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@robert-e-kelly
Russia Can't Win
The most basic lesson from Ukraine’s successes this year is that Russia is not going to win the war. That doesn’t mean that Ukraine will. The stalemate of the last 3.5 years is likely for another 3.5. But there is now pretty obviously no route to a Russian victory outside of escalation measures – like a national draft or the use of nuclear weapons – which are too risky. That’s what I wrote this…
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The Weird, Drifting, On-Again-Off-Again US-Iran War
News of a possible deal with Iran just broke, but the ‘deal’ is so ill-defined, that I am not sure we are still fighting them or what. If the MoU floating around is real, then this is a near-capitulation by the Trump administration. That is why I am skeptical this is actually the final deal. Did Trump really agree to this? How can he possibly defend it? (By blaming it on Vance…
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Iran War: Sometimes It is Just Cheaper to Lose and Get Out
We lost in Iran. No, we weren’t militarily defeated, but we did lost the larger political contest the fighting reflected. This post re-ups an essay I wrote to that effect at the National Security Journal. Iran has left the contest stronger than it entered, mostly notably in taking positive control of the Strait of Hormuz. This threat was always lurking in the background of the US-Iran stand-off,…
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A US Blockade of the Gulf of Oman is a Desperation Move to Avoid Invading Iran
The US Blockade of Iran’s Strait of Hormz’ Blockade will Occur in the Gulf of Oman So Trump is now going to ‘blockade a blockade’? Seriously? Does anyone think that is going to work? I don’t think so is what I wrote at 1945 this week. Please go there for my full argument. I am not sure Trump even knows how this blockade will work. I guess this idea is that what little traffic does come through…
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Iran: I Thought Trump would Try a Limited Ground Assault Rather than TACO
– The best tacos in Columbus, Ohio (where I live in the US) I am pretty surprised Trump just capitaulated in Iran this week. Wow. I figured the embarrassment of losing a war would be too much for him and that he would escalate at least to a limited ground invasion on the Iranian side of the strait of Hormuz before throwing in the towel. That’s what I wrote about in 1945 this week. I figured a…
What Lesson will China Learn from the Iran War? That the US is Overstretched
The USS Gerald Ford in Greece for repairs I don’t really like ‘lessons of war’ arguments. It’s really easy to just project your own biases and favorite variables onto conflicts for self-validation. But everyone is starting to note that China is watching how the US war in Iran is flying off the rails. It is pretty clear that the war is bigger than Trump expected, and he doesn’t know what to. It…
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Iran War: Can We Open Hormuz or Denuclearize Iran Without a Ground War? Probably Not
– The Strait of Hormuz, including Qeshem which the US probably has to neutralize I increasingly don’t think that Trump can win this war without going in on the ground. I wrote this up at 1945 magazine this week. Specifically: Opening Hormuz will probably require at least taking a strip of coast on the strait’s Iranian side. Qeshm island is emerging as a key, heavily-fortified location from…
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Iran War: Will the US Ever Pivot to Asia? Sure Doesn't Look Like It
I wrote a couple op-eds this week on this question of the ‘pivot’ in the wake of yet another US Mideast war – one at Channel News Asia, another at 1945. Here’s the basic argumeent: the strategic case for the pivot to Asia (China) is stronger than ever the Iran War is probably going to be bigger and longer than we thought so we can’t pivot more to East Asia for while in fact, we are…
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The Trump Doctrine: Rogue State Elite Replacement in Venezuela, Iran, next Cuba
Delcy Rodríguez, the new, sorta pro-American despot of Venezuela I put up some thoughts on Trump ending the war in Iran at 1945 magazine. We’re moving toward putting a pro-US stooge in the place of now-deceased Iranian leader Khamenei so that we can withdraw quickly. It seems like this is what Trump wants – basically a replay of the Venezuelan drive-by decapitation we did in early January. The…
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Iran War: Trump Goes Full Neocon in the Biggest Gamble of His Presidency
I posted my first thoughts on the Iran war over at 1945; please go there. But my short take is that this thing is going to require a ground war to do right. And Trump seemed to admit that when he told Iranians to rise up in his first war speech on Saturday. By now everyone knows that airpower isn’t enough for regime change. Robert Pape has banging away at that all week. So you need some force on…
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Who Will Control North Korean Nuclear Weapons in a Conflict?
North Korea is building tactical nuclear weapons – for use on the battlefield – and that raises tricky command-and-control problems for actually using them in combat. I put some thoughts on this at 1945 magazine. Basically, if Kim Jong Un wants to use nukes as a warfighting tool, then he has to let his battlefield commanders have authority to use them. He must delegate release authority. But…
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Trump is Incentivizing Allied Nuclearization
Trump’s threats against US allies and partners encourage them to consider nuclear weapons. This strikes me as painfully obvious, even though we keep saying we don’t want allies to nuke up. I just wrote about this at 1945 magazine. Please got there for the full argument. Post-Greenland, I don’t know why US allies would trust us. For two months, we were openly discussing the possibility of using…
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A North Korean SSBN is an Advertent Escalation Risk
What might bring us (the US, South Korea, Japan) to deliberately attack North Korea? Are there triggers for deliberate (advertent) escalation, on top of the traditional, nuclear age fears of accidental (inadvertent) escalation? The following is from my essay on this for 1945 magazine and Twitter thread. To me it seems like the most likely trigger for us to deliberately bomb NK is NK building a…
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If Trump Takes Greenland, the US would Struggle to Project Power into the Middle East – My Latest for ‘1945’ Magazine
So Trump has decided not to take Greenland by force. He announced that today at Davos. This is great news. It was becoming pretty apparent that a military move might – spark a stock market meltdown – be met by force (even if we would win) – break NATO – lead to massive European Union counter-sanctions – spark yet another impeachment effort against Trump – provoke a civil-military crisis in the US…
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My Latest for Foreign Affairs: It’s a Only a Matter of Time before US Allies Hedge America, even if the Democrats Win in 2028
I wrote a short essay for Foreign Affairs, with my friend Paul Poast of the University of Chicago, on Trump’s treatment of US allies. This is follow-up on a longer article we wrote in 2022 for FA. (And the great pic for this post comes from this article, which is a good read.) Our argument in 2022 was that US allies were willing to absorb a lot more US abuse – under Trump – than people expected.…
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My Take in Foreign Affairs on S Korea’s Constitutional Crisis: A Super-Presidency + Deep Polarization = Temptation to Rule by Decree
I wrote a short essay for Foreign Affairs this month on South Korea’s ongoing political turmoil. My co-author is Suh Jae-Kwon; we are both in the political science department here at Pusan National University. Here is the essay page at FA. Unfortunately it is pay-walled, so you can find our text below the jump instead. My basic take is that President Yoon Seok-Yeol wildly over-reacted to divided…
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Original Version of My Foreign Affairs Essay on South Korean Nuclearization: America’s Response to Nuclear Risk in the Ukraine War Tells Us a Lot about its Likely Response in a Second Korean War
This post is the original version of an article I published this month in Foreign Affairs on potential South Korean nuclearization with my friend Kim Min-Hyung. I think the editing made the essay more readable, but some topics I wanted to elaborate got edited out. Specifically, US hesitation against fully and robustly supporting Ukraine against Russia – because of Russia’s nuclear threats – is a…
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