The End of the American Age

The American age that followed World War II was bound to end eventually.

What’s shocking is how suddenly that moment has arrived.

In the past six months, America’s power—long exemplified by the world’s best warfighting equipment and most highly trained military personnel, a global network of bases and logistics systems, and military and diplomatic partnerships with all corners of the world—has proved insufficient to defeat Iran, a repressive, economically stagnant regime armed with cheap missiles and drones.

For years, virtually everyone thought that, in a crisis, Washington could draw on deeper reserves of money, troops, munitions, and diplomatic support than any other nation.

Even when U.S. forces faced setbacks in conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, a widespread assumption about America’s fundamental strength reassured allies and deterred foes.

Yet that assumption also promoted a complacency that has left the U.S. military exposed now that even inexpensive, mass-produced weaponry can be guided with deadly accuracy.

President Trump did not erode U.S. capabilities on his own.

But Trump’s war with Iran has revealed just how the underlying dynamics of global power have shifted—and just how much American might has decayed.

Since Britain’s postwar retreat from the Middle East, the United States has been the most important military power in that volatile region.

In 1980, the Carter administration asserted that America would guarantee the free flow of oil and other commodities out of the Persian Gulf to the wider world.

The success of the Carter doctrine required hostile governments, which then included the Soviet Union as well as the new theocracy in Iran, to believe that the United States could and would take decisive military action against anyone who dared to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s petroleum, and other vital commodities, has long passed. [ Read: Iran unleashed ] Until recently, the array of American bases surrounding Iran gave that country’s leaders every reason to fear being overwhelmed militarily if they moved to control the strait.

Yet the regime remains intact, even after attacks by the United States and Israel succeeded in killing top Iranian leaders, and its long-range missile and drone attacks managed to elude American air defenses and incapacitated many U.S. facilities.

In March, fewer than two weeks into the fighting, The New York Times identified 17 American bases, air-defense installations, and diplomatic facilities that had been hit.

Among them were some of the U.S. military’s important staging points: the Fifth Fleet’s headquarters in Bahrain as well as the Ali Al Salem Air Base, Camp Arifjan, and Camp Buehring in Kuwait.