Iran's Rope-a-Dope of Donald Trump

[ericjhensal]

After World War II, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (European War) found that German war production actually increased through 1944, peaking even as the Combined Bomber Offensive intensified. Strategic bombing has long been seen as a wasteful strategy. But who is surprised Donald Trump failed to consider history or today's realities as he began February's Iranian war?

"If they [German workers] had been at liberty to vote themselves out of the war, they would have done so well before the final surrender. In a determined police state, however, there is a wide difference between dissatisfaction and expressed opposition...by and large workers continued to work." – United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (European War), September 30, 1945, p. 12.

U.S. post-war research established that a strong coercive state apparatus could adapt its population to focus on war production. Bombing did not foster the desire to overthrow the Nazi government — it hardened a resolve to produce more. And on a practical level, if you bomb out other businesses and employment, what else can a person do to make a living but work in war production? From World War II onward, history shows bombing has a diminishing utility as war progresses. And that point is rapidly approaching with Iran.

Iran's profiteering strongmen are distributed across structures and institutions that can function if specific people are lost. Iran is a starfish, while Venezuela, for example, was a snake. The U.S. cut off that snake's head on January 3rd — an extra-judicial extraction from Caracas, arranged by former comrades, that put President Maduro in a Brooklyn detention cell. Iran offers no such single regime-affecting target. The U.S. and Israel managed to kill a substantial number of senior leaders in the first days of their February War, but Iran just regrows arms and keeps going.

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Iran's Rope-a-Dope