Will failure in Iran reshape how the US fights?
Veterans and voters have punished past administrations for costly wars, but these days many Americans don’t seem to care
Jacquelyn Schneider
When the Iran war began in February, the consensus view was that the country’s middling military and weakened regime were uniquely vulnerable to the sort of long-distance, high-tech war that America prefers to fight.
Buttressed by artificial intelligence, smart munitions and platforms such as aircraft carriers and stealth aircraft, many observers assumed the US could force Iran to acquiesce to its demands — all with relatively few domestic repercussions.
At the time, I identified a few outcomes that would indicate that this American style of war is no longer working: no decisive victory; conflict that digresses into nation-building exercises or guerrilla warfare; unsustainable economic costs.
What’s the verdict today?
Operationally, the US dominated the first six months.
It conducted more than 13,000 strikes, obliterated the Iranian air force and much of the Iranian navy, assassinated the supreme leader and a large part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership, and blockaded ports.
The war devastated the Iranian economy, with immediate impacts on inflation, resource scarcity and an estimated $200bn-$300bn in rebuilding costs.
But the US has not been able to win decisively.
Hardliners remain in power in Iran.
The future of its nuclear programme, probably damaged by US-Israeli strikes, is unclear.
Negotiations to end hostilities have stalled.
Iran has continued to launch missile strikes at US forces and support in the region.
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and now the Red Sea, remains at risk.
US strategic success may be unclear, but the operational cost is easier to calculate: 18 service members dead and at least 624 wounded.
This number is far smaller than in ground conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam but far larger than the US’s last major air-dominated combat in the Balkans in the 1990s.
In this war, 42 aircraft have also been lost or damaged, including four F-15s, an F-35, an E-3 and more than 20 Reapers (in comparison, the US lost only one F-16 and two Predators during two years of air conflict in the Balkans).
Operations in Iran have cost the Pentagon $37.5bn, with an additional $67bn to rebuild stockpiles now at dangerously low levels (as well as potentially another $5bn to repair damaged installations in the region).
The chief economist of Moody’s Analytics assessed that “the typical [US] household will pay $1,000 because of the war” — either in taxes to support military spending or in rising fuel costs.
By all measures, then, Iran is a failed case for the American way of war.
However, success is not primarily determined by battlefield effects, but by whether long-range, high-tech wars can insulate decision makers from the wrath of the American public.
Outcomes on the battlefield can make wars more popular with Americans, but not always.
The Tet Offensive during the Vietnam war demonstrated how the US could beat back the Vietcong and yet lose American support.
The Korean war, on the other hand, created very little public outrage even as thousands of US service members died — an example of how Americans can become inured to loss, implacable or apathetic, even, in the face of failure.
Polling suggests most Americans disapprove of the Iran war (even a growing percentage of Donald Trump loyalists).
And yet, it has so far generated very little public disruption.
There have been no mass protests, no mass resignations from within the military.
Even the death of a Navy helicopter pilot in the Arabian Sea drew very little public attention.
The stock market, despite some dips, is booming and oil prices have come down.
The US military budget is still dominated by expensive precision munitions delivered by destroyers and stealth planes, which are difficult to scale or quickly adapt; its unmanned systems are focused on decreasing personnel loss instead of decreasing costs or innovating new missions; its industrial base is still incentivised for large and rigid weapons programmes.
Perhaps the real test will be in November, when midterm elections reveal whether the public will penalise Republicans for initiating the conflict.
Absent that punishment, it is highly unlikely that Congress or the White House will change how they expect to use the American military.
That will leave it to the veterans of this war to build new doctrines, theories of victory, manpower and weapons systems.
Vietnam veterans were able to significantly change the US military, creating the All-Volunteer Force and changing the American theory of victory, partly because they believed the public was willing to hold decision makers accountable.
It’s unclear today if the average American even cares.
The writer is a Hoover fellow at Stanford University
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