Terms of Iran's Victory

Terms of Iran's Victory

We saw the signals a few weeks ago: positioning the United States as the victor over Iran with careful caveats: it was a ‘military’ victory, meaning a tactical and operational victory. The target pack was serviced. The other poor dumb sonofabitch died for his country. The battle was won; the war is over. In a folk understanding of warfare, you win a war by winning battles. Win all the battles, win the war. Achieving tactical aims through killing and destruction results mechanistically in some broader victory. We left that idea behind when Marie von Clausewitz published her edition of her husband’s big book, right? We left it behind when Rhett Butler told the Southern gentlemen that they couldn’t win a war without steel mills, right? We left it behind when Harry Summers told that Vietnamese colonel that America should’ve won because they won all the battles, right? Right?! To someone like me, all wheels and gears, you don’t start a war without a policy aim that requires war to implement. Let’s take the late-war version of America’s policy aim: Iran must not have a nuclear weapon ever. There are ways of achieving this aim, including negotiating a deal in which Iran never builds a nuclear device, and they get something in return; and fighting a war against a country of significant size in order to create conditions in which Iran will never build a nuclear device. If none of the other strategies will work, you choose a strategy of war to achieve the policy. By what means will a war achieve the policy? By killing and destruction, the currency of war. If you kill and destroy in a certain way, you can create the conditions for strategic success. Because war is a complex nonlinear system, you never really know how the killing and destruction will create the conditions for success, which is why war is an art. Because you can train people to fairly reliably deliver tactical success, war is also a science. If your killing and destruction don’t connect to achieving strategic aims, you should have stood in bed. Not achieving strategic aims is a lot cheaper by other means than war, which is particularly expensive in (and this is always a splendid phrase) blood and treasure. As we look back from the promised end of this war on Friday (assuming, that is, the Iranians are compliant), we can see that the lack of American clarity on their strategic war aims have made it easy to claim that tactical success (smoking ruin created as and when required) has resulted in victory in the war. Contrariwise, Iran went into this war intending for its repressive bloodthirsty regime to survive, and it has. The terms which the US has had to accept in order to restore status quo ante bellum (the way things were before the war, in this case freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz) include preserving the regime and, at least on paper, preserving their proxies. Iran might dilute its current supply of enriched uranium (not betting on that myself, especially since unlike 2015 they get to keep it in Iran instead of sending it to Russia), it might not, but remember that they were willing to make a deal on that before the war (when a live Ayatollah said it was un-Islamic to build a nuke); they’re willing to make a deal on that now; all that matters to my eye is that I’m not filled with a feeling of trust in the Iranian regime to do any of that. They’ve still got their under-mountain missile factories, and now the President has slipped them $12,000,000,000 upfront to invest as they please. Can I be any clearer? If this deal sticks, even if it goes on to Phase II (unlike the Gaza cease-fires), Iran gets what they wanted: they still get to be the Iran they’ve been since 1979. That was their strategic aim when they were first attacked, that’s where they are today, and even if they dilute their uranium down far enough to make uranium glass dinnerware, they got what they wanted. They won. You can hear my mistake when talking about Geneva: Sitting across the table from the United States like equals will be the newly legitimised Iran, not the United States. You can’t buy this kind of authenticity! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe [https://nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Trump-Netanyahu Götterdämmerung

The Twilight of the Warlords more than the Twilight of the Gods, mind. Last night Binyamin Netanyahu went cap in hand to the President of the United States to ask for permission to defend his country by responding to Iranian attacks with Israeli counterattacks against Iranian national infrastructure. President Trump’s response was to tell him no, at least publicly. The Israeli counterattack was apparently attenuated by this command, if not halted, and designed to exact a price without escalating the conflict. The Iranian attack on Israel was brief, and likewise designed to exact a price for Israeli attacks against Iranian proxy Hizballah in Lebanon. In similar fashion the very limited disobedience from Netanyahu enables Witkoff and Kushner to go back to the Pakistani interlocutors and say, ‘we Americans are ready to be reasonable, but I can barely rein in this maniac Netanyahu!’ I often talk about the American and Israeli domestic political imperatives that drive war against Iran and Hizballah. I have in the past few months talked about the rift between the US and Israel on strategic objectives. Here we see that rift having significant effects. Neither President Trump nor Binyamin Netanyahu engaged Iran with strong strategy: they had vision, or at least vision statements; but unclear strategic pathways on the American side, perhaps clear operational pathways on the Israeli side but poor connections to their strategic aims (no nukes, no missiles, no proxies). They were clear in their risk management: the war would be limited to air power plus Israeli (and perhaps Kurdish) special forces. Apart from that, though; not much. When the going got tough and the Iranians blocked the Strait of Hormuz, we remembered Mike Tyson: ‘Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus.’* Now they’re both going into autumn elections without victories to show for their efforts. Two men would lead their countries in permanent states of war against the implacable and unbeatable, and hold power if not office til their dying day. Each is ready to wave goodbye when the other outlives his usefulness. Each is at risk of appearing to be the tool of the other. Both paddle their respective canoes towards the twilight, occasionally shouting real or fake f-bombs at each other. Netanyahu exits pursued by the public prosecutor and the younger, fitter figure of Naftali Bennet. Who follows President Trump out the door? Perhaps it’s the younger, fitter figure of the Albanian property developer Ivanka Trump, accepting the Republican nomination in 2028, becoming America’s first Jewish president, and birthing the dynasty that Rose Kennedy never could. Xi Jinping will be immensely pleased. He might already know that, in the words of Yogi Berra, ‘tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat’. For people listening to the podcast without video, there is a point at which my phone drops from its perch. I considered taking some time to edit the moment out, but really if I slow down to edit, then I’ll never get the post up! *’No plan ever survives with any certainty past the first time the enemy main force punches you in the mouth.’ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe [https://nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Polar Power Projection

The Strait of Hormuz moment makes this an apt time to look at the Bering Strait and the North West Passage. Looking at the proportion of the Arctic littoral that is the coast of Greenland and Canada’s Arctic Archipelago makes it easier to understand the odd fascination that President Trump has annexing this bit or that. As the polar icecaps melt, the route through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago will become more accessible. It will offer a quicker route from the Pacific to East Coast ports in North America, and before long warm water ports in Canada’s North. Shipping to Europe along Russia’s northern coast will give China’s goods a quicker trip to European markets. I’ll link a paper below that suggests that by mid-century ice-strengthened ships will just bash straight on along a gentle curve from Point Barrow Alaska to Barrow-in-Furness.We’re so used to those Mercator projections, where the shapes and relationships around the Arctic littoral are twisted and obscured by the top margin. Also, ‘high north’ latitudes is a bit of an artefact of a Mercator projection. In particular, the narrowness of the Bering Strait and the North West Passage are harder to see on the usual maps. A polar projection, or in this case an azimuthal equal-area projection centred on the North Geographic Pole, can give a much clearer idea. This map from the CIA World Facebook (one of the great gifts the CIA gave the World, along with the writings of Richards Heuer) aligns fairly closely with the map I’m producing using my rather unsophisticated if shiny pencil. Run, do not walk, to read this paper on the subject from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1214212110 I‘m very conscious that a lot of people listen to this podcast audio-only. If that’s you, consider watching it on the Substack app, or on a browser, just because I spend the first 7 minutes drawing a map. Cartography materials: One sheet Strathmore Bristol 4-ply, my favourite paper; one Kaweco SketchUp 5.6 clutch pencil. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe [https://nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Low Energy Warfare

So, Bibi Netanyahu is on a choke chain: precision strikes against Hamas leadership, apparently OK; attacks against Hizballah apart from the Capital, fine; but nothing that is going to lead to something close to achieving a strategic effect against Iran’s most prized proxy. Remember that moment when KushKoff leaked to Barak Ravid that ‘JD is going to the Super Bowl’? This is the other bookend: Marco Rubio appears to be in charge of Middle East as though he were SecState or something; Mike Needham is now Assistant (Acting) National Security Advisor, and presumably now meant to actually run a national security shop in the White House. Apparently the results from that version of the Super Bowl weren’t optimal. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe [https://nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What's the difference between paying a toll and paying a fee?

I had a fairly random question this afternoon when I came in from an extraordinarily warm morning’s gardening on a holiday Monday. This was my answer. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe [https://nusbacher.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]