BY MAnlio graziano
The Real Asymmetric War Between the United States and Iran
This image is AI-generated.
Today, no one can predict how or when the war launched by Israel and the United States against Iran will end. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying, and anyone who truly knew would have a duty not to reveal it. It is especially in these circumstances that geopolitics comes in handy. Geopolitics, in fact, explains the context within which events unfold day by day; it provides the framework in which those events fit and can be explained, at least in their essential outlines.
When we speak of “asymmetric warfare,” we usually refer to a conflict between adversaries with a significant imbalance in military power, often involving unconventional weapons and tactics. The wars against Native Americans in the nineteenth-century United States, the Second Boer War, and the Vietnam War are commonly cited examples. To these, we should add conflicts between so-called “state actors” with highly unequal political and military capabilities. In the 1991 Gulf War, for example, a coalition of forty-two countries led by the United States confronted a single country, Iraq. A similar, though less extreme, imbalance can be seen in the conflicts in Afghanistan in 2001, again in Iraq in 2003, and in the war of extermination launched by Israel in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas pogrom of October 7, 2023 (assuming, generously, that Gaza can be regarded as a country with “state-like” characteristics).
The current Gulf War presents another example of a significant military imbalance between the rivals, and thus an asymmetric conflict. On the one hand, the combined American and Israeli military potential is clearly far superior to that of Iran; on the other hand, however, the balance shifts in Iran’s favor when it comes to drones as an offensive weapon, easy to produce and cheap (tens of thousands of dollars), but difficult and extremely costly (millions of dollars) to intercept.
Military specialists and planners are increasingly working to redefine their strategies and tactics to account for this relatively new tool, which has already demonstrated its devastating effectiveness in the war Russia has unleashed against Ukraine. Beyond the operational level, drones have also completed their transition in terms of their semantic classification from unconventional to fully conventional weapons.
Beyond strictly military asymmetry, however, there is another form of asymmetry that is often overlooked but has proven decisive in certain conflicts: psychological asymmetry. At least three factors contribute to this: the differing motivations of the belligerents, their differing cultures — in the broadest sense — and their accumulated political experience.
On the scale of psychological asymmetry, the balance tips decisively in Iran’s favor.
First and foremost, this is because, as a general rule, those defending themselves against attack are more strongly motivated than the attackers. This is especially true when the aggression is “unjustified and unprovoked,” as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and as Vladimir Putin literally repeated, with thinly veiled amusement, in reference to the Israeli-American attack on Iran last June (and reiterated after February 28 with even greater smugness).
Furthermore, the motivations are, of course, much stronger for those for whom the conflict takes on an existential character, that is, it is a matter of life or death. One of the reasons for the length of the American Civil War (1861–1865), despite the Union’s overwhelming military and economic superiority, was precisely the Confederates’ awareness that they were fighting for their survival. The same can be said of the desperate resistance of the Poles to the German and Russian invasions of September 1939, or of the “impossible” victory of the Israelis against the coalition of six Arab countries in 1948–1949.
Cultural differences, in the broadest sense, also contribute to this psychological asymmetry: not only in terms of ideological motivations, but above all in the degree of willingness to sacrifice. Death in battle is not accepted in the same way everywhere. The Việt Minh’s assault on the French base at Dien Bien Phu was ultimately victorious precisely because of the sacrifice of vast numbers of people, thrown into successive waves of attacks that, according to some sources, resulted in ten times as many Vietnamese casualties as French ones. The slogan of the Arab warrior and poet Khalid ibn al-Walid (584–642)— “We love death as much as you love life”—was taken up by Iranian propaganda during the war against Iraq (1980–1988), in which 36,000 young men, who “ask[ed] for martyrdom,” were thrown into the immense carnage.
In contrast, every coffin draped in the Stars and Stripes repatriated from a conflict zone is a crack in American cohesion — all the more so when no one in the United States knows why they were sent to die.
Last but certainly not least, the weight of accumulated political experience. On this front as well, with a political past dating back at least twenty-five centuries, Iran enjoys an indisputable advantage over the United States, which was born only 250 years ago. But this is not merely a temporal ratio of one to ten; the years, in fact, must in turn be multiplied by another decisive factor: accumulation, that is, the transmission of political experience from generation to generation. In this respect, throughout their history, Americans have largely proven incapable of accumulating political experience: certainly not because they lacked it or because they did not have the time to accumulate as much as their current Iranian adversaries, but because they did not need it. Or, at least, they believed they did not need it.
Over 2,500 years of history, Persia has been shaped by wars, invasions, defeats, and the rise and fall of vast and glorious empires. The Persians fought against the Babylonians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, only to become, in the nineteenth century, an indirect battleground in the rivalry between Russia and Britain. They built great empires — Achaemenid, Sassanid, and Safavid — only to see them swept away by the whirlpool of historical events. In short, they have experienced both extraordinary heights and profound abysses. From these experiences, they have learned; at times they have recklessly mocked them, and at others they have tried to forget them.
Yet accumulated experience becomes a legacy that is difficult to erase, even for those who would prefer to ignore it. The ayatollahs who came to power in 1979 replaced the symbol of imperial continuity — the Lion and Sun of the Achaemenid dynasty — on the country’s flag with a newly devised Islamic emblem, embroidered with the phrase “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”). This was an explicit sign of the desire to break with the past, driven by the ambition of making post-revolutionary Iran not the proud successor to Darius and Xerxes, but the cradle of a future global Islamic republic.
However, in part as a result of the war with Iraq (1980–1988), the past quickly resurfaced, compelling the ayatollahs to gradually scale back their universalist religious ambitions and adapt them to a distinctly Persian-style “Great Patriotic War.”
A keen sense of continuity and national pride has been accompanied by a highly developed capacity for governance, of which the Iranian clergy is the paradoxical heir. When the Safavids (1501–1736) came to power, they imposed Twelver Shiism as the state religion and organized the clergy along hierarchical lines that closely resembled those of the traditional Persian bureaucracy. In this sense, Iranian Shiite clerics can be seen as a pure product of the state itself; once in power, they almost instinctively reproduced its structures and national ideology, ensuring continuity despite their initial desire to break with the past.
This is a dialectical process that envelops all countries with a long accumulated historical experience. Even Mao Zedong’s regime, which sought to embody the sharpest break with the Chinese imperial past, ultimately proved to be the most complete form of nationalism, setting the country on a path toward imperial restoration.
In short, to imagine that Iran can be treated like any other country, like Venezuela or even one of the Arab countries in the region, is a monumental mistake. A mistake that the United States has not failed to commit. And it has not failed to do so precisely because it lacks historical depth; and while the experience of the past certainly exists, it has not been accumulated — that is, it has not been passed down from generation to generation except in mythical and almost mystical form. From this perspective, the United States can be seen as the inverse of Iran. To its own detriment.
The reason, as mentioned, is not merely that American history is ten times shorter than Persian history. Nor is it solely because Iran has deep roots in a territory inhabited by Persians for more than twenty-five centuries, while Americans have no deep roots in the territory they occupy today; and the roots of the hundreds of millions of immigrants who have flocked from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the rest of the Americas have merged into a multicultural and, fundamentally, extraterritorial melting pot. The main reason is rather that Americans believe they live in an extratemporal space that remains perpetually unchanged, where the country can cease to be “great” only because of the betrayal of some and the exploitation of others, and where the country can become “great again” by eliminating traitors and exploiters and resuming the recipes that worked in the past, as if the past were identical to the present.
For many decades — roughly, one might say, between 1890 and 1950 — the United States could effectively afford to live in extraterritoriality and extratemporality. These were the decades when the country’s immeasurable economic superiority made up for all its shortcomings.
In 1890, the United States became the world’s leading industrial power. By 1914, it already accounted for one-third of the world’s manufacturing output. By 1945, it accounted for half of global industrial production and was also the world’s leading trading power and foreign investor; all global trade was denominated in its currency, and all other currencies were pegged to it; and two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves and half of the merchant fleet were under its direct control. During that period—1890–1950—the United States was able to win three wars that transformed the country from a regional (or “hemispheric,” as they like to say) power into a global power. In the first (1898), they launched a hostile takeover of the oceans to oust the British; in the other two (the world wars), they ended up obliterating their actual and potential rivals—Europeans, British, and Japanese—and establishing themselves as an absolutely dominant power, a hegemonic dominance unique in human history in terms of strength and scope.
America did not win those wars thanks to its military superiority, but thanks to its economic superiority. Its military potential, in fact, was minimal: between 1869 and 1916, defense spending exceeded 2% of GDP only in 1899 (2.15%), and between 1904 and 1916, it did not even reach 1.5%, with a low of 0.85% in 1916. Paul Kennedy writes that, on the eve of World War I, the U.S. Army was “insignificant in size compared to that of a medium-sized European country like Serbia or Bulgaria.”
Even as late as 1938, military spending did not reach 2% of GDP; in absolute terms, it was six and a half times lower than German spending—which, however, accounted for 23.5% of GDP—almost five times lower than Russian spending (26.4% of GDP), and just over half that of British (5.7%) and Japanese (28.2%) spending.
Nevertheless, Paul Kennedy reminds us that as early as 1942, the sinking of an American aircraft carrier was offset by the production of three new heavy carriers, three light carriers, and fifteen escort vessels; in 1943, by five heavy carriers, six light carriers, and twenty-five escort vessels. In 1944, they had twenty times as many tanks and twenty-five times as many aircraft at their disposal in France as the Germans. In short, “by 1943-4 the United States alone was producing one ship a day and one aircraft every five minutes!”
The following table, comparing aircraft production between the United States and the Axis powers from 1939 to 1945, clearly illustrates how the former’s ultimate victory was practically inevitable:
When we speak of “asymmetric warfare,” we usually refer to a conflict between adversaries with a significant imbalance in military power, often involving unconventional weapons and tactics. The wars against Native Americans in the nineteenth-century United States, the Second Boer War, and the Vietnam War are commonly cited examples. To these, we should add conflicts between so-called “state actors” with highly unequal political and military capabilities. In the 1991 Gulf War, for example, a coalition of forty-two countries led by the United States confronted a single country, Iraq. A similar, though less extreme, imbalance can be seen in the conflicts in Afghanistan in 2001, again in Iraq in 2003, and in the war of extermination launched by Israel in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas pogrom of October 7, 2023 (assuming, generously, that Gaza can be regarded as a country with “state-like” characteristics).
The current Gulf War presents another example of a significant military imbalance between the rivals, and thus an asymmetric conflict. On the one hand, the combined American and Israeli military potential is clearly far superior to that of Iran; on the other hand, however, the balance shifts in Iran’s favor when it comes to drones as an offensive weapon, easy to produce and cheap (tens of thousands of dollars), but difficult and extremely costly (millions of dollars) to intercept.
Military specialists and planners are increasingly working to redefine their strategies and tactics to account for this relatively new tool, which has already demonstrated its devastating effectiveness in the war Russia has unleashed against Ukraine. Beyond the operational level, drones have also completed their transition in terms of their semantic classification from unconventional to fully conventional weapons.
Beyond strictly military asymmetry, however, there is another form of asymmetry that is often overlooked but has proven decisive in certain conflicts: psychological asymmetry. At least three factors contribute to this: the differing motivations of the belligerents, their differing cultures — in the broadest sense — and their accumulated political experience.
On the scale of psychological asymmetry, the balance tips decisively in Iran’s favor.
First and foremost, this is because, as a general rule, those defending themselves against attack are more strongly motivated than the attackers. This is especially true when the aggression is “unjustified and unprovoked,” as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and as Vladimir Putin literally repeated, with thinly veiled amusement, in reference to the Israeli-American attack on Iran last June (and reiterated after February 28 with even greater smugness).
Furthermore, the motivations are, of course, much stronger for those for whom the conflict takes on an existential character, that is, it is a matter of life or death. One of the reasons for the length of the American Civil War (1861–1865), despite the Union’s overwhelming military and economic superiority, was precisely the Confederates’ awareness that they were fighting for their survival. The same can be said of the desperate resistance of the Poles to the German and Russian invasions of September 1939, or of the “impossible” victory of the Israelis against the coalition of six Arab countries in 1948–1949.
Cultural differences, in the broadest sense, also contribute to this psychological asymmetry: not only in terms of ideological motivations, but above all in the degree of willingness to sacrifice. Death in battle is not accepted in the same way everywhere. The Việt Minh’s assault on the French base at Dien Bien Phu was ultimately victorious precisely because of the sacrifice of vast numbers of people, thrown into successive waves of attacks that, according to some sources, resulted in ten times as many Vietnamese casualties as French ones. The slogan of the Arab warrior and poet Khalid ibn al-Walid (584–642)— “We love death as much as you love life”—was taken up by Iranian propaganda during the war against Iraq (1980–1988), in which 36,000 young men, who “ask[ed] for martyrdom,” were thrown into the immense carnage.
In contrast, every coffin draped in the Stars and Stripes repatriated from a conflict zone is a crack in American cohesion — all the more so when no one in the United States knows why they were sent to die.
Last but certainly not least, the weight of accumulated political experience. On this front as well, with a political past dating back at least twenty-five centuries, Iran enjoys an indisputable advantage over the United States, which was born only 250 years ago. But this is not merely a temporal ratio of one to ten; the years, in fact, must in turn be multiplied by another decisive factor: accumulation, that is, the transmission of political experience from generation to generation. In this respect, throughout their history, Americans have largely proven incapable of accumulating political experience: certainly not because they lacked it or because they did not have the time to accumulate as much as their current Iranian adversaries, but because they did not need it. Or, at least, they believed they did not need it.
Over 2,500 years of history, Persia has been shaped by wars, invasions, defeats, and the rise and fall of vast and glorious empires. The Persians fought against the Babylonians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, only to become, in the nineteenth century, an indirect battleground in the rivalry between Russia and Britain. They built great empires — Achaemenid, Sassanid, and Safavid — only to see them swept away by the whirlpool of historical events. In short, they have experienced both extraordinary heights and profound abysses. From these experiences, they have learned; at times they have recklessly mocked them, and at others they have tried to forget them.
Yet accumulated experience becomes a legacy that is difficult to erase, even for those who would prefer to ignore it. The ayatollahs who came to power in 1979 replaced the symbol of imperial continuity — the Lion and Sun of the Achaemenid dynasty — on the country’s flag with a newly devised Islamic emblem, embroidered with the phrase “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”). This was an explicit sign of the desire to break with the past, driven by the ambition of making post-revolutionary Iran not the proud successor to Darius and Xerxes, but the cradle of a future global Islamic republic.
However, in part as a result of the war with Iraq (1980–1988), the past quickly resurfaced, compelling the ayatollahs to gradually scale back their universalist religious ambitions and adapt them to a distinctly Persian-style “Great Patriotic War.”
A keen sense of continuity and national pride has been accompanied by a highly developed capacity for governance, of which the Iranian clergy is the paradoxical heir. When the Safavids (1501–1736) came to power, they imposed Twelver Shiism as the state religion and organized the clergy along hierarchical lines that closely resembled those of the traditional Persian bureaucracy. In this sense, Iranian Shiite clerics can be seen as a pure product of the state itself; once in power, they almost instinctively reproduced its structures and national ideology, ensuring continuity despite their initial desire to break with the past.
This is a dialectical process that envelops all countries with a long accumulated historical experience. Even Mao Zedong’s regime, which sought to embody the sharpest break with the Chinese imperial past, ultimately proved to be the most complete form of nationalism, setting the country on a path toward imperial restoration.
In short, to imagine that Iran can be treated like any other country, like Venezuela or even one of the Arab countries in the region, is a monumental mistake. A mistake that the United States has not failed to commit. And it has not failed to do so precisely because it lacks historical depth; and while the experience of the past certainly exists, it has not been accumulated — that is, it has not been passed down from generation to generation except in mythical and almost mystical form. From this perspective, the United States can be seen as the inverse of Iran. To its own detriment.
The reason, as mentioned, is not merely that American history is ten times shorter than Persian history. Nor is it solely because Iran has deep roots in a territory inhabited by Persians for more than twenty-five centuries, while Americans have no deep roots in the territory they occupy today; and the roots of the hundreds of millions of immigrants who have flocked from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the rest of the Americas have merged into a multicultural and, fundamentally, extraterritorial melting pot. The main reason is rather that Americans believe they live in an extratemporal space that remains perpetually unchanged, where the country can cease to be “great” only because of the betrayal of some and the exploitation of others, and where the country can become “great again” by eliminating traitors and exploiters and resuming the recipes that worked in the past, as if the past were identical to the present.
For many decades — roughly, one might say, between 1890 and 1950 — the United States could effectively afford to live in extraterritoriality and extratemporality. These were the decades when the country’s immeasurable economic superiority made up for all its shortcomings.
In 1890, the United States became the world’s leading industrial power. By 1914, it already accounted for one-third of the world’s manufacturing output. By 1945, it accounted for half of global industrial production and was also the world’s leading trading power and foreign investor; all global trade was denominated in its currency, and all other currencies were pegged to it; and two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves and half of the merchant fleet were under its direct control. During that period—1890–1950—the United States was able to win three wars that transformed the country from a regional (or “hemispheric,” as they like to say) power into a global power. In the first (1898), they launched a hostile takeover of the oceans to oust the British; in the other two (the world wars), they ended up obliterating their actual and potential rivals—Europeans, British, and Japanese—and establishing themselves as an absolutely dominant power, a hegemonic dominance unique in human history in terms of strength and scope.
America did not win those wars thanks to its military superiority, but thanks to its economic superiority. Its military potential, in fact, was minimal: between 1869 and 1916, defense spending exceeded 2% of GDP only in 1899 (2.15%), and between 1904 and 1916, it did not even reach 1.5%, with a low of 0.85% in 1916. Paul Kennedy writes that, on the eve of World War I, the U.S. Army was “insignificant in size compared to that of a medium-sized European country like Serbia or Bulgaria.”
Even as late as 1938, military spending did not reach 2% of GDP; in absolute terms, it was six and a half times lower than German spending—which, however, accounted for 23.5% of GDP—almost five times lower than Russian spending (26.4% of GDP), and just over half that of British (5.7%) and Japanese (28.2%) spending.
Nevertheless, Paul Kennedy reminds us that as early as 1942, the sinking of an American aircraft carrier was offset by the production of three new heavy carriers, three light carriers, and fifteen escort vessels; in 1943, by five heavy carriers, six light carriers, and twenty-five escort vessels. In 1944, they had twenty times as many tanks and twenty-five times as many aircraft at their disposal in France as the Germans. In short, “by 1943-4 the United States alone was producing one ship a day and one aircraft every five minutes!”
The following table, comparing aircraft production between the United States and the Axis powers from 1939 to 1945, clearly illustrates how the former’s ultimate victory was practically inevitable:
It was what historian Russell F. Weigley calls the “American Way of War,” that is, the art of winning wars not through tactical skill or political acumen, but thanks to extraordinary industrial power.
The first example of the American Way of War was the Civil War: Northern troops were less motivated than those of the South and operated in unfamiliar and hostile territory; its generals were less skilled and its politicians more divided; despite this, the Union ultimately prevailed precisely because of its economic superiority over the Confederacy. Despite a clear imbalance of forces from the outset (see the table below on the relative strength of the two sides in 1860), however, the war lasted four years. But, in the end, it was won.
The first example of the American Way of War was the Civil War: Northern troops were less motivated than those of the South and operated in unfamiliar and hostile territory; its generals were less skilled and its politicians more divided; despite this, the Union ultimately prevailed precisely because of its economic superiority over the Confederacy. Despite a clear imbalance of forces from the outset (see the table below on the relative strength of the two sides in 1860), however, the war lasted four years. But, in the end, it was won.
During the conflict, and largely because of it, the North ramped up its production of weapons, ammunition, steel, ships, and agricultural goods, and expanded its railway network by 7,300 miles. “By the end of the war,” wrote Paul Kennedy, “Northern soldiers were probably better fed and supplied than any army in history.” GDP grew, according to various sources, by between 3 and 5 percent, and, ultimately, its population increased by about a quarter. Growth in industrial production, wealth, and population were characteristics that recurred in subsequent conflicts up to 1945 —occurrences quite unique in the history of warfare.
At the same time, the Civil War was the most devastating of the entire American history. Not only were four major cities — Atlanta, Columbia, Richmond, and Charleston — and some twentyish smaller towns razed to the ground, but the total number of casualties exceeded the combined total of all wars fought by the United States, from the War of Independence through the Korean War.
That bloody experience seemed to reinforce the belief that the country’s Manifest Destiny also allowed it to win everywar, or at least to press on through massacres and destruction until the enemy was annihilated.
That method was later applied against Japan, which, like the Confederates, refused to surrender despite its material inferiority on nearly every front. Between March 9 and 10, 1945, three hundred B-29s dropped nearly 500,000 napalm bombs on the most densely populated areas of Tokyo, causing the death of approximately 120,000 people; General Curtis LeMay, head of operations, later stated: “We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night, than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” LeMay himself, who was also in charge of the bombings during the subsequent Korean War, recalled in 1988: “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea too.... Over a period of three years or so, we killed off-what-twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure? Over a period of three years, this seemed to be acceptable to everybody.”
And it continued to be acceptable even after things had changed. Despite their destructive power, the United States was no longer able to win a war — at least not without being accompanied by more or less reluctant “allies.” The era in which the country’s immeasurable economic superiority made up for all its shortcomings had come to an end. And it had come to an end because that economic superiority was no longer so overwhelming: in the decades following 1945, rival powers — particularly the Japanese and Europeans — had re-entered the competitive arena, beginning to erode the ground occupied by the Americans.
The chart below explains better than a thousand words why the old American Way of War has become impossible:
At the same time, the Civil War was the most devastating of the entire American history. Not only were four major cities — Atlanta, Columbia, Richmond, and Charleston — and some twentyish smaller towns razed to the ground, but the total number of casualties exceeded the combined total of all wars fought by the United States, from the War of Independence through the Korean War.
That bloody experience seemed to reinforce the belief that the country’s Manifest Destiny also allowed it to win everywar, or at least to press on through massacres and destruction until the enemy was annihilated.
That method was later applied against Japan, which, like the Confederates, refused to surrender despite its material inferiority on nearly every front. Between March 9 and 10, 1945, three hundred B-29s dropped nearly 500,000 napalm bombs on the most densely populated areas of Tokyo, causing the death of approximately 120,000 people; General Curtis LeMay, head of operations, later stated: “We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night, than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” LeMay himself, who was also in charge of the bombings during the subsequent Korean War, recalled in 1988: “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea too.... Over a period of three years or so, we killed off-what-twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure? Over a period of three years, this seemed to be acceptable to everybody.”
And it continued to be acceptable even after things had changed. Despite their destructive power, the United States was no longer able to win a war — at least not without being accompanied by more or less reluctant “allies.” The era in which the country’s immeasurable economic superiority made up for all its shortcomings had come to an end. And it had come to an end because that economic superiority was no longer so overwhelming: in the decades following 1945, rival powers — particularly the Japanese and Europeans — had re-entered the competitive arena, beginning to erode the ground occupied by the Americans.
The chart below explains better than a thousand words why the old American Way of War has become impossible:
After proving capable of winning two world wars, also on behalf of its allies, against major military powers such as Germany and Japan, the United States in the 1960s found itself unable to prevail in a war of attrition against a guerrilla movement in Vietnam, despite its undiminished capacity to inflict death and destruction. This rude awakening prompted the Nixon administration to begin reckoning with the country’s relative decline, largely through the tenacious efforts of a German-born figure, Henry Kissinger, whose outlook stood apart from the ideology of “manifest destiny.”
That political effort, however, ultimately ran aground with the resurgence of American ideological confidence, once the burdensome memory of Vietnam had faded into the mists of oblivion. To make matters worse, the victory of 1991—achieved at the head of a coalition of forty-two countries against a single, weakened adversary—and, above all, the collapse of the Soviet Union rekindled the illusion of an America that had become great again. The Vietnam interlude seemed to be over. Yet the subsequent experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya — again against weak or fragile adversaries, and often with coalition support — demonstrated otherwise.
Over the course of the twenty-first century, the gap between American economic growth and that of the rest of the world has widened. As a result, the United States’ room for maneuver has contracted, while that of other actors has expanded. More actors mean more alternatives. The old hegemonic power has thus become progressively less hegemonic.
Two additional factors have contributed to this weakening. First, deindustrialization and rising public debt have increased the country’s dependence on external sources: foreign creditors and global supply chains. The second factor is what might be called the “military trap”: the belief that decline can be halted by increasing military spending. The U.S. defense expenditure has grown from $320 billion in 2000 to a projected $961.6 billion for the 2026 budget, to which Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently proposed adding $200 billion to finance the Iranian adventure.
Anyone with even a basic understanding of international politics — something dreadfully lacking in the so-called American leadership — should know that "great powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on ‘security,’ and thereby divert potential resources from ‘investment’ and compound their long-term dilemma” (Paul Kennedy).
Yet in this realm of extraterritoriality and extratemporality, everything appears magically possible. Protectionism, isolationism, and the Monroe Doctrine are being hauled out of the dusty attics of the past, along with wars waged by brute force rather than intelligence. Italian General Paolo Capitini observes that Americans have reverted to equating war with destruction: “The more I destroy, the more I win.” But if success were measured by the number of deaths, the scale of destruction, the cities reduced to ashes, and the factories laid waste, how, he asks, are Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan to be explained?
More troubling for the United States is that, in recent years, the pressures of decline have intensified, while its ability to respond with the composure and seriousness the situation demands has all but vanished. As the National Security Strategy document — conspicuously devoid of any real strategy — mercilessly reveals, the United States today no longer knows which direction to take. It embarks on wars with potentially catastrophic consequences without even knowing why. As Seneca wrote, “the sailor who does not know where to go never finds a favorable wind.”
The psychological asymmetry in Iran’s favor, however, does not mean that Tehran can win this war. Like the United States, Iran cannot hope to prevail through destructive force alone; for now, it can rely on the superiority of its political experience, expressed in a resilience so carefully organized and sustained that it has endured even the decapitation of its leadership.
Yet this resilience is unlikely to endure indefinitely. Tehran may be able to force the United States to the negotiating table, perhaps even to secure the regime’s survival, but that would not amount to victory. In many respects, Iran had already lost the war before the attack of February 28, as its economic backbone had long ceased to connect the brain with the rest of the body. Even if Israeli-American aggression does not deliver the final blow, the country will almost certainly emerge far weaker than before — exhausted, and potentially fractured by ethnic, religious, and criminal divisions that regional and global powers will not hesitate to exploit.
Before it can reestablish any form of imperial continuity, Iran will have to endure a prolonged period of painful trials. Yet, drawing on its accumulated political experience, it may one day succeed. The imperial continuity of the United States, by contrast, now lies definitively buried in the vast dinosaur graveyard of history.
That political effort, however, ultimately ran aground with the resurgence of American ideological confidence, once the burdensome memory of Vietnam had faded into the mists of oblivion. To make matters worse, the victory of 1991—achieved at the head of a coalition of forty-two countries against a single, weakened adversary—and, above all, the collapse of the Soviet Union rekindled the illusion of an America that had become great again. The Vietnam interlude seemed to be over. Yet the subsequent experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya — again against weak or fragile adversaries, and often with coalition support — demonstrated otherwise.
Over the course of the twenty-first century, the gap between American economic growth and that of the rest of the world has widened. As a result, the United States’ room for maneuver has contracted, while that of other actors has expanded. More actors mean more alternatives. The old hegemonic power has thus become progressively less hegemonic.
Two additional factors have contributed to this weakening. First, deindustrialization and rising public debt have increased the country’s dependence on external sources: foreign creditors and global supply chains. The second factor is what might be called the “military trap”: the belief that decline can be halted by increasing military spending. The U.S. defense expenditure has grown from $320 billion in 2000 to a projected $961.6 billion for the 2026 budget, to which Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently proposed adding $200 billion to finance the Iranian adventure.
Anyone with even a basic understanding of international politics — something dreadfully lacking in the so-called American leadership — should know that "great powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on ‘security,’ and thereby divert potential resources from ‘investment’ and compound their long-term dilemma” (Paul Kennedy).
Yet in this realm of extraterritoriality and extratemporality, everything appears magically possible. Protectionism, isolationism, and the Monroe Doctrine are being hauled out of the dusty attics of the past, along with wars waged by brute force rather than intelligence. Italian General Paolo Capitini observes that Americans have reverted to equating war with destruction: “The more I destroy, the more I win.” But if success were measured by the number of deaths, the scale of destruction, the cities reduced to ashes, and the factories laid waste, how, he asks, are Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan to be explained?
More troubling for the United States is that, in recent years, the pressures of decline have intensified, while its ability to respond with the composure and seriousness the situation demands has all but vanished. As the National Security Strategy document — conspicuously devoid of any real strategy — mercilessly reveals, the United States today no longer knows which direction to take. It embarks on wars with potentially catastrophic consequences without even knowing why. As Seneca wrote, “the sailor who does not know where to go never finds a favorable wind.”
The psychological asymmetry in Iran’s favor, however, does not mean that Tehran can win this war. Like the United States, Iran cannot hope to prevail through destructive force alone; for now, it can rely on the superiority of its political experience, expressed in a resilience so carefully organized and sustained that it has endured even the decapitation of its leadership.
Yet this resilience is unlikely to endure indefinitely. Tehran may be able to force the United States to the negotiating table, perhaps even to secure the regime’s survival, but that would not amount to victory. In many respects, Iran had already lost the war before the attack of February 28, as its economic backbone had long ceased to connect the brain with the rest of the body. Even if Israeli-American aggression does not deliver the final blow, the country will almost certainly emerge far weaker than before — exhausted, and potentially fractured by ethnic, religious, and criminal divisions that regional and global powers will not hesitate to exploit.
Before it can reestablish any form of imperial continuity, Iran will have to endure a prolonged period of painful trials. Yet, drawing on its accumulated political experience, it may one day succeed. The imperial continuity of the United States, by contrast, now lies definitively buried in the vast dinosaur graveyard of history.
The opinions expressed in this article are of the author alone. The Spykman Center provides a neutral and non-partisan platform to learn how to make geopolitical analysis. It acknowledges how diverse perspectives impact geopolitical analyses, without necessarily endorsing them.