iran, there are more important things at stake here - some substack writers need to have been right!
Trump has been moving the goalposts around so much that it’s not clear even he knows where they are anymore. If it was unambiguously successful why is it still going on and why is Trump begging other countries to help him open the Strait of Hormuz?
Let's assess whether this was the "most successful operation in military history" when it's actually over. We can assess it by a) whether it met its goals and b) even if it didn't, what did it accomplish and was it worth it?
Yes the US/Israel have been very effective at killing people and breaking stuff, but there are a lot of possible consequences that come from that (Iran has been wargaming this too, right?) that if you don't think about what you're trying to achieve you might get something you didn't intend (that's the whole point of this piece). This has already gone worse than they expected and there is still plenty of downside risk. (Iranian civil war? $200 oil? Dirty bomb?)
I think of this as a bullying mentality. The problem that bullies don't often realize is that their victims will empty of restraint as the level of resentment builds. There will be a tipping point when the victims will join together to take down the bully or stand by when some other(s) do it. That lesson is being demonstrated in a lesser fashion as other countries are saying "No" to Trump's "requests" for support in securing the shipping lanes in the region. I am concerned that a larger demonstration is on the horizon.
"Now, the best weapons are the ones that never fire." -- After living through the terror of the Cold War, it was such an eye-opener to realize the simple truth: Nuclear weapons are useless. Because they can only be effectively used once... and that was in 1945, in that brief period when only one country had The Bomb. It could never be used again after that, only be wielded as an empty threat. (Granted, there was still the real danger of nuclear war being caused by a mistake.)
'Now, with modern technology, a country can credibly threaten to inflict pain on the population from the start, or even after the end (when insurgents might also inflict pain back). Destroying the other military, as an objective, has become somewhat outdated.'
I think this is what the European pacifist left does not (or, I suspect, refuses to) understand about the necessity to adopt a more coercive approach towards Russia. Nobody thinks that the Russian army is able to steamroll straight to Warsaw. But the war in Ukraine has shown that it remains a force capable of inflicting unspeakable damage and loss of life even while enduring tactical defeat and WW1-level combat casualities. It is against *that* that Europe must arm itself, not against imperialist annexations or what not.
> The Hegsethian philosophy of war
Must philosophy sit so close to Hegseth in a sentence.
Another way in which this is operation rolling blunder: by carrying out the war as a caricature of US middle east interventionism with an extra dash of “America, Fuck Yeah!”, Hegseth and Trump have done exactly what the Iranians were expecting and arguably planning for, constructing their military logistics and command structure around surviving and responding to a massive air campaign. Iran seems also to have pre-planned out an escalation plan mapped exactly to each thing the US and Israel has done to them. The brute force campaign was already accounted for in their strategy. Hegseth, despite having been a major in the national guard, doesn’t seem to be able to think ahead and outsmart the Iranians.
Nice post!
I have a quibble with this passage:
“To be sure, there are certainly many targets that the Trump Administration would like to destroy via brute force: nuclear facilities, missile launchers, planes, ships, soldiers, officers—even Supreme Leaders.”
Is it in fact true that brute force directed at these military capabilities serves American interests rather than coercion? True, eliminating these capabilities eliminates an immediate threat (at least to Israel), but unless the Israel and America intend on periodically “mowing the grass” (a terrible, terrible euphemism for what this actually means), destroying nuclear sites or degrading other military capabilities doesn’t seem like the route to a stable, desirable equilibrium for the US. In the end, a negotiated solution will probably get the US closer to such an equilibrium, as well, incidentally, as creating the conditions for a broad middle class that might be capable of genuine, internally-generated regime change. Trump had an opportunity earlier this year and in the latter half of the 2025, when the Iranian regime seemed willing to negotiate a deal that would be better for the US than the JCPOA. That opportunity has been squandered, and the US has eroded its credibility as a negotiating partner by repeatedly bombing Iran in the midst of negotiations.
It’s also worth saying that the larger logic of this situation has made it so that the US may have to use brute force a lot more often than it would have had to before. Why? Because now any country that thinks it could cross the US has a strong incentive to develop its own nuclear program. These states will look at Libya, Ukraine, and Iran and see countries that have faced attack, whereas North Korea continues to stand unmolested. By undermining America’s credibility with respect to such nuclear deals, the chances that America will have to suppress these programs using violence has probably gone up, and the danger posed by nukes, which nonproliferation was supposed to address, has become more acute.
And what about the Gulf States? Their development strategies, based around natural resources and attracting tourists and high-skilled labour, have been shown to be extremely brittle. At the same time, despite having multiple military installations available for American use throughout these countries, the US has for the most part failed to protect them. (The only country the US has done a good job of protecting, eg, by expending its own interceptors on incoming Iranian missiles or drones is Israel.) I doubt these countries are going to be as eager to cooperate with the US going forward, especially since degrading Iranian capabilities means Israel is likely to emerge as the regional hegemon. (It should be noted that Israeli activities in the Gulf have already put these countries on alert and have opened up a rift with the US. See, for instance, the Israeli bombing of Doha, Qatar, in September 2025, which America failed to warn the Qataris about. And, to anticipate a possible rejoinder, I am not trying to defend Hamas—the leaders of Hamas deserved what came to them after the barbarism of October 7.)
The supposedly isolationist and pro-peace stance of this administration was always at odds with their obsession with machismo, military aesthetics and sadistic cruelty, as well as Trump’s continued boomer obsession with Israel and Iran. This contradiction alone made some sort of intervention inevitable and Trump’s penchant for flashy showmanship and owning the libs guaranteed that it would be needlessly bloody, sloppy and mostly pointless.
I didn’t think I wanted to hear anything about the war, but the Schelling passages are so good and make some important distinctions I had never considered before really clear!
Thanks for your thoughts.
I think this piece, like most analyses on the conflict, is overly concerned with the admin’s rhetoric, which has admittedly been inconsistent and confounding, but how about a bit more analysis on the actual operational successes and failures, because on that front, things are going well. Iran and its proxies have been utterly crippled.
Hegseth promises Irans total political and physical destruction, and instantly loses any *reason* for Iran to give up.
It’s not even a modern concept. Even Sun Tzu understood this
Did not know about "compellent violence" before this, but it occurs to me that that is how one abuses an animal one doesn't know how to train. And in context...yeah.
Is this the part of substack living in an alternate reality, where ackshually the most successful military operation in modern history is a total disaster because something something grease those goalpost wheels?
Like is anybody physically capable of writing about this in a way where they don’t spend 90% of their words finding various ways to insult Trump and Hegseth? I get it, they are embarrassing, childish, unserious people. Breaking News at 11!!!
And? What about the entirety of the non-Trump and non-hegseth military? Generals? Pentagon planners? People that are actually experienced and competent and have been wargaming this for literal decades. Let’s just ignore them, they clearly don’t matter despite doing literally 99% of their work, because Trump said a stupid!
This isn’t analysis. And the strait of Hormuz is an issue, but I’m sorry I haven’t seen any objection to this that is not just “so we should just let dictators do literally whatever they want forever.” This war was inevitable, you can thank the IRGC for that, and dealing with the Strait was likewise inevitable.
If you think we could have nicely talked the IRGC into becoming a normal government, you’re a fool. Some things can only be resolved with force, because some people do not respond to literally anything else and cannot just be left to their own devices to do what they want indefinitely.
When the Strait of Hormuz issue ends up not being an issue in either a free Iran (🤞) or just another few weeks, I look forward to the next thing the pundit class decides was ackshually a huge failure.
There is a lot more at stake here than whether Hegseth and/or Trump call this a war, or whether they were hypocritical about something (spoiler: probably). Like seriously who gives a shit? THIS is the critical thing we need to be talking about? This is what’s at stake? Not the 90-million-odd Iranians who are cheering the war because they want to be free, not the girls that were killed in a rare but tragic error, not the 30k+ protesters killed by the IRGC two months ago.
No, the REAL issue is that… Hegseth did a hypocrisy!! You guys!!! Stop everything! Can you imagine, did you hear! Trump technically used the wrong before!!
Who are the unserious people again…? Is it the people desperately wishcasting a bad end to the 2-week old war so that they can drop some sick zingers in their next article? Sorry Iran, there are more important things at stake here - some substack writers need to have been right!
Trump has been moving the goalposts around so much that it’s not clear even he knows where they are anymore. If it was unambiguously successful why is it still going on and why is Trump begging other countries to help him open the Strait of Hormuz?
Let's assess whether this was the "most successful operation in military history" when it's actually over. We can assess it by a) whether it met its goals and b) even if it didn't, what did it accomplish and was it worth it?
Yes the US/Israel have been very effective at killing people and breaking stuff, but there are a lot of possible consequences that come from that (Iran has been wargaming this too, right?) that if you don't think about what you're trying to achieve you might get something you didn't intend (that's the whole point of this piece). This has already gone worse than they expected and there is still plenty of downside risk. (Iranian civil war? $200 oil? Dirty bomb?)
I think of this as a bullying mentality. The problem that bullies don't often realize is that their victims will empty of restraint as the level of resentment builds. There will be a tipping point when the victims will join together to take down the bully or stand by when some other(s) do it. That lesson is being demonstrated in a lesser fashion as other countries are saying "No" to Trump's "requests" for support in securing the shipping lanes in the region. I am concerned that a larger demonstration is on the horizon.
Horrifically embarrassing. Drunken frat boy machismo and half baked nationalist rhetoric. He’s cosplaying SECDEF.
Perhaps Mr. Hegseth should've watched John Boorman's movie EXCALIBUR (1981) and taken notes.
Even though it's medieval fantasy, it makes some deep observations about leadership.
Merlin correctly chastizes King Uther Pendragon for being rash and losing allies:
Uther: You must help me, Merlin!
Merlin: Must I?
Uther: I am your King!
Merlin: So! You need me again now that my truce is wrecked! Years to build and moments to ruin! And all for lust!
"Now, the best weapons are the ones that never fire." -- After living through the terror of the Cold War, it was such an eye-opener to realize the simple truth: Nuclear weapons are useless. Because they can only be effectively used once... and that was in 1945, in that brief period when only one country had The Bomb. It could never be used again after that, only be wielded as an empty threat. (Granted, there was still the real danger of nuclear war being caused by a mistake.)