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If Trump’s election prospects begin to look really bleak, then his temptation to summon patriotic support by recourse to war against Iran might have irresistible political appeal, but even then it seems problematic as an effective tactic. At best, recourse to war with Iran would have huge backlash risks for the Trump campaign. Recollections of Bush’s “mission accomplished” assertion at the beginning of the Iraq occupation in 2003 would almost certainly be revived, including reminding the American people of the costly and political failures arising from Iraqi resistance to the Anglo-American occupation, which, among other unintended side effects, led to the formation of ISIS and the discrediting disclosures of Abu Ghraib.

As with the Vietnam War, American leaders have failed to respond adequately to an important shift in historical agency. They have consistently failed to grasp the significance of the fact that in the period since the end of World War II, military superiority only achieves political victory under special circumstances. In the First Gulf War (1992) and the Kosovo War (1999), overwhelming force could be applied and core identities were not at stake on the weaker side. In such conflicts, and few others, the stronger side prevailed. The more typical combat situation in this period — as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — involves reliance on military power by the intervening side, which generates a nationalist mobilization of resistance on the weaker side militarily.

High-tech military superiority can kill and destroy without limit, but it can rarely win a war if the national mobilization is robust and persevering. This lesson was mostly learned after the Second World War by the European colonial powers, sometimes painfully. It was learned in some instances by withdrawal (Britain) or through lost wars (France), but remains unlearned by the United States because learning would undermine the military foundations of global security policy, along with eroding the bureaucratic hegemony of the military/intelligence/industrial establishment.

This limitation on military agency applies to other countries as well. The Soviet Union never recovered from its devastating political defeat in Afghanistan, and Iraq’s inability to prevail in Iran despite possessing decisive advantages on the battlefield was the beginning of the end for Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime in Iraq.

Trump has displayed a soft spot for militarism since becoming president, which may lead him to think his best option for “keeping America great” is to make war with Iran at some point and then ride an ensuing wave of patriotic enthusiasm to victory in the 2020 elections. We know that the Pentagon refuses to acknowledge the limits of American military power for fear of having its budget reduced. But what about the American people? I am somewhat hopeful that enough Americans, including some Trump supporters, would see through the war ploy as an electoral tactic that could lead to a spectacular backlash.