11 May 2026 · 7:39 AM UTC
https://nitter.net/RnaudBertrand/status/2054040365561426205

There's no overstating how extraordinary this Atlantic article is, given the
author and the outlet.

As a reminder Bob Kagan is:
- The co-founder of Project for the New American Century, probably the single
most imperialist Think Tank in Washington (which is quite a feat)

- A man who spent his entire life advocating for American military
interventions, especially in the Middle East, and a vocal advocate of the Iraq
war. He started advocating for intervention in Iraq before 9/11, which speaks
for itself...

- The husband of Victoria Nuland, an extremely hawkish former senior
U.S. official (a key architect of U.S. policy in Ukraine, with the consequences
we all witness today)

- The brother of Frederick Kagan, one of the key architects of the Iraq surge

In other words, we ain't exactly looking at some sort of anti-imperialist
peacenik. This is quite literally the guy Dick Cheney called when he needed a
pep talk.

And the man is writing in The Atlantic, the most reliably pro-war mainstream
media outlet in the U.S. (also quite a feat).

So when HE writes that the U.S. "suffered a total defeat" in Iran that has no
precedent in U.S. history and can "neither be repaired nor ignored," it's the
functional equivalent of Ronald McDonald telling you the burgers aren't great:
it means the burgers really, really aren't great.

Extraordinarily (and somewhat worryingly, for me), his arguments for why this is
such a defeat are virtually the same as those I laid out in my article "The
First Multipolar War" last month (open.substack.com/pub/arnaud... ).

Here they are 👇
1) Vietnam/Afghanistan were survivable, this isn't

He agrees that this war - and the U.S. defeat - is fundamentally different in
nature from previous U.S. interventions.

Where I wrote that the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan didn't change the
equation much in terms of power dynamics ("in the grand scheme of things, the
giant walked away with little more than a bruised ego"), Kagan writes that "the
defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to
America's overall position in the world."

And when I wrote that "it's painfully obvious that the Iran war is of a
qualitatively different nature" from these, he writes that "defeat in the
present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character."

Same point.

2) Iran will never relinquish Hormuz and uses it as selective leverage
When I wrote that Iran has turned "freedom of navigation" on its head by
establishing "a permission-based regime" through the Strait of Hormuz, Kagan
arrives at the same conclusion: "Iran will be able not only to demand tolls for
passage, but to limit transit to those nations with which it has good
relations."

He also agrees that "Iran has no interest in returning to the status quo ante,"
when I myself cited Iran's parliament speaker Ghalibaf in my article, saying:
"The Strait of Hormuz situation won't return to its pre-war status." Same point
and virtually the same words.

3) Gulf states will have to accommodate Iran
He agrees that most Gulf states will have no choice but to accommodate Iran,
effectively making Iran into a, if not THE, dominant regional power.

Kagan writes "the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing
the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran."

On my end, I wrote that "the Gulf monarchies will eventually have to choose
between two security propositions. One where they stay aligned with a distant
superpower that [can't protect them]. The other proposition being: make peace
with the regional power that just proved it can hit [them] whenever it wants."
Which is not much of a choice...

4) Military impossibility to reopen Hormuz
Kagan writes that "if the United States with its mighty Navy can't or won't open
the strait, no coalition of forces with just a fraction of the Americans'
capability will be able to, either."

On my end, in my article I cited Germany's defense minister Boris Pistorius:
"What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful
US Navy cannot?"

The exact same argument.

5) Global chain reaction
Kagan agrees that this is a global strategic failure that fundamentally changes
the U.S.'s position in the world. As he puts it: "America's once-dominant
position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties... America's allies
in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of
future conflicts."

You'll have guessed it, I wrote essentially the same thing: "Think about what it
says if you're Saudi Arabia, quietly watching your American-built defenses fail
to protect your own refineries. Or any European country now facing the worst
energy shock since 1973, caused not by your enemy but by your ally, and
realizing that said 'ally,' supposedly in charge of 'protecting' you, couldn't
even protect Israel's most strategic sites - when it's the country with which
it's joined at the hip. I'm not even speaking about China or Russia who are
seeing their worldview being validated on almost every axis simultaneously."

6) Weapons stocks depleted, credibility shattered
Kagan: "just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American
weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight."

Me: "America's most advanced weapons systems are much more vulnerable than
previously thought - not theoretically, but in actual combat."

Kagan: "America's allies... must wonder about American staying power in the
event of future conflicts."

Me: "The U.S. security guarantee has been empirically falsified in real time."

----------- So, yup, Bob Kagan and I agree on nearly everything. I need a shower
🤢

Reassuringly though, we still differ on a few fundamental aspects.

First of all, arguably the most important one, the moral aspect. In typical
neocon fashion, his article contains not a word about the human cost of this war
- not the 165 schoolgirls, not the devastation inflicted on Iranians during 37
days of bombing, not the toll this war is taking on the entire world through its
devastating economic consequences (the economic devastation on ordinary people
worldwide is referenced only as a political problem for Trump). For him, this is
purely a strategic chess problem, morality and people don't figure in his mental
map.

For me, the moral bankruptcy of this war isn't separate from the strategic
failure - it is the strategic failure. Much like Gaza can only be a failure
because of its sheer abjectness.

Secondly, there is not an instant of reflection in the article on how we got
there. Which is unsurprising because he personally, alongside his wife, his
brother, and every co-signatory of every PNAC letter, spent a generation pushing
for exactly this kind of confrontation. The man spend 30 years advocating for
military dominance in the Middle East and hostility towards Iran, thereby
forging them as an adversary and facilitating this very war that he now says has
"checkmated" America.

I know introspection has never been the neocon forte but at some point you have
to stop setting houses on fire and then writing op-eds about how surprising the
smoke is.

Last but not least, we differ on what should be done. This is the funniest part
of Kagan's article - showing that the man is decidedly beyond salvation. On one
hand he calls this a "checkmate" by Iran, and a U.S. defeat that can "neither be
repaired nor ignored," yet an the other hand his solution for it is...
surprise, surprise... a bigger war still!

He writes that what's to be done is "engage in a full-scale ground and naval war
to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new
government can take hold."

The arsonist's solution to the fire is a bigger fire ¯\_(ツ_/¯

For my end, this was the conclusion of my previous article:

"There is almost a Greek tragedy quality to U.S. actions lately where every move
taken to escape one's fate becomes the mechanism that delivers it. The U.S. went
to war to reassert dominance - and proved it could no longer dominate. It
demanded allies send warships - and revealed it had no real allies. It waged
forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran before this moment came - and
instead forged the very adversary now capable of meeting it. It started the war
in part to have additional leverage over China - and handed the world the
spectacle of begging China for help. The prophecy was multipolarity. Every
American action to prevent it reveals it instead."

I wouldn't change a word. The only thing that's changed since I wrote it is that
even the arsonists now smell the smoke.

Src for the Atlantic article: https://archive.ph/1dhLIq