President Donald Trump is losing his Iran war — but Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark argues American democracy might come out the winner.
Last points to Wednesday’s reported firing of Navy Secretary John Phelan, preceded just three weeks earlier by the firing of Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, now 54 days into the war.
“These datapoints are linked. They are an admission by the president that America is losing the war,” Last writes. “Because the simple fact of the matter is: You do not make high-level personnel changes in the middle of a war if you are winning.”
He notes that the entire Pentagon operation is involved when America goes to war. In wartime, with organizational structures strained, what’s needed most is stability.
“If you are winning the war, then you don’t fire senior leaders, even if their performance is subpar—because the result speaks for itself. You are winning. Any change you make to leadership risks upending that balance.”
Conversely, when “the president starts firing senior military leaders while combat operations are ongoing, it’s an admission that the war is going badly. It’s an admission that the status quo is not tenable and must be altered, even if doing so creates instability and organizational risk.”
Last finds a possible silver lining in the Iran war’s failure: it strengthens American democracy — if U.S. military leadership turns on Trump, even partially.
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He wonders if “perhaps the net effect of the Iran war will be to turn the senior leadership of the military against Trump and reduce his confidence that, in a constitutional crisis, he could call on them to help him domestically?”
Last notes several data points related to the war, such as Trump launching it after being talked into it by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his rejection of the military’s assessments, the “almost daily” shifting of rationale for going to war, being caught “completely by surprise” when Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and trump repeatedly being proven wrong about what is happening and will happen.
He also reminds that during “the rescue operation of the two downed airmen, the president had to be kept out of the room in order to prevent him from interfering and screwing up the mission.”
Last offers up an uncomfortable concept, what he calls, “not a very nice thing to say”:
“One of my maxims is that in the real world, the Joint Chiefs are the final arbiters of American democracy. No one gets sworn in on Inauguration Day without the implicit consent of the military.”
Losing the Iran war will make it that much harder for Trump to turn the military against American democracy should he not like the outcome of any future election.
“Political leaders who lose wars—especially through their own strategic incompetence—do not usually engender loyalty from the officer corps,” Last says, suggesting that losing the war has made one of Trump’s “long-shot endgame scenarios even more unlikely to work.”
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