The Insurgent Empire

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As we cross the one month mark of the Israeli-American war on Iran, a sufficient corpus of data is emerging to contemplate the kinetic dynamics of the conflict. This is a very strange war. It is not merely the fact that the roster of combatants and associated parties - Netanyahu, President Trump, Lindsay “Holden Bloodfeast” Graham - comprise the most polarizing figures in world politics today. As if to punctuate this fact, I fully anticipate angry comments berating me for using a sanitized and emotionally titrated word like “polarizing.” But we digress. Far more interesting than endless apoplexy over Israel or Trump is a look at the kinetic scheme of the war and what its long term strategic ramifications might be. We are using the term “war”, although it has somewhat humorously taken on life as a “Special Military Operation” - a riff on Russia’s idiosyncratic bureaucratic parlance for the war in Ukraine, which the White House inadvertently stepped in when they referred to Operation Epic Fury as a “special combat operation.”Subscribe nowThe idea of a Special Military Operation is interesting in its own right, and carries a connotation of regime change achieved through a mixture of military force and subversive coercion. Such a label was highly appropriate in the case of America’s January operation in Venezuela, where an overwhelming strike package was combined with political preparations which had Vice President Delcy Rodríguez in position for a favorable transfer of power. In contrast, the conflict in Ukraine has clearly spiraled beyond the scope of a “special operation”, w…