Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog

Barbara Tuchman, one of America’s preeminent historians of the 20th century, wrote an analysis of some of the most consequential failures of leadership in world history. The March of Folly, published in 1984, deconstructs the egregious errors made by rulers, popes, kings, and presidents in four specific situations. The final chapter of the book, detailing Washington’s flawed decision-making leading up to and during the tragedy of Vietnam, offers pertinent lessons for the White House’s current military imbroglio with Iran. While it is clear that our present war in the Persian Gulf and the tragedy of Vietnam are very different, Washington is making some of the same mistakes that underpinned our failed foreign policy of sixty years ago.

First and foremost, we again are falling into the trap of underestimating the tenacity and fighting spirit of our opponent. Like the Vietnamese in the 1960s, Iran is proving to be a much more difficult foe than President Trump, Secretary Hegseth, and their obsequious supporters ever imagined. Much as Tuchman describes Washington’s apparent inability to see Hanoi as anything more than a “fourth-rate Asiatic country,” our current leadership seems blind to Tehran’s recent history of surviving a brutal eight-year slugfest with Iraq in the 1980s, let alone the reality that Persia—modern day Iran—has been a power in Western Asia since well before the time of Christ. 

Add the fact that Iran is fighting on its home turf, a direct parallel with what we faced in the 1960s in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and our ostensible lack of foresight in anticipating how Tehran might respond to being attacked (how about that Strait of Hormuz) does not instill confidence in our national command authority. History is replete with examples of seemingly more powerful militaries far from their homelands crashing on the rocks of tenacious indigenous resistance. Napoleon at the gates of Moscow, Hitler at Stalingrad, the British, Soviets, and Americans in Afghanistan, and the Kremlin’s present special military operation in Ukraine all highlight this point. 

A flip side of belittling the enemy is exaggerating one’s own military effectiveness. With respect to Iran this began last June when President Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear sites had been “completely and totally obliterated” in initial U.S. airstrikes. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that had that been true we would not be bombing them again now to force them to abandon their (maybe it’s not obliterated) nuclear program.

As a corollary to the above, during the current phase of this war, Washington has relied exclusively on naval and air power, hoping the overwhelming display of destruction from the sky will achieve the desired political goals. The efficacy of this military strategy, however, has repeatedly failed in the modern era from the German blitz on London in 1940/41 through America’s “Rolling Thunder” bombing of Vietnam in the 1960s to, one could argue, Moscow’s relentless but so far unsuccessful carnage from the sky it’s inflicting on Ukraine. 

In her analysis of America’s war in Vietnam, Tuchman quotes a 1966 study from the Institute of Defense Analysis on the lack of utility of this type of bombing campaign. According to the study, sustained aerial assault “tended to strengthen the fabric of (the bombed) society, increase popular determination and stimulate protective devices and capacity for repair.” What was true in 1966 remains true today yet President Trump, channeling his inner Lyndon Johnson, in early April threatened to bomb Iran “back to the stone age.” As Tuchman eloquently posits in The March of Folly, “the irony of history is inexorable.”

Testifying in 1966 before Congress as part of the Fulbright Hearings, leading U.S. diplomat George Kennan soberly criticized Washington’s war in Vietnam for the betrayal of core American principles, specifically to “not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” According to Kennan, “pursuing monsters meant endless wars in which the fundamental maxim of American policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.” Those words resonate as poignantly today as they did sixty years ago.

The one snare that, to his credit, Trump has so far avoided in the current conflict is getting involved in a land war in Asia. Despite the paradox that the only plausible way to definitively control Tehran’s nuclear program is to put lots—likely hundreds of thousands— of boots on the ground, the president is wise to avoid that trap as the last thing America needs is another open ended military commitment in Asia. Furthermore, although our commander in chief revels in the pomp and ceremony of war, psychologically he’s not built for the patience, perseverance, and fortitude required of a large scale land war.

It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration is capable of learning these lessons from history, many of which America experienced in the 1960s in the jungles of the Mekong Delta. The performance so far in the Persian Gulf, highlighted by a dangerous combination of arrogance and ignorance, reminiscent of failed U.S. military adventures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, unfortunately does not offer a surfeit of hope for a positive outcome. 

Once again, America’s leadership is pursuing a military strategy, in this case limited war, that is unlikely to achieve the stated political goal—a non-nuclear Iran. Trump is, thus, stuck in a stalemate that is causing economic pain to the American consumer, as well as damaging what remains of our reputation in the rest of the world, with any potential peaceful resolution of the conflict now likely to include a nuclear agreement very similar to what President Obama achieved in 2015, without the war. President Trump is therefore well on his way to joining a long line of occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who have failed to heed the lessons of history. 

In the insightful words of legendary basketball coach John Wooden, “failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” Will we ever learn?

Note: This article was submitted to local New England papers for consideration on 7 June.