Neo-con Robert Kagan, one of the architects of George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, looks at Trump’s campaign against Iran and sees only an irreversible defeat, “a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored.”
“Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character,” he writes in a May 10 article in The Atlantic. “It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be ‘open,’ as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started.”
Kagan thus has set the tone for the rest of the piece in which, among other things, he describes the ineffectiveness of the military campaign and economic warfare to force any concessions out of Iran and Trump’s lack of options—despite his claims to be holding all the cards—going forward. “The risk calculus that forced Trump to back down a month ago still holds,” Kagan writes. “Iran would still be able to launch many missiles and drones before its regime went down—assuming it did go down. Just a few successful strikes could cripple the region’s oil and gas infrastructure for years if not decades, throwing the world, and the United States, into a prolonged economic crisis. Even if Trump wanted to bomb Iran as part of an exit strategy—looking tough as a way of masking his retreat—he can’t do that without risking this catastrophe.”
What defeat looks like, Kagan goes on, includes the following: Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz, which is more powerful for Iran than having nuclear weapons; Israel’s interests will be threatened, because Iran will be left stronger than it was before the war; and “In the region, the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran.”
“The global adjustment to a post-American world is accelerating,” Kagan concludes. “America’s once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties.”
This is the second such piece that Kagan has written since President Donald Trump began the Iran war on Feb. 28. In the first, dated March 30 and entitled “Rogue Superpower,” he complained that Trump’s war “has both exposed and exacerbated the dangers of our new, fractured, multipolar reality—driving deeper wedges between the United States and former friends and allies; strengthening the hands of the expansionist great powers, Russia and China; accelerating global political and economic chaos; and leaving the United States weaker and more isolated than at any time since the 1930s.”
