War! What Is It Good For?

Corey Robin recently made the point that "Despite the differences in personnel between the Bush and the Trump administrations, the parallels between the war in Iraq and the war in Iran are pretty straightforward." Central to this similarity was the way in which "a small group of influencers—neocons in Bush’s case, the Israelis in Trump’s case—make the argument for war on two logically incompatible grounds: a) the enemy regime is poised to be so militarily powerful that if the US waits any longer, the enemy will be able to land a devastating blow against it; b) destroying the enemy regime militarily will be staggeringly easy." Fear at the advance of a rival has been a common cause of war since Thucydides spoke of the "growth in power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta", while naked opportunism has never gone out of fashion. But the combination of the two is particularly characteristic of empires engaged in peripheral but asymmetric rivalry.

Once the nineteenth century "great powers" moved beyond the phase of unapologetic incursion and expansion, which globally came to an end with the Treaty of Versailles and the redistribution of German and Turkish possessions, and notwithstanding the temporary revival of territorial aggrandisement by Fascist Italy in Africa and Nazi Germany in Europe, colonial wars were essentially defensive: the "policing" operations and resistance to liberation movements that marked the interwar years and then the 30 years between the end of World War Two and the fall of Saigon. Intervention in Korea and Vietnam were both sold as necessary to prevent communist advance elsewhere (what became known as the Domino Theory), but also as wars that could be contained - an opportunity to strike a decisive blow without risking escalation - because the Soviet Union made it plain it wouldn't put its troops on the front-line in the first case and China did likewise in the second.

One reason for presenting these conflicts as discrete reactions to local provocation was to avoid identifying the links and similarities, as Robin has done, other than the convenient link of a communist masterplan for world domination. In other words, to avoid admitting that these were essentially imperial wars of choice "over there" in which the trigger was not a communist plot (the liberation movements were typically nationalist, with communist parties coming to the fore as a result of a Cold War paradigm being imposed by the US), or some barbarian recidivism (the British stance in Kenya, for example), but usually an attempt by the hegemon (global or regional) to force the geopolitical map into a preferred shape or simply to remind the "natives" who's boss. The history of British and American dealings with Iran since the 1953 coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh is a textbook example.

The claim that the Iran War has been a strategic defeat for the US and Israel should be treated with scepticism, and that's before considering that the war may well not be over as Israel continues to pound Lebanon and Iran continues to restrict access to the Strait of Hormuz in response. The claim is independent of the state of the conflict and stems from the belief that Trump and Netanyahu have failed in their aims and left Iran stronger. Up until literally the day before the ceasefire was announced, these same commentators were claiming that the US did not have any clear war aims, so in what sense has it failed to achieve them? If the actual aim was to (once more) trash a Middle Eastern country, pour encourager les autres, then arguably it's mission accomplished, once again.

Likewise, Israel got cover for its incursions into, and possible continued occupation of, Southern Lebanon. For all the noise made by the Israeli opposition, Netanyahu has not diverged from mainstream policy, whether couched in terms of "mowing the lawn" or Eretz Israel. Israel does not want regime change in Iran as this would jeopardise their own position vis-a-vis Lebanon and Gaza. Tehran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas has always been primarily opportunistic, but so too has Israel's demonisation of both groups (and willingness to covertly strengthen them at times) and the supposed malevolent influence of Iran. The fears of the Israeli opposition centre on the idea that Netanyahu is jeopardising the relationship with the US by alienating the national security establishment in Washington (always more important than Trump, who will be gone ere long). They're less bothered about alienating European leaders, which is why the latter have suddenly been emboldened to criticise Israel's bombardment of Lebanon (in the expectation that Trump will rein Netanyahu in).

The idea that Iran is stronger now because it controls the Strait and will exact a lucrative toll (supposedly worth 20% of its current GDP, according to analysts at J P Morgan) ignores that the waterway is evenly divided with Oman, which presumably isn't about to block its half of it or even charge a toll (as that would monumentally piss off its neighbours in the Gulf). And the idea that the world has suddenly woken up to the vulnerability of the Strait is preposterous. Not only did the 2021 blockage of the Suez Canal bring home the sensitivity of the global economy to the interruption of such strategic sea lanes, but the specific criticality of the Strait of Hormuz was already proven back in the 1980s during the Tanker War episode of the wider Iraq-Iran War. The progress of the war to date has shown that the Gulf states are capable of defending themselves against Iran, short of an unlikely seaborne invasion, and the US fleet will continue to patrol the Gulf, even if the chances of an amphibious landing on Iranian territory remain remote.

The reports of how this particular casus belli sausage was made, notably the New York Times article by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, place great emphasis on Netanyahu's ability to sway Trump. The idea that various people have a hold on the US President, whether through Putin's kompromat or Netanyahu's Svengali-like persuasive powers (an old antisemitic trope, it should be noted), ignores that his decison-making process is often peremptory and even arbitrary. As the article makes clear, Trump wasn't particularly interested in the idea of a popular uprising in Iran and regime change, which were based on optimistic claims by the Israelis that few in Washington thought credible. What attracted the US President was killing Iran's Supreme Leader (whose title must be a provocation to Trump's vanity) and destroying the Iranian military almost at a whim. In other words, it was the spectacle of hegemonic power unrestrained by morality - we can kill anyone we like and no one can stand up to us - that proved decisive.

Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, America's military doctrine has been not only to over-match all possible rivals but to use overwhelming force when conflict occurs. It is the spectacular use of that force that has driven strategy, rather than any attempt to bring about genuine regime change, let alone democratisation, hence the decision not to invade Iraq after the shock and awe of thr First Gulf War, and the abject failure of "nation-building" after the Second Gulf War. As Jean Baudrillard noted in 1991, this isn't war but a masquerade: a performance of war that amounts to an atrocity. Since then, the US has conducted atrocities, in this sense of spectacular expressions of destruction and killing power, across the Middle East, from Iraq to Afghanistan, and its approach has enabled similar atrocities by Israel (in Gaza and Lebanon) and the Gulf states (via proxies in Syria and now Sudan). The assassination of foreign leaders is at one with the bombing of schools and hospitals. The violence is an end in itself, not the means to any geopolitical reordering.