Trump Repeats America's Old Sin: Fails to Understand and Miscalculates on Iran
Trump Repeats America’s Old Sin: Fails to Understand and Miscalculates on Iran
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - The United States’ war against Iran is seen to reveal a longstanding weakness in Washington that keeps recurring: the failure to understand the thought processes, values, and perspectives of the parties it faces.
Cited from The Economist, this weakness is one of the dangerous problems in Donald Trump’s war strategy against Iran.
The Habit of US Presidents Since Long Ago
In front of their troops, US presidents usually depict the enemy as a dangerous foe that must be stopped immediately. He asserts that even though the opponent has not surrendered, the US military will continue to strike key points deemed capable of weakening them. He also often says that American troops have capabilities that other countries do not possess.
That president then explains that US forces operating far from their country are trying to reorganise the conflict zone to make it safer and more stable. He also asks his troops to be proud because they come from a country considered strong and solid.
On the other hand, to convince Americans who are starting to doubt the war, the Pentagon continues to present data on military operation results. US generals explain the number of bombs dropped and the targets destroyed. Bridges and oil refineries are also attacked because they are considered to help the enemy keep moving.
However, when the war, initially expected to end quickly, instead lasts for weeks, all those figures are no longer enough to cover the fact that America has miscalculated. The military pressure applied has not yet succeeded in making the opponent surrender.
Interestingly, the story of the war in that early part does not refer to Donald Trump. That event happened in 1999, and the president in question was Bill Clinton.
At that time, US military planners estimated that it would only take three days for the US and NATO to break the resolve of Serbia’s leader, Slobodan Milosevic, through air strikes.
The goal was to stop the ethnic cleansing of Albanian citizens in Kosovo, a former Yugoslav region. But in reality, the air war lasted 79 days before Serbia finally surrendered amid the serious threat of a NATO ground invasion.
From that comparison, it is clear that the mistakes now associated with Trump are actually not new in US history.
Indeed, there is a very distinctive side to Trump, such as his fondness for hurling crude threats, acting impulsively, and disliking hearing facts that do not align with his wishes. However, previous US presidents have also made similar mistakes.
John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, for example, once thought that the Vietnamese people would welcome America as an ally in fighting communism. In fact, many Vietnamese saw America as a coloniser.
When the US Fails to Understand the Opponent
The root of the problem is that America too often underestimates cultural factors when formulating foreign policy or military strategies.
Within the US intelligence agencies themselves, in the last one to two decades, thinking has developed that specifically highlights the blind spot or that habitual weakness. The 1999 Kosovo war is even often used as an example.
One reference is a paper titled Cultural Topography published in 2011 by two former CIA officials, Jeannie Johnson and Matthew Berrett.
That paper explains that US planners during the Kosovo war underestimated the Serbian cultural view of honour, dignity, and the ability to endure pressure. As a result, the US failed to see that Serbia might feel victorious precisely because it could stand against a much larger military power, when the world thought they would surrender quickly.
Similar mistakes then repeated in Afghanistan and Iraq. US leaders and commanders loved to view problems in other countries merely as targets to be hit or issues to be resolved immediately.
Yet, situations in other countries also encompass social, political, and cultural issues that must be understood first. Johnson and Berrett then founded the Centre for Anticipatory Intelligence at Utah State University to train US intelligence in mapping cultural characteristics in reading threats or opportunities.
Berrett assesses that policymakers should first ask whether the foreign policy outcome they desire requires other countries to change something very fundamental in their culture or worldview.
If the answer is yes, then the next question should be far more realistic: how long can such a change be achieved, and what resources are needed. Unfortunately, questions like this are too rarely asked.
One cause is that the US is too militarily strong, so strategies are often thought of afterwards. America also too easily remembers its success in turning Germany and Japan into allies and democratic countries after 1945, but forgets that the change was born from total war and even launching two atomic bombs.
Behind Trump’s Ambitions Towards Iran
Trump himself has often mocked his predecessors for trying to turn Middle Eastern countries into liberal democracies. But in practice, his administration still pushes for fundamental change in Iran.
Vice President J.D. Vance even said that Trump wants Iran to behave like a normal country, one that prioritises economic and business interests over ideology. That means there is a push for Iran to shift from the Islamic nationalism that has been its main foundation.
In the end, Trump’s way of waging war is assessed to repeat almost all of America’s old cultural mistakes, only without one element that used to often cling to Washington: excessive idealism.
If in the past many countries complained about US presidents who came with good intentions but still mis