Tim Miller interviews Robert Kagan about the Trump administration’s Iran war and its broader geopolitical fallout. Kagan argues the U.S. has launched a war it cannot win through airpower alone, is drifting toward state-failure tactics and possible war crimes, and is accelerating the erosion of U.S. alliances, credibility, and dollar-based global influence.
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This episode is a long-form interview built around one central argument: Robert Kagan believes the Trump administration’s Iran campaign is strategically unsound, morally corrosive, and likely to leave the U.S. weaker globally. He says bombing alone cannot solve the problem, and that the administration has already moved beyond mere incompetence into a pattern of reckless escalation without a viable end state. The conversation repeatedly returns to Kagan’s thesis that the U.S. can inflict damage on Iran, but cannot “win” on acceptable terms without far larger commitments than Trump is willing to make. Kagan grounds that view in historical analogies. He argues the U.S. repeatedly learned in the 1990s and early 2000s that airpower by itself does not achieve strategic goals, citing Kosovo and the 1998–99 bombing of Saddam Hussein as examples. …
Tactically, the setup looks dangerous: if the U.S. widens strikes or signals ground involvement, the near-term risk is escalation, allied backlash, and operational overreach. The immediate tradeoff is between short-lived show of force and a much bigger political/military bill.
Over the next few months, the base case is a messy campaign that either stalls or pushes Iran, the Gulf states, and U.S. allies into harder hedging. Confirmation would come from deeper allied disengagement, no diplomatic off-ramp, and continued rhetoric around infrastructure targets.
Structurally, the episode points to a post-American regime shift: U.S. guarantees look less durable, allies hedge more aggressively, and China/Russia exploit the opening. Even if the Iran operation ends, the lasting implication is weaker credibility for U.S. leadership and a more fragmented security order.
The US cannot defeat Iran through air and bombing alone; a full-scale ground invasion would be required to win, and that is not achievable at an acceptable cost.
Bob argues that despite complete air superiority and the ability to bomb Iran at will, the US is still losing the war because bombing alone cannot achieve the strategic objectives — only a ground invasion could finish it, which is unacceptable.
The US has demonstrated it can start a war with Iran but cannot win it at an acceptable cost.
Speaker argues that after extensive military action, the US is unable to achieve victory at a cost acceptable to itself and its allies.
The bombing of Iran's energy grid and civilian infrastructure constitutes war crimes, analogous to what Putin is doing in Ukraine.
Kagan argues that attacking the energy grid of a country is a clear attack on civilian targets, drawing a direct parallel to Putin's destruction of Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
Why do you think bombing alone was never going to solve the Iran problem?
He argues that air power rarely achieves the political end state by itself. He points to the 1990s, including Kosovo and Iraq, to say bombing can damage a target but usually does not force capitulation without ground pressure or a broader strategy.
What worried you about Trump's role in the conflict beyond the military strategy itself?
He says he did not trust Trump to act competently or without corruption, and he worried about domestic authoritarian spillovers if the country stayed at war. He also says Trump showed little real concern for Iranian people and was more interested in destruction than liberation.
How do you assess the latest reports about the downed F-15 and the attack on the bridge?
He says wartime accidents are expected and notes the carrier's return was tied to a laundry fire and long deployments. On the bridge strike, he says attacks on energy infrastructure or other purely civilian utilities would cross into clear war-crime territory.
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