Since the Iran war began nearly three weeks ago, President Trump has routinely (and accurately) boasted of America’s battlefield dominance. On an almost daily basis, he recounts how Iran’s navy, missile sites, and military infrastructure have been decimated or completely destroyed. He is, with good reason, supremely confident in American arms. This week, responding to NATO allies who refused to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open, the president declared that, “we don’t need too much help, and we don’t need any help, actually.”
And so far as it goes, Trump is right. The United States is dominating the battlefield in Iran without any help from NATO allies. On Tuesday, U.S. warplanes dropped multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions on Iranian coastal missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz, the first major action in its effort to secure the strait and clear the way for the thousands of commercial vessels now trapped in the Persian Gulf.
There is no question of American battlefield dominance thus far in the war. Yet the Trump administration now faces a different sort of challenge that cannot be quantified in missile strikes or sunk ships. The paradox of U.S. strategic power is that while no nation in human history has ever been able to wield so much military might, the American democratic system of government means the deployment of that power is contingent on public opinion.
In practice, that means America’s obvious superior military capability against Iran does not necessarily guarantee what military strategists call escalation dominance. The U.S. military has better weaponry than any other country, our Armed Forces are vastly superior in every way, and our industrial base dwarfs Iran’s. On the battlefield, the American military will certainly prevail.
But one of the lessons of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is that escalation dominance, at least for a democratic country like the U.S., depends in part on political will, which in turn depends on public opinion. If the American people turn hard enough against a conflict, the U.S. military can win every battle and America will still lose the war.
This is especially salient in a conflict like the one we have launched in Iran. The Trump administration has given multiple justifications for launching the war, which has contributed to a public atmosphere of confusion about American war aims. A recent Washington Post poll found that 65 percent of respondents don’t think President Trump and his team have clearly explained the goals of the war. As Byron York points out at The Washington Examiner, this is despite weeks of the administration saying what its goals are: Destroy Iran’s missiles and missile production, destroy its navy, destroy its ability to project power through regional proxies, and prevent it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. (Read more from “Victory In Iran Depends On More Than U.S. Military Dominance” HERE)
