핵심요약

• 미국은 이란 관련 작전에서 유전 및 비료 운송 차질 대비 미흡함을 보였습니다.
• 정밀 탄약 및 요격기의 탄창 깊이 부족과 드론 공격에 대한 대응 실패가 지적되었습니다.
• 미국의 전략적 목표(정권 교체, 장거리 타격 능력 파괴) 달성에는 실패했습니다.
• 전략적 실패는 이란이 핵 야망을 추구하고 호르무즈 해협에 대한 통제력을 확보하는 결과를 낳았습니다.

도입

본 기사는 미국이 이란과의 분쟁에서 얻은 전술적 교훈이 어떻게 전략적 무능함을 해결하지 못했는지 분석합니다. 이는 단순히 군사적 효율성을 넘어, 외교 정책과 지정학적 목표 달성이라는 더 큰 틀에서 미국의 실패를 이해하는 데 중요합니다. 투자자들은 이러한 군사적 실패가 중동 지역의 에너지 및 해상 통제에 미치는 장기적인 영향을 주시해야 합니다.

본문 1: 전술적 미흡함과 전략적 결과

분석가들은 미국 작전의 전술적 측면에서 여러 미흡한 점을 지적합니다. 구체적으로, 석유 및 비료 운송 차질에 대한 준비 부족, 정밀 탄약 및 요격기에 대한 탄창 깊이 부족, 그리고 저가 일방적 드론 공격에 효과적으로 대응하지 못한 점 등이 언급됩니다. 이러한 전술적 부족함은 군사적 효율성을 저해하는 요소로 작용했습니다. 그러나 이러한 전술적 결함이 미국의 초기 전쟁 목표인 정권 교체나 이란의 장거리 타격 능력 파괴와 같은 전략적 목표 달성에 직접적인 영향을 미치지는 못했습니다. 즉, 전술적 개선이 전략적 목표 달성을 보장하지 않는다는 점이 핵심입니다.

본문 2: 전략적 실패의 근원

군사적 실패에도 불구하고 이란이 핵 야망을 추구하고 호르무즈 해협에 대한 통제력을 높이는 결과를 낳은 것은 전략적 실패가 근본 원인임을 시사합니다. 이는 군사적 개입이 지역의 지정학적 역학 관계를 완전히 재편하지 못했음을 의미합니다. 미국의 군사력은 여전히 7,000마일 이상에서 군사력을 투사하는 등 기술적으로는 우위를 보였으나, 이는 최종적인 정책 목표 달성으로 이어지지 못했습니다. 결과적으로, 미국의 개입은 이란의 핵 정책이나 걸프 국가들에 대한 영향력에 대한 통제력을 크게 변화시키지 못했습니다. 이는 군사적 우위가 외교적, 전략적 목표 달성으로 전환되지 못했을 때 발생하는 구조적 한계를 보여줍니다.

본문 3: 장기적 지정학적 전망

이러한 군사적 좌절은 중동 지역의 에너지 흐름과 해상 통제에 대한 장기적인 불확실성을 남깁니다. 이란이 핵 야망을 추구하고 호르무즈 해협에 대한 통제력을 강화할 수 있는 여지를 남긴 상황은 지역의 불안정성을 지속시킬 수 있습니다. 향후 미국의 외교 정책은 이러한 군사적 현실을 반영하여 전략적 목표 달성을 위한 다각적인 접근 방식을 모색해야 할 필요가 있습니다. 군사적 능력과 전략적 목표 간의 괴리를 줄이는 것이 향후 외교적 노선의 핵심이 될 것입니다.

결론

결론적으로, 이번 사건은 전술적 우수성이 전략적 무능함을 보완할 수 없음을 명확히 보여줍니다. 미국이 직면한 과제는 기술적 능력의 향상뿐만 아니라, 군사적 행동이 궁극적인 지정학적 목표 달성으로 연결되도록 전략적 계획을 통합하는 데 있습니다. 향후 지역 안정화와 에너지 안보를 위해서는 군사적 개입의 결과를 외교적 목표와 연계하는 입체적인 접근이 필수적일 것입니다. 투자자들은 이러한 지정학적 변동성이 향후 에너지 시장과 중동 지역의 정책 변화에 미치는 영향을 면밀히 관찰해야 합니다.

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The U.S. Is Learning the Wrong Lessons in Iran - Foreign Policy

Tactical excellence can never salvage strategic incompetence.

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Although the conflict in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is far from over, analysts are already rushing to declare what lessons should be learned from it. An emerging genre of security policy articles highlights the various logistical and tactical shortcomings of the U.S. operation against Iran: a lack of preparation for disruptions in oil and fertilizer shipping, insufficient magazine depth in precision munitions and interceptors, a general failure to prepare effectively to counter cheap one-way attack drones, insufficient minesweepers , and so on.

These are useful lessons that may help the United States prepare for future conflicts, but they are not the fundamental cause of the country’s failure in the Strait of Hormuz. Even if some or all of these concerns had been addressed long before the conflict, it is hard to see how they might alter the Trump administration’s failure to achieve its initial war aims of regime change , the destruction of Iran’s long-range strike capability , or major alterations in Iranian policy toward nuclear weapons and regional proxies .

While greater magazine depth and preparedness for oil shortages might have enabled a longer bombing campaign or a greater degree of economic pressure, that is no reason to suppose that seven months of bombing or blockade might achieve what nearly six months thus far have not. Strategic failure, leaving Iran with a freer hand to pursue nuclear ambitions, a far greater degree of control over the Strait of Hormuz, and consequently a greater degree of influence over the Gulf states now seems the most likely outcome of this military debacle.

The U.S. military remains remarkably capable, demonstrating even in this poorly conceived war technical capabilities that no other military can currently match, projecting military force more than 7,000 miles from American shores, and seizing control of Iran’s skies with the apparent casual ease the world has become accustomed to in America’s wars.

The resulting damage has been remarkably lopsided, with the United States suffering at least 18 dead and more than 600 wounded against Iranian losses that almost certainly number well into the thousands, though a precise total is not known. In short, even with failures of planning and logistics, the U.S. military has shown that it remains remarkably dangerous.

No amount of technical excellence, however, can make up for the strategic incompetence of demanding that the military accomplish the impossible. U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded of the military not one impossible task, but three, and then reacted with shocked anger when it has failed.

The first of these impossible tasks was the administration’s stated aim of achieving regime change without any ground operations. Achieving a strategic victory entirely through airpower has been the coveted aim of independent air forces around the world ever since Italian theorist Giulio Douhet predicted in 1921 that future wars could be won with bombers alone, even going so far as to suggest in 1928 that just 300 tons of bombs dropped on a mid-sized country could end a war in a month.

The thesis that wars can be won entirely from the air is now one of the most thoroughly tested in all of modern industrial war, and 40,000 tons of German bombs dropped on London during the Blitz merely hardened the British will to resist. The 2.5 million tons of bombs the allies dropped on Germany during World War II in return inflicted serious damage and imposed stark choices on Adolf Hitler’s regime, but they likewise did not force it to collapse and indeed seem to have reinforced public commitment to the war. The 8 million tons of bombs that the United States dropped during the Vietnam War likewise accomplished little and may even have been broadly counterproductive, serving to secure the civilian populace’s support for communist war aims while alienating the American public.

It may be impossible at any level of bombing short of nuclear use to collapse a regime from the air. The closest that any operation has ever come was the NATO campaign against Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic, but even there the bombs stopped dropping in June 1999, while Milosevic’s regime fell to mass demonstrations in October 2000.

The chances of the Iranian regime collapsing entirely through the application of airpower were slim to none, so the next impossible thing demanded of the U.S. military was to neutralize Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capacity, also entirely from the air. But this mission—disabling mobile launch capability with minimal ground forces—has also been tried repeatedly before and has also never succeeded.

In WWII, both American and British air forces made substantial efforts to shut down V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket production and launches through an extensive bombing campaign, codenamed Operation Crossbow , but they could not stop the launches. It was simply too easy to harden or conceal production and launch sites.

The advent of precision munitions has not changed this calculus, being offset by the emergence of mobile launch systems. Infamously, efforts to take out Iraqi Scud launchers from the air during the Gulf War were unable to produce even a single confirmed destruction. Israel likewise has spent two decades running extensive air operations over Gaza and southern Lebanon to prevent Hamas and Hezbollah rockets from being fired at Israeli territory, but only ground operations in both areas were able to silence the rockets.

Multiple coalitions of countries have attempted to silence Houthi missiles and drones fired from Yemen, yet the launches continue even now. Even with precision munitions, it does not seem possible, from the air alone, to destroy enough mobile launch systems, which can fire from concealment and then swiftly move into new locations, to end a drone or rocket campaign. As with regime collapse, stopping the rockets appears to require ground troops.

The Trump administration’s final fallback appears to be simply running nearly perfect missile defense over much of the Persian Gulf region to prevent Iran from damaging the infrastructure of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, upon whose hospitality the U.S. military effort relies. Greater investment into cost-effective interception methods, such as those in use in Ukraine , and the deployment of more short-range air defense might well have enabled the U.S. military to intercept a greater percentage of Iranian attacks. Yet in an environment where drones and ballistic missiles remain much cheaper and quicker to produce than the means to intercept them, it was always likely that Iran would eventually saturate defense capacity in the region. One more impossible task could not rescue the failure of two others.

If the U.S. military required a wake-up call to the dangers and opportunities posed by drones, as well long-standing procurement problems for things like frigates, minesweepers, and hardened aircraft facilities, that call has been delivered. But this was not a war lost in the halls of the U.S. Defense Department; it was lost in the halls of the White House.

If Trump was unable to see the peril in demanding the U.S. military accomplish the impossible, it was the duty of his defense secretary to make him aware. Of course, Trump did not select an experienced and capable defense secretary, but a loyal toady, made only the more loyal by his manifest incompetence, in the form of Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth, in turn, has gone to great lengths to purge the senior ranks of anyone likely to offer a contrary opinion. The U.S. officer corps has never exceled at delivering unwelcome news to political decision-makers, but Hegseth’s approach meant the Pentagon was never going to push back against presidential ineptitude. Reporting suggests that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, made a token effort to signal the difficulty before being drowned out by Hegseth’s boosterism.

All of this was predictable and indeed much of it was predicted . Thus, while the immediate blame for the debacle in Iran attaches to Trump and his incompetent advisors, the ultimate blame must lie where no politician will admit it: with the voters. It was the choice of a plurality of American voters to return Trump, a man manifestly incompetent, manifestly incapable of absorbing unwelcome or contrary information, manifestly interested in surrounding himself with loyal yes-men, to the White House.

It turns out that electing the leader of the most powerful military on the planet is not the same as selecting the most entertaining host of a reality show. Reports about lessons learned are doubtless already being penned within the Pentagon. Yet as the strategic fallout, from elevated oil prices to depleted U.S. resources, of this predictable and disgraceful failure continue to mount, the question is whether the American voters have realized that no amount of military excellence is sufficient to insulate them from their own poor choices at the ballot box.

This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage . Read more here .

Bret Devereaux is a historian specializing in the Roman economy and military.

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