Capitulation Day

The dimensions of defeat, and the chance for recovery

The United States has capitulated to Iran. There is a “deal,” which has been signed, on terms that can only be described as those of complete Iranian victory.

The US-Iranian talks that were supposed to begin today were cancelled, so today is as good a day as any to discuss the signed “memorandum of understanding” and mark the completion of the disaster. We have what we have: humiliation.

War, as some people apparently needed to learn, is not about the pleasure one takes in watching things blow up. It is politics by other means. To win a war means changing the politics of the enemy such that they must surrender. That is what Iran just did to the United States.

This war was a parade of Trump’s incompetence at every possible level from the beginning. To win a war requires understanding the politics of the other side and how it might be changed. Trump, Hegseth and the others treated the Iranian leadership as cartoon characters who would immediately do what Americans wanted as soon as the bombs fell. The Americans had no strategy -- no sense of how violence could change politics -- and it did not occur to them that the Iranians would have one. Once the Iranians did the obvious, which was to respond to American long-range strikes with their own, and close the Straits of Hormuz, the war was over, and they had won. The Americans had no second move, except to claim that they had won when they had lost (which they are, laughably, still doing).

It matters that we no longer employ qualified people to handle matters of war and peace, but leave war planning to entertainers and negotiations to profiteers.

We seem to still be under the sway of the fairy tale that Trump himself can negotiate. He cannot and he never could. That was a character he played on television. He himself, and the people around him, talk big in front of the cameras in the safety of their studios, but know nothing about the actual workings of world power. Trump is vulnerable to flattery, always in a hurry, unable to focus, and indifferent to any issue beyond his own comfort. He started the war for personal pleasure, and then he surrendered to Iran for personal convenience: he wants to stay in the White House forever, and so he wants gas prices down, and so he gave Iran everything.

Until now, I tended to think that Trump’s geopolitical legacy would be as a footnote in the Russo-Ukrainian war, as a wannabe oligarch who artificially extended a real oligarch’s war of aggression. Now Trump has found his way into the main text of the history of Russia’s ally Iran, as the architect of the renewal of the atrocious regime in Tehran. By attacking Iran he generated sympathy for torturers and murderers. By losing to Iran he expanded its power profile in the Middle East. And by capitulating to Iran he created an enduring power base for Iran’s rulers. Iran will charge fees for transit through the Straits of Hormuz, and the United States will unfreeze Iranian assets and pay three hundred billion dollars in reparations. Thanks to Trump, the United States no longer has any leverage to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

We make a mistake, I think, in how we think about evil and folly. We tend to think that one excludes the other: if it is evil, it must serve some intelligent purpose; if it is foolish, it must not be very malicious. The truth, as this war shows, is that evil and folly can march hand in hand along the path to national self-destruction. This war was a strategic disaster, but it was also an ethical disaster. Fighting an undeclared and illegal war of aggression, flaunting the laws of war, and killing scores of civilians does not bring victory. Taking pleasure in doing those things is not a sign of canny calculation. It is simply wrong. To be hard-hearted is not to be hard-headed. One can enjoy violence and still be a loser. One can be hard-hearted and soft-headed, as Trump and Hegseth have just proven.

There is, in other words, no consolation. It is not that we used evil means to some good purpose. We used evil means foolishly and left the world far worse than it was before, in every conceivable respect. Aside from the economic consequences that we already feel and the strategic weakness that we have demonstrated, we have created a more disorderly and dangerous globe, one less bound by law and order, one more like the model that the regimes in Beijing and Moscow (and for that matter Tehran) want.

There is, however, a lesson. If evil and folly can march together, then so can good and wisdom. The United States got to a place where a war like this was possible because we allowed too much power to be concentrated in too few hands -- too much political power, too much economic power, too much media power. The capitulation to Iran, in other words, was not just the result of an error by a few self-absorbed incompetents, but of structures in which such people could attain power. Wars of whimsy are a symptom of tyranny, and a warning for those who prefer republics. They must be opposed, but more fundamentally they must be prevented: be removing money from politics, by addressing basic inequalities, by breaking up monopolies, by enabling social mobility.

Iran had no difficulty winning this war, because to do so it had only to prick the self-interest of an aspiring tyrant. To build an America that does not capitulate, as Trump and Hegseth and the rest have just proven, is not a matter of being hard-hearted and soft-headed. It really is the opposite -- and that is on us. We really should have harder heads, valuing leaders who have achieved something good in their lives, and resisting the easy charisma of the people who want their hands in our pockets and our children dying in some desert. And we should have softer hearts, caring more about one another, and thinking of our government as enabling better lives for all of us.

PS. Today is Juneteenth, a time to reflect on the most profound of injustices, slavery. It is in courageously confronting our moral mistakes that we become stronger as a people.