Caskets demand explanations.
Thirteen American service members have been killed and more than300 wounded since President Trump and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu launched their war against Iran a month ago. For the families who’ve lost sons and daughters, the American commander in chief’s shifting explanations for the war are infuriating. He’s listed more than half a dozen so far — including regime change, ending Iran’s nuclear program and destroying that nation’s military. He’s even called the whole thing a “little excursion.”
After a full career, I can attest that we soldiers know we’re expendable. And yet we still go where we’re sent. But there is an asterisk. There is just one thing that we ask. It’s that America spends our lives on something worth the sacrifice.
Would you be willing to die for a “little excursion”? Would you send your daughter or your son to die in one?
We often forget that foreign policy is just this personal. It begins and ends at home. It’s one kid willing to fight, to go wherever deployed. It’s one family willing to sacrifice. That’s the nucleus, the atomic unit of American foreign policy. Because armies don’t fight wars alone; societies do.
That’s why popular consent matters so much. In every major conflict of this past century, vast American majorities (over 75%) supported the war at the outset. The war in Iran currently falls under 40% approval, perhaps the least popular war America has ever started.
That abysmal percentage tracks almost exactly with the president’s own popularity. He hasn’t even tried to convince the American public to support this war. No justification, no explicit reason for why this, why now. A modern commander in chief has never taken us into conflict without concern for consent.
Consent matters now because this will not be an easy war. It’s true that Iran is relatively weak. Its national economy is smaller than Connecticut’s. Its defense spending is roughly 1% to 2% of ours.
But location, location, location. With 1,000 miles of coastline, Iran has long prepared to wage naval guerrilla warfare that does deliberate damage to the global economy via the Hormuz Strait.
Even without Iran’s extreme geostrategic advantage, shooting from the hip can’t change regimes or end nuclear programs. Airstrikes won’t cut it, just like they didn’t get the job done this past summer when the administration claimed it “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear program.
To do either job — remove the regime or end its nuclear program — would take far more troops than we’d be willing to send. Iran is much bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and without considerable allied support we wouldn’t have the requisite troop strength to get this job done. Every military operation intends a range of impact from influence to control. With airstrikes we can influence Iran, but we’ll never get anywhere close to control.
Shock and awe wears off real quick — I know from experience in Iraq — and any organized group of people with explosives and a willingness to die can inflict a lot of pain. So Iran will wait us out and they will inflict pain when they want and as targets present.
So that’s reality. Iran can and will inflict economic pain, and the U.S. and Israel can inflict physical pain. Both sides are like two boxers without knockout punching power, so we’re destined for a punishment doom loop. But for Iran, merely surviving would be a win. For the U.S., the pain will soon become unbearable. And that’s how we will end up in some form of détente.
It’s easy to think of a list of potential events that might sour Americans further on the war. Terrorism, cyber attacks and plain pocketbook pain. “If we don’t open Hormuz,” assesses global oil expert Bob McNally, we could see gas prices at an “all-time high.” Just what precise American pressure point might end the war?
But the individual straws matter less in this situation because the camel’s back is already broken. Americans are already against this war and already find the costs too high. Besides, the normal war-ending signals from the public are unlikely to matter much when the commander in chief doesn’t care to give a coherent reason to go to war. It follows that he also won’t necessarily leave the war even if good reasons to do so are obvious to everyone else.
If you can’t justify it, don’t fight it. Maybe that’s the real lesson here. Maybe that’s the real “Trump corollary” for foreign policy practitioners: You can’t win a war you can’t explain.
Especially to the families of the fallen.
Retired U.S. Army Strategist ML Cavanaugh, co-founder of the Modern War Institute at West Point, is the author of the forthcoming “Who Wins Wars: Lessons in Leadership, Power, and Supreme Command From Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower.”
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