David Samuels
Unherd, Feb. 5, 2024
“… the defeats of key American proxies over the next 12 months can be understood as the products of tactical failures rooted in failed US military doctrine, which is in turn grounded in strategic choices and assumptions that have proven to be wildly delusional and yet stubbornly and mystifyingly resistant to change.”
It seems unlikely that America will make it to this November without being forced into a very public reckoning with a decade of disastrous foreign policy failures. Taken separately, any one of America’s impending losses in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and possibly Asia would be a significant military and diplomatic blow. Three major regional collapses occurring within months of each other would be a geopolitical event akin to the disintegration of the Soviet Union — an empire that appeared immutable until, very suddenly, it was gone.
While it is impossible to predict the military, diplomatic, political and economic consequences of a rapid-fire series of American defeats abroad, the defeats themselves are easy enough to foretell. If the US succeeds in its attempt to halt Israel’s military campaign in Gaza with Hamas still in power, and pivots to international recognition of a Palestinian state, as the US State Department has recently signalled it hopes to do, it would be impossible for either Israelis or their regional enemies to see the October 7 terror attacks, backed by Iran, as anything other than a massive Iranian victory and US-Israeli defeat.
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