Strategies professor Phillips Payson O’Brien tells the Atlantic that the U.S. military is showing signs of stupid.
“When a complex system starts to decay, the first signs are usually subtle,” said O’Bien. “In the third century, after the Roman empire had reached its geographic maximum, literacy began to decline across Roman society. Education levels fell not only among soldiers, but among officers, aristocrats, and even emperors. The Roman army still looked formidable for years afterward. It had good equipment and could march well. Yet it was no longer as advanced relative to Rome’s enemies as it had once been. It fought as hard as ever, but less effectively.”
The capabilities of the U.S. military are still far superior to Iran’s, said O’Brien, but recent developments in the American bombing campaign against Iran are revealing what look like signs of strain. In Bahrain, a lone Iranian drone costing less than a new car penetrated the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which oversees 2.5 million square miles of the world’s oceans. O’Brien said the AN/TPS-59 radar surveillance unit it destroyed was estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars.
This is nothing compared to the deaths of six U.S. soldiers, however.
Iranian retaliatory attacks — consisting of simple drones, no less — penetrated American defenses, killing six soldiers and wounding others stationed in Kuwait. CNN reported that the Americans received no warning of the incoming drone. CBS News reported U.S. forces had prepared for car bombs around the facility but did not aim eyes at the sky.
“We basically had no drone defeat capability,” an unnamed military official told the network.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth downplayed the fatal snafu: “Every once in a while, you might have one, unfortunately — we call it a squirter — that makes its way through.”
“Yet the failure to beef up relevant defensive measures in a facility located so close to Iran is a curious lapse in planning,” said O’Brien, especially since Trump, as the aggressor, began the schedule “of America’s choosing,” meaning the U.S. should have been prepared for aerial attacks.
The technology is good, said O’Brien, but the brains behind it are not so good under Trump and his officials.
“On Sunday, three F-15Es were shot down in short succession in a single friendly-fire incident over Kuwait. These were among the more advanced aircraft that the U.S. Air Force possesses,” said O’Brien. “Were the three F-15E aircraft flying so close that they could all be taken out at once? How well were American forces communicating with Kuwaiti allies? Perhaps the incident simply resulted from a misunderstanding in a moment of conflict, but America’s ability to collaborate effectively with other countries is very much in doubt under Trump.”
Forging military and diplomatic alliances with other governments used to be the U.S.’ superpower, but the Trump administration has deliberately snubbed traditional U.S. allies. Worse, The Trump keeps cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the greatest security threat to democratic Europe, and Trump has threatened to invade a NATO ally.
“Americans and Europeans might still refer to each other as ‘allies,’ but the signs of rot are obvious,” said O’Brien. “Just as the Roman empire survived for two more centuries after it started to decline, the United States isn’t in danger of imminent collapse. But Trump’s rejection of planning, expertise, and diplomacy is beginning to have real-world consequences.”
