Yves here. I hope that readers who are experts in the American military will discuss this topic. It is surprising to me, that many commentators on the Iran war say that the US and Israel are set to conduct very intense, short-term, air power conflicts, and that Iran was well aware of that tendency and prepared itself to be able to fight a long war. However, I have not followed US operations in Syria or Afghanistan, so perhaps the wars against the rebels follow the pattern described below.
Douglas Macgregor presented the failure of the US in a completely different way, that the US did not adapt to the new way of warfare driven by ISR, which he foresaw in his 2003 book, Transformation Under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas JS Davies, authors of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of A Senseless Conflict now in a revised, updated second edition. Medea Benjamin is the founder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real and Political History of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas JS Davies is a freelance journalist, CODEPINK researcher and author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
US-allied South African troops conduct search and destroy operations in Namibia in the 1980s Photo: Wikipedia
A 60-day extension of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran could lead to a permanent peace or it could end within a week, leaving behind a dysfunctional alliance between the US and Israel. If it doesn’t, it could mark the beginning of a shift away from the doctrine of “low-energy conflict” that has shaped US foreign policy for decades.
Negotiations between the US, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar began in Switzerland on June 21. But Iran has confirmed that it holds the United States responsible for Israel’s violation of the US-Iran memorandum and cannot move forward with other parts of the agreement until the US fulfills its part in Article 1, which requires that Israel be truly eliminated and withdrawn from Lebanon.
If the memorandum agreed between Iran and the United States fails, the world will be left with much less oil and gas and a regional war between Iran, Israel and the United States from Lebanon to the Persian Gulf.
This whole problem is the worst result of the failure of the world community to control war crimes and genocide in Israel or to end its illegal occupation of Palestine and attacks and attacks in neighboring countries – all of which the United States continues to allow and support through its military and diplomatic alliances and arming the Israeli army.
Trump seems to understand the rapidly deteriorating situation of the US and Israel, and realizes that his political future now depends on getting the US out of the Iran war he and Netanyahu are cooking up. Voices of peace from around the world support the temporary extension of the ceasefire and oppose efforts to undermine it by politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv.
But to understand the roots of this crisis in US foreign policy, we must look back. Since the 1980s, aggressive US foreign policy has drawn the Middle East and much of the world into what US military planners call a “low-cost conflict” or “LIC.”
Under this doctrine, the United States, and now Israel, says it has the freedom to act to use military force in flagrant and widespread violations of international law, while preventing the rest of the world from mustering the political will to enforce the law or hold them accountable.
The US doctrine of low-intensity conflict was a deliberate policy chosen by the Reagan administration in the 1980s, after the US defeat in Vietnam. After Bush II and Cheney’s full-scale US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama, Trump and Biden returned to low-level wars, but expanded their scope.
This choice of the US to expand the low-power war followed the example and strategy of the British Empire in its last phase in the 1950s. From the Suez crisis to the guerrilla war against communist revolutionaries in Malaya and the Mau Mau concentration camps in Kenya, the deliberate and deadly violence of British imperial policies was hidden from its own people and the rest of the world behind false pretenses.
In 1989, Michael Klare and Peter Kornbluh edited a book on the subject Low Level War: How the USA Fights Wars Without Declaring Them.
They wrote that the official definition of low-intensity warfare was deliberately broad and vague, including the drug blockade in Bolivia, the Beirut invasion, the Grenada invasion, the 1986 airstrike in Libya, and “special operations,” “special operations,” and “irregular warfare.”
They concluded that the low-power conflict was in fact “a strategy for re-alignment of the US military, and a renewed commitment to the use of force in the global war against insurgent organizations and governments.”
Today’s false ceasefire decisions in Gaza, Lebanon and the Persian Gulf fit perfectly into that doctrine. They allow the US and Israel to continue their illegal use of force while appearing to respond to international demands for dialogue and negotiation.
But US involvement in low-level conflicts today is not limited to the Middle East. It also includes Russia’s proxy war centered on Ukraine; the brutal, deadly siege of Cuba; US and western crime at sea; the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife; and economic and financial enforcement measures or “sanctions” affecting approximately 40 countries.
Today’s low-level warfare also includes the deployment of US special forces in up to 140 countries. Since 2001, US special forces have claimed 40% of all US military casualties, including the deaths of 8,492 Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Concentrating such a large proportion of the casualties of US wars in such a small army – about 70,000 men and women at any given time – helps to give many American families the illusion of living in peace, even as the United States organizes troops around the world and kills thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of people abroad.
The doctrine of low-level war rests on a basic assumption: that countries targeted by the United States and its allies will always be too weak, too isolated or too divided to resist effectively. But that thought is increasingly being tested.
Iran has made great strides in developing effective military defenses and has shown to the dismay of American and Israeli officials that it can no longer defend itself. But the deadly consequences of false ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon are concrete evidence that Israel and the United States still prefer war less than real peace.
Even as Trump portrays himself as a peacemaker, he is still committed to funding a massive war machine that can combine military power and covert operations at the top and bottom of different parts of the world as he prepares new forms of resistance and responds to changing international pressures.
But the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza opened the eyes of a new generation of people around the world to the reality of US imperialism. This official is lying that low-level fighters are dangerously dressed. People can no longer swallow the false narrative of US and Western politicians and media.
America’s political, military and business leaders face a crisis of credibility and legitimacy that only grows as they take off the gloves and intensify these campaigns, from escalating the Russian war and brutal blockade of Cuba to killing innocent fishermen and boaters in the Caribbean and Pacific and threatening traditional allies like Canada and Denmark.
In the US-Israeli war against Iran and the negotiations to end it, we see a great effort of the attacked country to resist the bullies, to correct the imbalance of power and to support the international law.
Whatever one thinks of the Iranian government, Iran’s pursuit of lasting peace based on sovereignty, security and international law deserves the support of governments and people around the world, including Americans.
This period could be a turning point in the escalation of US aggression and the expansion of Israel’s territory. It may give humanity an opportunity to end this cycle of endless war and start working together to deal with the current problems that threaten the world in the 21st century.
As the people of the United States commemorate the 250th anniversary of its founding, and the violence of the US government comes home to attack us and our neighbors in our homes and streets, we must find common cause, and learn from our neighbors around the world who have opposed US violence for generations.
Ultimately it is up to us to take our future into our own hands and begin the fundamental transition from monarchy to democracy.
That is why CODEPINK is calling for a Summer of Peace and Love, a time to abandon fear, war and empire, and organize our communities with a simple but powerful demand that our country stop fighting the world and start investing in life.
