Military Strategy, Iran, Personal Jealousy, Bin Laden, and Bugs Bunny

And a reminder of something I think we all forgot.

Cassidy Steele Dale forecasts and contextualizes the present to equip us to make a better, kinder future…

… and one of those ways to equip you with a set of questions for the next crisis.

Hokay, Trump’s strikes on Iran this week really cut into my scenario-writing time for you and that’s just inconsiderate.

As a futurist I don’t like commenting on most international affairs because other futurists and commentators are better at all-of-that however I will offer the set of questions I tend to ask myself during events like this.

• You’ll have to fill in the answers yourself on most of these.

• But I will offer something at the end that I haven’t seen anyone else point out yet — or at least not for a long time.

Here are the questions. It’s a short list.

Why is this happening?

Why is this happening now?

Is this a fight or a conflict/war?

• Fights are short; conflicts/wars are long. You can win fights but lose a war. You can win a war even though you lose some fights along the way. In fact, you can win a long war by losing all the right fights until the world turns to your side.

What are the warring parties’ strategies against each other — or do they have any? Do the warring parties’ strategies counter each other or miss each other entirely (out of strategic ineptitude or because the warring parties fundamentally fail to understand each other)?

• If one party thinks the situation is a fight but the other two think it’s a war, then you’re going to have a bad mismatch. The party who thinks it’s a fight will be at disadvantage against those who treat it as a longer term conflict or war.

• Military strategists will tell you there are only three kinds of warfare: (1) wars of annihilation in which you are trying to utterly destroy or eradicate the enemy forces and people, (2) wars of attrition in which you are trying to grind down your enemy’s capacity to make war, and (3) wars of exhaustion when you try to fight for so long that you outlast your enemy’s capacity to make war and then you conquer them. There’s a variation on that last one called a Fabian war of exhaustion when you are trying to exhaust your enemy’s will to fight regardless of their physical capacity to continue fighting. (My current favorite exhaustive doorstop-tome on military, corporate, and other strategies is Sir Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy: A History. He even includes nonviolent “strategies from below.” And anything you can get your hands on by Hal Brands will be absolutely superb.)

• There’s another kind of warfare that I call a war of obviation where instead of engaging in combat you fly deep beneath the radar of the warring sides and supplant or subvert the conflict’s raison d’etre: its entire reason for being. In some cases this means solving the problem that caused the war in the first place. Wars of obviation are the domain of the smartest policy people and the best ministers of faith and best professional subversives you can find — or you can become. Wars of obviation subvert, prevent, and thwart shooting wars. A war of obviation is not a war.

What do leaders tell their own domestic publics about what the fight or the war is about, why it is (or was) necessary, and what victory in this conflict looks like?

If the leaders are selfish, in personal danger, or are personally insecure, then what is the fight or the conflict be really (or at least additionally) about? Put another way: Does the fight or the conflict help preserve their regime or their agenda? Does the fight distract from the regime’s detractors? Will it help keep them out of jail? Will it help them achieve something — petty or profound — they’ve always wanted but can’t achieve via more difficult, legitimate means?

Each of the three countries’ leaders have their own immediate, semi-existential fears and desires. You can figure out who’s who and what’s what but I’ll remind us of something: Trump remains deeply, maddeningly jealous of (and livid with) Barack Obama.

Obama mocked Trump during his comedy routine in front of the world — and in front of Trump to his face in the audience — during the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011 while the world didn’t know the Navy SEALs were on standby to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan the next day. Trump never got over his hate of Obama and still stews in his own jealousy.

Trump continues to compete every day with Obama. Trump wants to become and be remembered as the greater President.

And Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize for bigger reasons than Obama got his in 2009. He’s already telegraphing his desire for a Nobel because Captain Lack-of-Impulse-Control just cannot contain himself and subtlety is not his superpower:

Trump wants a military victory greater than Obama’s for the Osama bin Laden raid. Trump wants to be perceived as stronger and greater and cooler and better than Obama.

I think Trump directed his speechwriters to tonally-and-textually mirror his bomb-the-crap-out-of-Iran address to the nation after Obama’s announcement that the United States had found and killed Osama bin Laden.

Here’s a small textual mirror as an example. Here’s Obama:

Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history…

And Trump a few days ago, standing in the exact same spot in the White House as where Obama spoke (but rather than striding out alone Trump brought his posse):

A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive, precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime. Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise.

Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.

Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated…

Even when Trump doesn’t imitate he nevertheless tries to rhyme. And add colorful adjectives to try to make himself appear bigger, mightier, and smarter than whoever he’s competing with. Which in this case doesn’t work even as a military comparison because Osama bin Laden is very dead and it appears from press reporting that Trump’s strikes maybe only rearranged some Iranian crockery.

• Trump either mistakes a win in a fight for victory in a conflict or he hopes the appearance of victory in one will disguise the loss of the other long enough to trick the Nobel Committee. He wants to trick the Nobel Committee and the world into affording him greater stature than Obama.

He will fail because Norwegians can’t be tricked by a false frost much less this guy’s song and dance. And because you cannot bronze a legacy of ashes or mold them into an idol of gold.

No, I’m not saying Trump ordered the strikes on Iran because he’s jealous of Obama. I am saying that Trump probably additionally saw it as an opportunity to try to outdo Obama on several levels at once and cement himself a greater and higher place in history as the bigger man.

• Which reminds me of my Looney Tunes rule (adapted from Jeff Greenfield’s): Whoever keeps their wits and their cool will beat the flailing, screaming mess. Daffy Duck never beats Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd can’t militarily overpower The Wabbit. And Obama probably loves carrots because Obama is Obama.

Strongmen, when they become insecure, demonstrate strength out of their misbegotten belief that their cruelty will rally the support of the cruel and intimidate their political enemies into submission. Strongmen think the right people will like the crackdown and the wrong people won’t. So expect more glorious crackdowns and flailing demonstrations of ‘strength’ if/as Trump decides the Iranian strikes or his peace deal failed. (Iran has started theirs.)

And that’s your forecast from me this week.

Nope, wait, I’ve got another.

Strongmen never understand that crackdowns and great demonstrations of their strength alienate more than they intimidate.

I know you’re alienated.

And after the No Kings protests and resistance to ICE and failed military parades these past few weeks, I think Americans have begun demonstrating their own strength.

I don’t think you can be intimidated any more.