There are plenty of dramatic examples of mighty nations — even empires — accepting defeat and actually finding longterm strategic success in loss. Japan in 1945. Nixon going to China amid U.S. failure in the Vietnam War. President Trump is approaching that very moment now and he needs to seize it, says our guest this week Michael Vlahos.
Vlahos, a military strategist and historian, says the cult of military power has never been stronger but has been dealt a serious blow in the Iran War. The U.S. military has dominated the planet in capability, wealth, and technology for generations, but in the last four months was bested by a much less equipped, smaller, and under-resourced Iran. How? Why?
Vlahos explains how Washington has never learned the lesson — that military might alone doesn’t win wars. Trump’s move now is to accept defeat and turn it into something that not only stabilizes the region, but helps to accept that sustaining American empire only destroys our national interest and like empires before it, is doomed to ultimate failure.
Lots of learning here on Trip the Beltway Fantastic this week, check it out!
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is Editorial Director of Responsible Statecraft and Senior Advisor at the Quincy Institute. She was a regular news writer and reporter for Antiwar.com from 2009 to 2014. She served for three years as Executive Editor of the The American Conservative magazine, where she had been reporting and publishing regular articles on national security, civil liberties, foreign policy, veterans, and Washington politics since 2007. From 2013 to 2017, Vlahos served as director of social media and online editor at WTOP News in Washington, D.C. She also spent 15 years as an online political reporter for Fox News at the channel’s Washington D.C. bureau, as well as Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine.
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