Paul Krugman’s subhead: “Our Hormuz humiliation was not an accident”; mowing the grass, & salting the Earth: Hormuz, Iran, & America’s moral collapse—strategic defeat for everyone, save IRGC honchos, newly promoted with status & power, & with a much stronger position inside the Iranian régime as they can now say: “we told you so: these assholes cannot be negotiated with, for the only language they understand is when people find a way to bloody their noses…”
The Pearl-Harbor-in-reverse surprise attempted decapitation strike against the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran is, I think, one of those conflicts in which every major actor can plausibly claim a tactical success, while all of them suffered dire strategic defeats.
The United States and Israel have shredded much of Iran’s conventional military capacity, assassinated a horrifying number of senior officials, and repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reach into Iranian territory at will.
Yet the Iranian régime has survived, has bloodied U.S. allies, and—most important—has weaponized the Strait of Hormuz, making the extreme interdependence of the world globalized value-chain economy work for it. Oil, gas, and fertilizer prices are up; global supply chains are jittery; the world now has vivid evidence that the premier maritime choke point for hydrocarbons can, in fact, be choked. And Iran will now tax the oil flow. Plus I would be surprised if part of the price for fertilizer for Indus River valley farms will be charged to Pakistan in the form of its assistance in Iran’s building a nuclear weapon.
Perhaps the only real winners are the newly-promoted IRGC honchos, who now have more power, more status, much more secure positions within Iranian politics, and have discovered that Hamas and Hizbollah were much weaker than is Hormuz.
There was nothing that passed for “strategy” in Washington. There were improvisations driven by presidential ego and domestic politics unbridled as the US military again demonstrated that it was extremely strong and could carry out immensely destructive missions. The question of whether those missions were being carried out at a resource-consumption ratio that attritted our actual and potential adversaries rather than ourselves was never asked. The answer is clear: while we may have attritted Iran more than it attritted us, add in Russia, China, and Denmark to the list of potential adversaries who might shoot at us and it is clear that we are weaker and they are stronger before our Pearl-Harbor-in-reverse attempted decapitation strike.
Without a coherent theory of victory, America’s vast military and economic advantages were translated into very little durable leverage at a high price in terms of our preparedness and stockpiles for other emergencies, and high prices paid by our Gulf ex-allies for choices that they did not meaningfully shape.
And Israel—Israel has, impressively, “mowed the grass” once again. But here in America the unpatriotic Republican Party has learned that Binyamin Netanyahu puts a 0% weight on being an ally of and 100% weight on exploiting his influence inside the Republican Party for his benefit and his benefit alone. And the patriotic Democratic Party has been, again, taught the lesson that Jabotinsky’s Likud Israel is no friend of America’s, whatever Ben-Gurion’s Labor Israel once was, now two generations ago. The chances that Tel Aviv is a sea of radioactive glass in fifty years has gone up significantly.
It is against this backdrop that you should read Paul Krugman’s “Ignorance and Ignominy”. Krugman’s core point is that the debacle at Hormuz was not an unlucky break in an otherwise competent policy, but the almost inevitable outcome of a government staffed at the top by men who are proudly ignorant, ideologically intoxicated, and convinced that divine favor will compensate for the absence of planning. The humiliation is not just military or diplomatic; it is moral. A superpower that flirts so casually with massive war crimes, then calls its own retreat a victory ordained by God, is advertising not strength but decay.
<https://paulkrugman.substack.com/cp/193630576> <https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/ignorance-and-ignominy>
Paul Krugman: Ignorance & Ignominy <https://paulkrugman.substack.com/cp/193630576>: ‘Iran won. The Iranian regime has emerged far stronger than it was before, controlling the Strait of Hormuz and having demonstrated its ability to inflict damage on both its neighbors and the world economy. The U.S. has emerged far weaker, having demonstrated the limitations of its military technology, its strategic ineptitude and, when push comes to shove, its cowardice. We’ve also destroyed our moral credibility: Trump may have TACOed at the last minute, but he threatened to commit gigantic war crimes — and for all practical purposes our political and civil institutions gave him permission to do so…. God help us.
MUSICAL CODA
We've got someone who bluffs way too much. Other players will, of course, call someone who bluffs way too much: to penalize the bluffer, to feel better about themselves, and to look better to others (that's survival for dictators). Which means that the stakes go waaay up when dealing with a bad gambler. You can't declare victory when the Persian Gulf is controlled by the Iranians, even on Fox. Which means the bad gambler has to punish the other players to create credibility. The escalation isn't over; "We've only just begun" - cue the Carpenters.
Yes. To both Krugman’s comments and yours. But how the hell did we end up in this situation?!?!? And what happens next? These sound like rhetorical questions, but they really aren’t.