Reckless Power: Steering America Toward a Deeper Middle East Quagmire

Ours are the unequalled machines of war, a military superiority that in the hands of an unbalanced president and a hormonal defense secretary are just begging to be used. Those machines now seem to be in the lead, dragging the politicians and administration figures behind, a military machine that virtually drives policy by itself, by the fact of its very existence.

The recurring themes of this war are several. They have been (1) an overbearing impulsiveness to strike militarily, (2) the lack of a strategic plan for a region that literally pulsates with religious and ethnic violence and instability, (3) the lunacy of going to war without the legitimacy derived from a collective of like-minded allies, and (4) an adolescent’s puerile fascination with a communications package that is excessively riddled with terms of violence, lethality, Old Testament reckoning and chest-thumping claims of determination. These are themes that are transparent to other nations, most conspicuously the Iranians. None strengthens our claims of moral determination and each reminds us that Trump pointlessly tore up a functioning 2018 diplomatic settlement and unwisely eliminated further diplomatic negotiations as a possible solution.

Together, they weave a picture absent Kissingerian strategy, and proud of the ascent of unparalleled military force, an assembly of power made of technologies from an earlier era devoid of drones and emerging asymmetrical warfare. Together the picture features an uncharacteristic venom issuing from the oracle of the great United States of America, a changing democratic superpower that had been generally known for its fairness, equanimity and humanity.

What dominates everything now though is not tough-minded, morally banked and determined Churchillian leadership, but the punishment that we are wreaking on Iran everyday. To this is added a failure to describe in our public commentary (of which there has been a great deal of modest at best informative value) our version of an end-state to our war making.

Defining History of all ages has made it abundantly clear that when you mess around in the Middle East you are poking a hornet’s nest, and doing so with near unknowable consequences, and that you had better think it through. The Second Gulf War in Iraq and Afghanistan are good anti-models.

On the other hand, where things are not so clear is from the confusion that follows when the Secretary of Defense stakes out a rigid, if unconvincing, determination to see the war through to ultimate victory, only to be consistently undermined by The President’s confused, illiterate blather and his repeated setting of deadlines followed by indeterminate delays.

Whether US Forces assault and hold ground on Kharg Island, Qeshm or Bandar Abbas, the United States will be embarking on an escalation of huge importance, marked by equally enormous uncertainty. The same conditions that have been at work to muddle the air war’s purposes up to now will be present so much more profusely once ground forces are introduced. The risks of American casualties in the air war were there but in terms of general conflict minimal, however sad losses are. Once we are on the ground those risks explode. At the extreme end of risk would be an attempt to seize the highly enriched uranium presumably buried deep in colloquially named PickAxe Mountain. Even were such an operation mounted and successful, US casualties will be agonizingly hard to accept regardless of the outcome.

And you can rest assured that the long-term plans by a wounded Iranian rump government, or even just a series of some 40 radical Revolutionary Guard Satraps, will be to exact its grievances at any cost. And with considerable confidence we can say that the follow on to this war will fuel Iran’s ultimate determination to get that elusive nuclear capability one way or another, as the existential guardian against another attack, as written in the Pyongyang book of strategic defense.

William R. Piekney served as US Naval officer for four years and served in the CIA for 30 years in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He was under deep cover early in his career and later was station chief numerous times, including West Africa, Pakistan and Egypt. As a member of the Senior Executive Service he directed the Agency’s African operations and then East Asia operations, traveling extensively to those regions to maintain and develop relations with host intelligence and security services. Overall he has spent nearly fifty years in the U.S. Intelligence Community and in related national security affairs. He is a member of The Steady State.

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