The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has written previously and repeatedly about the Trump administration’s inability to think coherently about grand strategy. As the Iran War approaches ten days, the administration’s abject lack of strategic capacity is becoming more readily apparent.
To understand the Trump administration’s blind spots, let’s start with the military situation in the region — the area where the administration is probably on its strongest footing. On a purely tactical level, the joint U.S.-Israeli aerial assault on Iran is doing a solid job in degrading some of Iran’s military capabilities. According to the U.S. military, Iranian ballistic missile attacks have declined by approximately 90 percent since the first day of the war, for example.
The thing is, less expensive Iranian drone attacks are hitting the U.S. and allied radar installations being used to detect Iran’s missile attacks, thereby “degrading the ability of the U.S. and its allies to track incoming missiles” according to the Wall Street Journal. As a result, the United States now finds itself needing the assistance of — wait for it — Ukraine to combat Iran’s cheap Shahed drones.
This is likely a shock for an administration — and a president — whose gut instinct has been to denigrate Ukraine and soft-pedal criticism of Russia. Nonetheless, Politico reports that, “a person close to Trump’s national security team acknowledged that Zelenskyy has ‘marginal short-term leverage’ with the U.S. requesting its help on drone defense, and that it's a ‘smart play’ for a leader whom Trump and his administration feel lacked much leverage in the ongoing U.S.-led negotiations about ending the Russia-Ukraine war.”
This is what I mean about a failure of strategic thinking. This is a classic second-order effect of a regional war, the implications of which should have been considered before, you know, starting a war. Instead the Secretary of Defense seems intent on composing white-boy raps.
To be sure, some surprising situations can be chalked up to the fog of war. There are always unpredictable second and third-order effects of any significant conflict, like how the war in the Gulf might affect AI development. Surely, though, the Trump administration thought through some of the more basic scenarios before starting a Gulf War Three, though, right?
Right?
Unfortunately, it does not appear that the Trump administration considered any possible effects from attacking Iran. Not just second-order effects like needing Ukraine, but straightforward issues ranging from counterterrorism to energy prices to strategic alliances in the Middle East.
