Those four words open the lead essay of the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, published online Aug. 18. What is notable is where the assessment is appearing, and how little of the usual defense of American policy it contains.
The war, Marc Lynch writes, “has proved the bankruptcy of decades of sanctions and violence.” Washington’s inability “to protect its Gulf allies from Iranian attacks or to keep the Strait of Hormuz open has fatally undermined the core security bargain that justified its network of military bases in the region.” Within weeks, he writes, Iran “managed to damage, destroy, or render irrelevant large parts of the archipelago of military bases that had underwritten American primacy.”
The war’s architects “vastly exaggerated what military power could achieve, underestimated the capacity of adversaries to adapt, took for granted that allies would fall in line, and callously disregarded the lives of ordinary people.”
Two statements notable for their appearance in Foreign Affairs:
“For most people, the U.S. order meant only violence, hopelessness, and deprivation.”