The Iran Attack Presents A Series Of Reality Checks For The World
This article argues that claims of the United States losing its deterrent power and Europe pursuing security independence are largely symbolic and not grounded in real military capabilities.It cites headlines and commentary about Europe doubting U.S. NATO deterrence, EU calls for stronger defense and resilience, and figures like Mark Carney proposing a “middle powers” coalition to counter American dominance, suggesting that much of this discourse is more about narrative than reality.
The author contends that these fantasies overlook the concrete strength of American power, noting that real geopolitical and military dynamics—such as U.S. actions in the Middle East and the mismatch between claimed capabilities of potential rivals and actual assets—reveal American primacy. He questions the practicality of regimes-change style interventions, while arguing that Canada and other states lack the means to realistically rival or replace U.S. power. the piece asserts that the hard realities of war constrain aspirational narratives about a diminished American role.
Chris Bray, a former U.S.Army infantry sergeant with a history PhD, writes the piece and also blogs on Substack at Tell Me How This Ends.
Less than a month ago, Politico put this remarkable statement in a headline: “Top NATO allies don’t think US helps deter enemies anymore.” The body of the story went on to explain that “American military power is increasingly seen as an uncertain asset,” while fewer Europeans “still see the U.S. as an effective deterrent against enemy attacks.”
Doubting the value of American hard power, Europeans have called for a transition to a new era of security independence in which they can confront enemies like Russia without the handicap of being yoked to a dumb and declining United States. “Europe needs not only to strengthen its defence capabilities but to increase the resilience of its societies,” a policy brief published by the European Union warned in December. Get strong, get armed, and get ready for a world without American intervention. If democracy ever needs to be saved in Europe, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that same month, “we would manage that alone.” American military power, dead just short of its 250th birthday.
That fantasy has been spreading. In Davos this year, in a speech I’ve already spent half my waking hours mocking, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out a plan for a new security coalition of “middle powers” that would arm up and challenge American dominance. At the New York Times, a reliably stupid columnist declared that Carney had “marked out a path of allied integration and cooperation that could create, in essence, a new great power rival to the United States.”
This has been the emerging consensus among professional opinion-havers, who mostly manipulate symbols as symbols, not noticeably connecting to things in what we used to call meatspace. American power has faded into the past, because Mark Carney and Friedrich Merz said that American power has faded into the past. Speeches say what reality is. In this sense, Trump really is our last Boomer president: He engages symbols in real life. He perceives the thingness of things, and blows them up.
I’m skeptical of American military intervention in the Middle East, after a series of poor-to-terrible outcomes. I’m looking at you, Hillary. There are a half a dozen fair debates to be had around the current American military intervention in Iran, some of which are difficult to have in an environment of limited information. Should Americans die for Iran? Can we be certain that regime change in Iran will lead to something better? Some of those debates will shift around outcomes, as the administration measurably fails or succeeds at the effort, and some of those debates will shift as the cost — in American lives, in Iranian lives, and in time, weapons, and debt-funded federal spending — become clear.
But the immediate impact of a massive military operation, executed with lethal competence on effective intelligence and solid planning, reveals the extraordinary silliness of Mark Carney and Friedrich Merz declaring the emerging meaninglessness of American hard power. If you agree with the claim in the New York Times that Canada might plausibly organize “a new great power rival to the United States,” lay out the path by which Canada could soon have the military power to carry out a comparable operation in the near future: successful decapitation strike, immediate nationwide destruction of air defenses and ownership of the sky, deep and sustained military operations against a country that’s about four times bigger than California.
The U.S. Navy launched cruise missiles at Iran from destroyers, by the way, which Canada doesn’t have. So “a new great power rival to the United States” how? When? By what means? Compare the number and type of combat aircraft that the US appears to be operating in the skies above Iran to the number and type of combat aircraft Canada and the next two or three potential “middle powers” actually have.
American military power is unrivaled, really obviously, while Europeans and Canadians give speeches about shoving the American military aside and becoming rival powers. Like so much of what currently passes for governance in the world, this is not real. Remarkable amounts of political, media, and academic discourse is pure fantasy.
Similarly, a developing story from both Iran and Venezuela is that those countries are clients of Russia and China, and defend themselves with military systems — like air defense systems — from those countries. The joke currently all over the Internet in varying forms: “China’s anti-stealth radar detects the presence of stealth aircraft by exploding, thus alerting defenders that a stealth aircraft is definitely in the area.”
A series of global fantasies are dying this week in the face of the unavoidable realities of war, which turn out to be more real than giving speeches. You don’t have to agree with the war to see that point.
Chris Bray is a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army, and has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at “Tell Me How This Ends,” here.
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