Many experts and informed audiences are turning to University of Chicago Professor Emeritus Robert Pape’s work on the concept of the “Escalation Trap.” (historical examples)
Here’s an excerpt from a recent briefing on his Substack.
Subscribe to Professor Pape’s Substack:
The End of a GeoPolitical Model
My recent Foreign Affairs article, “Iran and the New Rules of Global Power,” argues that the Iran war has fundamentally changed America’s strategic position in the Middle East.
On Thursday evening, I want to take the next step—and address the question the article leaves open.
What if the Iran war did not simply expose a weakness in American strategy?
What if it marked the end of the geopolitical model the United States has relied on since the 1991 Gulf War?
4 Assumptions of Post-Cold War America
For more than three decades, American power rested on four assumptions:
forward bases could safely project power,
air superiority would dominate the battlefield,
precision strike would produce rapid victories, and
overwhelming technology would allow the United States to defeat regional adversaries quickly and at relatively low cost.
The Iran war challenges every one of those assumptions.
The United States has demonstrated overwhelming military superiority. Yet it has struggled to achieve the political objective that matters most: restoring secure commercial access to the world’s most important maritime corridors. At the same time, relatively inexpensive missiles and mass-produced drones have placed American bases, allies, and critical energy infrastructure under sustained pressure.
If that assessment is correct, then the question is no longer simply whether the United States wins in Iran. It is whether the military model on which Washington now spends roughly $1 trillion each year—and is preparing to spend substantially more—still produces the strategic outcomes it was designed to achieve. If not, this is no longer just a military debate. It could become one of the defining strategic, budgetary, and political questions heading into the midterm elections.
What if the Iran war is revealing not that America needs to spend more—but that it has been investing in the wrong theory of military power?
.. And if the post-1991 model has broken, what replaces it?
ELSEWHERE:
Robert Pape Wikipedia Profile