Iran war accelerates the collapse of the West – US planners understood that the American hegemony in West Asia would slip away
Sun 2:47 pm +00:00, 15 Mar 2026
Source: https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/iran-war-accelerates-the-collapse
Iran does not have to win the current Middle Eastern war to defeat the United States and Israel. She only needs to survive and it looks like she is more than surviving. This shouldn’t surprise anyone paying even casual attention to the events.
According to The Washington Post, US intelligence produced a classified assessment of the situation shortly before the US and Israel launched their military operations against Iran. They concluded that even a massive military assault on Iran is unlikely to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran and its state system. For some reason however, their assessment was ignored.
It gets worse: only two days before launching the war against Iran, Trump fired the Director of the Joint Staff Vice Admiral Fred Kacher. Apparently, Vice Admiral Kacher tried to warn Trump against attacking Iran on the account of risks, insufficient munitions stockpiles and likely casualties. As U.S. military’s senior operations officer supporting the Joint Chiefs, Kacher was the best placed officer to give the President a much needed reality check.
Trump apparently didn’t like what he was hearing so he sacked Kacher after less than three months on the job. Kacher’s boss, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine apparently also expressed caution about Iran but did ultimately accept to carry out his orders.
The greatest military force like nobody’s ever seen…
American leaders invariably like to talk up U.S. military power as unlimited and all-powerful. To Donald Trump, this obviously comes as second nature, but he is not alone in that: not so long ago his predecessor, Joe Biden was asked if the U.S. could wage war on three fronts [Ukraine, Middle East and China]. His answer was that yes, “of course we can do it. We’re the United States of America, for god’s sake.”
Certainly, many are eager to believe this, but U.S. military officers have long been aware of their army’s limitations. On 7 February 1990 – 36 years ago – the New York Times published a report based on the “Defense Planning Guidance,” a biannual document that frames the strategic thinking and identifies defence priorities of the top US military chiefs.
Emergence of regional threats
They directed General Norman Schwarzkopf, who was the head of US Central Command at that time, to concentrate on securing the Arabian Peninsula’s oil fields from “regional threats.” That objective was clearly outlined as the U.S. military’s strategic priority as the military brass understood that U.S. hegemony in the Middle East couldn’t be taken for granted.
In 1988 the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a study titled, “Meeting the Mavericks: Regional Challenges for the Next President.” It asserted that, “our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region.” That same year, President Bush 41 addressed the same challenge in a speech to the coast guard academy: “The emergence of regional powers is rapidly changing the strategic landscape… We must check the aggressive ambitions of renegade regimes.”
The widening credibility gap
That was exactly in line with the CSIS study, which stated that, “… the ability to cope with regional challengers must become a central objective of US foreign policy.” Its authors noted, however, that “At issue is the viability of military power as a general instrument of diplomacy… The gap between US capabilities and credibility may widen further as the world becomes increasingly multipolar.”
That prose, foreshadowing multipolarity and the waning of U.S. military power, was indeed written in 1988 – 38 years ago! Even back then, military strategists recognized that the hegemon’s ability to control the Middle East militarily was limited and depended on regional proxies allies:
“The U.S. will be unable to perform any major contingency operation without a substantial degree of assistance from other nations. All foreign and defense policy decisions must be made with this realization.”
U.S. regional hegemony also largely relied on ‘credibility’ and projection of power, not on its actual power. Former CIA and Pentagon chief James Schlesinger was candid:
“… individual force elements may not add up to the aggregate necessary to sustain America’s position as the leading world power. American policymakers should be quite clear in their own minds that the basis for determining US force structure and military expenditures in the future should not simply be the response to individual threats, but rather that which is needed to maintain the overall aura of American power.”
Two pillars, both collapsing
Stated otherwise, U.S. hegemony over the Middle East depended on two key pillars:
- The ability to mobilize proxy forces (i.e. Israel, al Qaeda, ISIS, al Nusra, etc.), and
- The ability to project power and intimidate any “regional threats” into submission.
Both of these pillars are visibly collapsing today. Donald Trump’s and Pete Hegseth’s boasting about the greatest, most deadly force in history of the Milky Way galaxy can be understood exactly as what Schlesinger called maintaining “the overall aura of American power.” But between 1988 and today, the credibility of U.S. power projection has continued to deteriorate and Trump’s and Hegseth’s huffing and puffing no longer have the power to hypnotize US’s regional rivals into submission. That ship sailed long ago.
Strategic defeat was discernible long ago
In his book, “Time to Start Thinking,” Edward Luce discussed a 2011 strategy session held at the National Defense University by 16 high-ranking US military officers. They concluded as follows:
“The window on America’s hegemony is closing. We are at a point right now where we still have choices. By 2021, we will no longer have choices. … The US is way too dependent on its military and should sharply reduce its ‘global footprint’ by winding up all wars, notably in Afghanistan, and by closing peacetime military bases in Germany, South Korea, the UK and elsewhere… All this is a means to an end, which is to restore America’s economic vitality. …
Our #1 goal should be to restore America’s prosperity. As such, we recommend the Pentagon shrink its budget by at least 20% … most of the savings would be spent on civilian priorities such as the infrastructure, education and foreign aid. … Nobody here thinks the politics in this town are going to change overnight; all we’re saying is that we’re in trouble if they don’t. This isn’t about ideology; it is about understanding where we are as a country.”
It is utterly dismaying that Donald Trump, whose administration clearly understood and heeded these warnings suddenly turned on a dime and launched what must be the most reckless and ill-advised geopolitical gamble in the living memory. Opinions and caution from true experts were jetisoned and Trump seemingly went with the advice from “Steve [Wytkoff] and Jared [Kushner] and Pete [Hegseth] and others, Marco [Rubio]…” Truly hard to believe, but that, apparently, is what happened.
Iran’s power and the costs of Trump’s own goal
In addition to being truly exhausted and war-fatigued, the empire’s forces have also been demoralized. That is the effect of scoring spectacular own goals. At the same the power and resilience of Iran only surprised those who allowed themselves to be dazzled by the “overall aura of American power.” Those who paid attention were not surprised. Here is what I wrote about this situation in a December 2023 TrendCompass newsletter:
The ultimate result will be the hegemon’s expulsion from the resource (and collateral) rich region to a massive detriment of western financial institutions. The only magic wand left for them to use will be the printing press and inflation.
We have turned that corner now. When an empire’s military muscle atrophies, it loses political power over its vassals who’ll need to look elsewhere for protection. They will no longer borrow from your financial institutions and might not award lucrative government contracts to your corporations.
Ultimately, the biggest impact from the loss of hegemony will be felt in imperial power’s economy and financial markets. If the empire is unable to reassert control over regional powers, their natural resource wealth will no longer be turned into your bank’s collateral. It’s like yanking the foundation from underneath the whole edifice.
To avert a collapse, Western central banks will have no other recourse but to print money in massive quantities. All that does is buy time. The system’s collapse is a mathematical certainty and only a matter of time. That is the big shift happening in the world today, as 500-year old foundations of the old world’s colonialism comes tumbling down like an avalanche.
As hegemony wanes, multipolarity rises
President Xi Jinping was quite right, at the end of his visit to Moscow, in stating that, “Right now there are changes – the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Russia and China together have clearly set out to dismantle the West’s hegemony. Trump’s attack on Iran has only accelerated that. But neither Russia nor China regard the American people as the enemy. Rather, they have set the imperial oligarchy – the owners of collateral – in their crosshairs.
Russian government’s foreign policy doctrine, unveiled by Vladimir Putin at the recent Valdai club meeting on 31 March 2023, read as follows: “The Russian Federation is interested in maintaining strategic parity, peaceful coexistence with the United States and the establishment of a balance of interests between Russia and the United States.”
Thankfully, Mr. Putin’s government continues to cultivate a constructive engagement with their American counterparts. That bilateral relationship is more important than any other for the future of peace in the world. Over the long run, I believe it will help guide international relations toward truly peaceful coexistence and productive cooperation.
Even if things look dismal today, we should keep the Confucian counsel in mind: that when a large tree falls, it creates great noise and destruction. But seeds grow in silence. Today we have the privilege of nourishing those seeds, because they are us.
