“Under heaven thunder rolls.”
—I Ching
Donald Trump once commissioned a ghostwriter to put his name to a book called The Art of the Deal—but he’s clearly never read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Consider a staple teaching from Master Sun: “So it is said that if you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperilled in every single battle.”1 Doubtless, the Pentagon has very capable military commanders, tacticians and a massive arsenal of weapons at their disposal. In matters of war, the balance of power heavily favours America’s legions of imperial soldiers. But with Trump as their commander-in-chief, they fly blind in terms of strategy.
In his political career, Trump has branded himself as an “America First” isolationist, allergic to “forever wars” that divert resources from the homeland. He has boasted about ending eight wars, a Nobel Peace Prize-worthy effort. When he did not receive said prize, he declared himself to be untethered from thinking about peace. After Venezuela amassed a citizens militia to deter American invasion, Trump opted to kidnap the president and threatened to kill his successor unless she complied with U.S. demands. The revolution in Venezuela is now in tactical retreat but the ink is not yet dry on the results of Trump’s acts of violence. Before even knowing what he had accomplished in Venezuela, aircraft carriers were positioned in the Middle East to set about duplicating the Venezuela operation all over again. This time it was in partnership with Israel and against the much more formidable opponent of Iran.
He Who Wishes to Fight
They began with a familiar decapitation strategy, taking the more audacious step of murdering Iran’s head of state rather than merely kidnapping him. They hit 500 targets and launched cyberattacks to encourage a domestic uprising against the government in Tehran. From interviews, Trump evidently believed that the combined external and internal pressure on Iran would bring a compliant leader to the foreground—an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez. But Trump confusingly oscillates between stated objectives in Iran, his motivations for attacking the country are unclear and he has struggled to define his relationship with war in general. In short, this is a man who does not know himself. And he does not know his enemy either.
Although the Venezuela operation was a tactical success for U.S. planners, the hardcore Chavista apparatus remains in place to live another day. Assassinating the Ayatollah Khamanei, on the other hand, galvanized grief and anger across the Shia world. It was an abrasive action that could not be interpreted as a “limited strike” by Iran’s theocratic government—much to Trump’s chagrin. The Iranians responded by setting in motion a battle plan that they had transcribed for weeks beforehand: regional conflict targeting the energy infrastructure of Gulf countries and closing the Strait of Hormuz. This plan was no secret, yet Trump astonishingly went on the record stating that the Gulf escalation was the “biggest surprise” of the conflict. Which brings us to another valuable lesson from The Art of War: “If you don’t know their strategy, you should avoid battle with them.”2
Iran’s escalation was clearly not accounted for by U.S. strategic planning. Only afterward did Trump realize he’d need a mass evacuation of American citizens, a British base for operational support, Ukrainian assistance to counter Shahed drones and more arms production to prosecute the war effort. His “big wave” aerial bombardment appears to be only an ad hoc response to the failure of a domestic rebellion to materialize and Iran’s refusal to capitulate to illegal U.S. and Israeli aggression.
Since Trump does not know his enemy, he may not be aware that Iran is fighting from “deadly ground”—a place where death is assured unless it can be fought out from. By constantly reneging on diplomatic agreements, assassinating leaders at will, surrounding their country with military bases and demanding the forfeiture of missiles, the United States has given Iran no choice but to fight in order to achieve deterrence against their enemy: “When you cannot press forward, cannot retreat backward and cannot run to the sides, you have no choice but to fight right away.”3 And so they have.
Opportunity in Chaos
Iran has adopted the sort of high-risk strategy to be expected from an army on deadly ground. But it is logical according to The Art of War: when outnumbered by a massive opponent “first deprive him of what he likes” and focus strikes on “what is weak.”4 The disabling of the Gulf state infrastructure and the Strait of Hormuz satisfy both criteria, as Iran is able to strangle the oil and gas supply from small countries that form the weak underbelly of the Persian Gulf. These countries are within range of Iran’s abundant store of short range range missiles, creating outsized pain for a fossil fuel-addicted world.
Iran’s strategy going forward will be to “find out where [the enemy is] sufficient and where they are lacking.”5 They will accomplish this by testing Israeli and American defences with low intensity but consistent missile and drone barrages in order to deplete interceptor inventories and conceal Iranian launch sites as much as possible. Expect Iran to refrain from ineffectual large attacks unless U.S.–Israeli defensive gaps appear. Only if missile defences are diminished will they be able to strike for a maximum psychological impact—like the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War.
Karl Marx observed that “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”6 Iran is at an extreme disadvantage with their heavily sanctioned economy now pitted against the military might of much wealthier opponents. The only reason they are in this fight is because of the deficiencies of current U.S. leadership. Of the eight types of decadence that compromise commanders according to The Art of War, Trump suffers from no less than five of them: insatiable greed, jealousy of the wise and able, making friends with the treacherous, a liar with a cowardly heart and talking wildly without courtesy.7
Iran’s path to victory is narrow but existent. It relies on their ability to absorb cruel and punishing aerial bombardment with clever military decoys and camouflage; to achieve critical depletion of the enemy’s missile interceptors; to inflict unsustainable economic pain on the West. All three criteria will have to be met before a strategic victory and future deterrence becomes a possibility. Failing to meet these goals will either result in the destruction of Iran’s 2,600 year old civilization by civil war or the bare survival of a weakened Islamic Republic that is sure to be in conflict again soon against bloodthirsty enemies. Regardless of the outcome in Iran, The Art of War has this to say about the fate of the United States: “Even if a country is large, if it is militaristic it will eventually perish.”8
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