That is the ultimate punishment. But for President Donald Trump, who was once aiming for the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war, military force has somehow become a casual tool, a kind of background effect for coaxing Iran into diplomacy.
The deployment of the largest military machine in history is the most critical mission facing America’s commander-in-chief. The Pentagon may have reduced public information about U.S. military casualties and facility damage, but both are still risks and realities. Dozens of Iranians have been killed since the last attack and counterattack began, and thousands more since February.
Normalizing violence itself should be a red line that should not be crossed, and reintroducing violence or threats should not end up as self-serving statements. The Trump administration’s disruptive powers may have real – perhaps unintended – benefits, and the president’s approach is certainly novel.
But as it becomes increasingly clear that the memorandum’s abandonment and resulting ceasefire exceed the limits of preservation, President Trump’s frequent asides about “destroying” Iran are just one of many topics raised with reporters. This is a complex, if not troubling, moment for both the ethical use of force and its practical application as a deterrent.
The nature of the threat attack undermines what was once America’s greatest strength: America’s standards of conduct. Despite their criticism of U.S. foreign policy over the past several decades, it was clear that they ostensibly sought to abide by international humanitarian law and presented the use of force as a last resort.
Instead, Trump is talking about destroying Iran’s infrastructure and attacking bridges and power plants. This is illegal – a war crime, legal scholars and lawyers will say.
Trump supporters may argue that these definitions are becoming outdated and that recent precedents have been set that make battlefields downright ruthless places. But in black and white, the rules remain the same for good reason, and Trump casually talks about flouting them. When Russian President Vladimir Putin attacks such targets in Ukraine, it naturally sparks anger in the West.
Over the past several decades, the United States’ apparent reluctance to use force has helped maintain the effectiveness of the Pentagon. The United States has fought many wars, and he carefully explained why. President Trump’s second term has strangely treaded territory that his predecessors would have avoided on principle.
The abduction of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was bold and high-risk, but Caracas is gradually paying off, including moving closer to the United States. But it shattered two things. It is an international norm that states that a sitting head of state should not be abducted from the capital simply because one dislikes the head of state. And after a year of trying, often unconventionally and unsuccessfully, to end the war he inherited, particularly when it came to Ukraine, the policy shattered President Trump’s pacifist facade.
In relations with Iran, President Trump now appears to be heading into the midterms for an endless war of his own choosing: eternal war-lite. It is a conflict of uncertain rationales, shifting goals, and fading domestic support against a more focused and resilient enemy.
The terms of the ceasefire were so vague that they almost invited a violation by Iranian hardliners. They agreed to give up a nuclear weapons program that Iran claims it did not have and did not want. And it gave Iran potentially billions of dollars in sanctions relief in return for the country being largely back to where it claimed it was in February. Iran was destroyed by more than 13,000 airstrikes, but survived and rebuilt itself without suffering any fatal blows. The United States appears to be having more trouble replenishing its ammunition stockpile than Iranian generals.
This is the inherent problem behind unused power. It reveals how far the military forces in question are and the underlying gaps in their resolve.
“Forever War” is a term coined to describe the war in Afghanistan, in which America’s vaunted inexhaustible firepower, military force, and finances reached their limits, and the country’s appetite for far-flung conflicts reached its limit. Even though their success in Afghanistan was to avenge 9/11 and prevent it from happening again, they could have done more, but they didn’t.
Iran poses another challenge. President Trump has never explained to the American people the necessity of continuing the war. It’s his Coke Zero conflict, and he thinks he can hang the can around his neck and be afraid of zero calories.
He appears to have simply decided to go to war, convinced of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opportunity. President Trump had no plan for the next day, or even the next month or even two weeks after the first bombshell was dropped, when his administration might fall. The casual nature of the beginning tells us how it stumbles.
The attitude toward America’s enemies is evident in Moscow and Beijing, but the same small-mindedness that President Trump used when he initiated this violence is evident everywhere. The nightly casualties among Iranians is an abomination in itself if it is done with a shrug. (In the 2003 offensive against Baghdad, even coalition generals expressed sadness at the bloody blows being taken against an inferiorly equipped enemy).
Iran’s resilience to conflict provides another example of the limits of American power. President Trump could threaten a ground invasion to capture key islands or further escalate air operations. But claims of greater violence in the future become hollower and hollower each time they are made, if they prove to be empty threats.
There are two important indicators of American resolve and limits on violence. The first is oil prices, which appear to be facing a new crisis as reserves are running low. It will always be a very public, often predictable, but relentlessly volatile check on American behavior.
The second is Trump’s own plummeting approval ratings. The latter will probably have less impact on an 80-year-old second-term president than handing over a manageable and healthy economy to an anointed successor. But the midterm elections could be really tough.
Iran’s hardline regime achieves some sort of victory by simply enduring and surviving. They faced severe civil unrest in January. It’s unlikely that their popularity has grown even more since then, but they won’t flinch or collapse in the face of this additional pressure. The Afghan Taliban and Iraqi insurgents defeated the United States through roadside bombs and sheer tenacity. But they were not nation-states. Iran’s accomplishment here has broader geopolitical implications regarding American power and focus.
Iran, which has kept its regime functioning despite targeted assassinations on an industrial scale over the past year, hopes to force the world’s largest military power to use force to force it to return to the negotiating table and eventually discuss a return to roughly the February status quo. It is the epitome of American misery and frivolity, and the consequences for decades to come are slowly coming into view.
In short, if you start a war casually, as if you don’t care about anything, the enemy will guess how enthusiastic you are about the outcome.
