The temptation for a great power to embrace the “iron laws of the world,” as a White House senior advisor once put it, and pursue a strategy of might makes right can be seductive. Indeed, geopolitics today is increasingly defined by a more unilateral and kinetic brand of foreign policy. As I’ve written previously, the United States is now part and parcel of this trend, having concluded at least for the time being that significant elements of the rules-based system, which we created and upheld, had become more of a constraint on national power than a tool to exercise it.
But hard power is not without its constraints. It’s one thing to execute Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela and extradite a leader such as Nicolás Maduro—an operation which, while quite complex, was limited in ambition. It’s quite another to try, at arm’s length, to reshape the geography of power across an entire region. The latter experiment—Operation Epic Fury in Iran—is now playing out in real time. The results lay bare not only the limits of military force, but also the chaos that the old rules of the game (for all their faults) kept at bay.
While at times it feels we’re an audience to a reality TV show, “Deal or No Deal,” there are at least three broader ramifications of the current conflict with Iran that bear watching: the implications for freedom of navigation, the innovations of asymmetric warfare, and the implicit assumptions underlying alliances and partnerships.
Enforcing freedom of the seas in international waterways has been one of the fundamental cornerstones of international order—and a core mission of the U.S. Navy—ever since there was a concerted effort in the nineteenth century to rid the world of piracy. It’s also been a primary concern for the United States in the Middle East dating back to the tanker war in the Persian Gulf in the 1980s.
The Strait of Hormuz was open and free prior to the start of this phase of the conflict with Iran on February 28. Now, reopening it is the top issue and central sticking point in the negotiations with Iran. As Foreign Policy analyst Keith Johnson put it, “Hormuz isn’t closed anymore. But it’s not fully open, either.” Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that the United States has been quietly sneaking 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz without being detected. “Do you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran—until right now.”
These ships are sailing “dark,” without lights or navigational “transponders,” through the Strait under the watchful eye of the U.S. Navy. As the old rules weaken, it’s ironic that the United States is now taking a page out of the playbook of China, Russia, North Korea, and even Iran, whose so-called “dark fleets” pioneered these techniques precisely to evade U.S. and UN sanctions.
Still, those clandestine strait transits, reported to be as many as fifteen oil and gas tankers per day, would pale in comparison to the pre-crisis status quo of more than fifty. Even if vessel transit volumes in the strait return to normal levels, it now appears plausible if not likely that some type of toll (or “environment fee”) will be imposed on these vessels. This could be an expensive lesson in the value of the rules-based system, particularly if it proves contagious as a source of deterrence, leverage, or finance by other countries who are blessed by geography to sit astride a strategic passage: Indonesia and the Strait of Malacca, Morocco and the Strait of Gibraltar, or maybe even England and the Strait of Dover, to name just a few.
That brings me to the second complication of this current moment: the issue of asymmetric warfare. Technological supremacy is no guarantee of military victory. The United States prosecuted a massive strike campaign against Iran, resulting in significant damage to its naval, missile, drone, and air defense capabilities—not to mention the deaths of regime leaders, including top military brass. It was by all accounts a triumph of modern air power. And yet, even in its weakened state, Iran’s deployment of relatively inexpensive drones, mines, and missiles has managed to wreak havoc on one of the world’s most critical waterways, countries throughout the Gulf, and select U.S. military assets.
But it is not just the Iranians who have been innovating on the battlefield. As in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, the conflict with Iran has reinforced the enthusiasm for autonomous warfare, both as a way of keeping more expensive and vulnerable systems in reserve and as a means of keeping troops out of harm’s way.
Just this week, the U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59 deployed an unmanned surface vessel in combat for the first time—in this instance, to rescue two service members. This mission should rightfully be heralded as a successful demonstration of how these new sophisticated autonomous systems developed by the United States can be effectively deployed. But the incident also highlights the extent to which attritable systems fielded by less sophisticated adversaries can threaten exquisite U.S. platforms—in this case, an Apache helicopter being hit by an Iranian drone.
The third complication this conflict poses is to the United States’ sprawling network of alliances and partnerships. Prior to Operation Epic Fury, the United States stationed some forty thousand troops across at least nineteen sites throughout the Middle East. These bases flanked and in some cases encircled its adversaries in the region. They also bound the host countries to the United States, not only militarily but politically and economically. This arrangement has been critical to sustaining deterrence and U.S. influence in the region.
But it also reflected a social compact under which the United States would provide for the security of its allies and partners in exchange for bases. That compact has been tested by this conflict, as the current war revealed that these bases and alliances also make targets of the United States’ friends in the region. Six U.S. servicemembers died while stationed defending these allies when an Iranian drone struck a U.S. operations center at Kuwait’s Shuaiba port. And that is to say nothing of the damage to the allies themselves: Iranian missiles and drones struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas complex, refineries in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, fuel tanks at Kuwait's international airport, and a desalination plant in Bahrain, along with three Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, not to mention hundreds of other targets including civilian apartment blocks.
The United States’ allies in the region are less than thrilled at having become collateral damage, particularly as the security compact now appears to be less ironclad than assumed. In 2019, an incident in which Iran attacked Aramco facilities and the United States did not retaliate sent shockwaves through Saudi Arabia. More recently, the president has tended to downplay the significance of Iran’s attacks on non-U.S. assets in the Gulf, raising concerns that partnering with the United States increases the risk that they will come under attack precisely at the same time that the U.S. commitment to their security is potentially wavering.
As a result, the United States may emerge from this war facing the prospect of diminished basing rights, and of longtime allies hedging their bets—whether by inviting in other powers like Russia and China or by striking their own accommodations with Iran that ensure their security at the expense of U.S. interests and influence.
Whatever the weekend brings—deal or no deal, new strikes or a new ceasefire, a relatively open strait or a closed one—it is one thing to change the rules of the game, and quite another to win it.
Let me know what you think about the constraints of military force and what this column should cover next by replying to president@cfr.org.
Find this edition insightful and want to share it? You can find it at CFR.org.
