Iran and Ukraine: The Illusions of Military Power

 

By David K. Shipler 

            The major wars raging in the Middle East and Europe are teaching a lesson, which will probably go unlearned. Two of the world’s strongest military forces are unable to defeat smaller countries that use asymmetrical warfare—that is, weapons and tactics less advanced than the arsenals they face. The United States and Russia are bogged down by Iran and Ukraine, respectively, whose governments’ continued existence is tantamount to a loss for Washington and Moscow.

            This is an interim assessment to be sure, for wars are judged by their outcomes, which are rarely visible in the short term. Today’s still photograph doesn’t necessarily predict the future. But so far, in failing to realize their ambitions, both Russia and the United States have displayed surprising vulnerabilities. Their armed forces seemed most formidable before they fired the first shot. Once the wars began, their destructive power turned out to be inadequate. The Iranian and Ukrainian governments, facing obliteration, had everything to lose unless they found inventive ways to fight back and survive, which they have done.

The parallel is not a moral one, obviously, for the world would be better without the Iranian regime and worse without a free Ukraine. But war is rarely virtuous, no matter the righteous pleadings of the perpetrators. Nor is the worthiness of a cause a guarantee of success.

            The current cases are especially instructive, because they are the product of two main errors made by both Russia and the US: unrealistic objectives and autocratic decision-making.

The ambitious goal for Vladimir Putin of Russia was to annihilate Ukraine’s national independence and distinctive culture. He spelled out his rationale in a long essay in July 2021, seven months before he invaded, when he wrote that Russia and Ukraine were not separate but occupied “one historical and spiritual space.” As a dictator, he had insulated himself from dissent by creating a bubble of sycophants in the Kremlin. Nor did he consult his citizens about going to war.

The ambitious goal for Donald Trump (and his Israeli partners) was to demolish Iran’s military and replace its Islamic government with one amenable to foregoing nuclear weapons. Among his shifting demands, after the war grew frustrating, came his threat of genocide as he declared last April that unless Iran capitulated, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” As an aspiring dictator, he had also insulated himself from dissent by creating a bubble of sycophants—in the White House. Nor did he consult his citizens—or even Congress, as the Constitution requires—about going to war.

It goes without saying that Iran is a serious menace and, with nuclear weapons, would be as untouchable as North Korea. Its ideological zealotry and projection of destruction through proxies in the Middle East would be virtually unchecked. But the US-Israeli onslaught has been a two-edged sword. While severely damaging Iran’s military and arms industry, it has also demonstrated to Tehran how easily global trade can be disrupted by drones, speedboats, and other small-scale threats to international shipping.

Those relatively simple tools are likely to remain in Iran’s hands indefinitely. They cannot be completely eliminated by the sophisticated, high-tech aerial assaults that the US employs. Nor can Iran’s nuclear aspirations be destroyed permanently from the air, which cannot reach either the country’s technical know-how or the enriched uranium stockpiled underground. Cyber attacks, assassinations of scientists, and bombings by Israel and the US have slowed the nuclear program, but only Iranian leaders can abandon it. That requires either the regime’s replacement (as Israel and the US expected), diplomacy with the current government, or a wholesale invasion and occupation.

Iran is well-schooled in the methods of asymmetrical warfare, which are used by state and non-state actors. The key is leveraging inferior weaponry into attacks on the pressure points of the larger enemy. Here, as we’ve seen, the pressure point is the Strait of Hormuz, “Iran’s new weapon of mass disruption,” Tom Friedman calls it, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil is shipped. As the prices of gas, fertilizer, and other commodities soar in the West and Asia, the power of Iran’s smaller arms capability is magnified.

Another key to a lesser force’s survival is the risk aversion of the larger force. Because Trump has not been willing to send ground troops, especially in the face of substantial public opposition to the war, casualties have been low; thirteen Americans have come back from this war in body bags to date. The dangerous depletion of US missile and ammunition stockpiles also imposes restraint, which takes the form of Trump’s embrace of the current on-and-off ceasefire.

The cost for Americans could be increased if Iran managed (or chose) to attack inside the US, either by terrorism or cyber sabotage. But that might not be necessary, for the most pervasive anti-war campaign in America is at the local gas station, with those big numbers staring you in the face every time you take a drive.

Ukraine has also discovered how to hit some of Russia’s pressure points. Just as Iran has developed drones (and has helped Russia build a drone factory east of Moscow), Ukraine’s advancements in drone technology now enable strikes deep inside Russian territory. Oil installations on the Baltic coast have been hit, and last week Ukraine struck an oil terminal near St. Petersburg, sending a tower of pitch-black smoke to stain the background scenery of Putin’s annual showcase, his International Economic Forum.   

On Ukrainian territory, Russia has lost its formidable reputation as the resistance has raised immense costs. Moscow’s vaunted armored units were virtually decimated and proven ineffectual. Russian resolve domestically is reportedly being eaten away by the use of non-Russian ethnic minority draftees and ex-convicts as cannon-fodder; the diversion of manufacturing to weaponry; and the worsening economy, with inflation and gas shortages. Putin has predicted an end to the war, and pro-Kremlin talkers are laying the groundwork for an ersatz claim of victory.

The stakes are high. Ukraine, a bulwark against Russian expansionism in Europe, is an essential line of defense. The greater the cost of the war to Russia’s invasion, the less likely it is to be repeated elsewhere—so goes the calculation.

Unfortunately, Trump is a miscreant in both wars. His halt of military aid to Ukraine, his attacks on NATO, and his incoherent negotiating tactics have given the impression that Putin need merely play the long game and wait for the irresolution of the West. The US has weakened itself by losing the trust of its allies. Only Ukraine and the Europeans can hold the line, which they are doing so far.

In Iran, Trump’s impulsive lack of strategic thinking and empathy—and his contempt for experts—have disabled him and his advisors from the capacity to anticipate Iran’s moves. His impatience for a negotiated agreement, his flustered, empty threats, are obviously being read in Tehran as the flailing of a helpless giant.

Trump is so eager to get away from Iran that he has conducted a public dispute with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s continued assaults on Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon. Iran has made a true cease-fire and serious negotiations contingent on a halt to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah. Therefore, in that labyrinth of entanglements, Iran has gained leverage over Israel via the US. It’s an amazing dynamic, all above Trump’s head.

This is hardly the first time for a great power to be defeated by an adversary weaker in conventional weapons but stronger in resolve: the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the United States in Vietnam.

In the 1960s and 70s, US officials thought that bombs, defoliants, artillery, and massive infantry could overwhelm the less advanced weaponry of North Vietnam and the Vietcong. Twenty-two years after the war, at a 1997 conference of former American and North Vietnamese officials in Hanoi, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara kept asking the Vietnamese how many of their people would have had to die before they gave up fighting and negotiated.

The Vietnamese, calloused by years of battle, kept answering that they were fighting an anti-colonialist war to unify their country in complete independence, and that no amount of suffering would have brought them to their knees.

McNamara couldn’t grasp this, and during a break, he gave some of us his conclusion: that Vietnamese cared less about human life than Americans did. That was a classic slander that practically every combatant visits upon the enemy, as I told him. Never true, but always believed.

Lessons on the limitation of military strength usually go unlearned, especially by the next generation of leaders. It must be so tempting to hold your finger on that trigger of immense power, and to imagine that once you pull it, destruction will bring just the reordering that you desire.