It would not be hyperbole to suggest that any current discussion of strategy in relation to the current US-Iran war is a lesson in confusion and everything Clausewitz warned against. It also sharply contrasts with the simple objectives of Operation Rising Lion from 2025.
Strategy is the use of engagements for the object of the war; it is thus the use of an instrument for a practical purpose. Strategy is done as tactics against an enemy force or to affect the actions or condition of an enemy force. So far, so good. Very clearly, strategy is not about making deals. It is about the violence that forces the enemy to accept your terms, though it is rarely that clear-cut.
In the current campaign, passion, reason, and chance are all on display in ample quantity, with the chance of uprisings that have yet to materialise placed front and centre. The coercive intent and nature of air campaigns have a chequered history and an even more doubtful body of literature on the for-and-against argument, but the simple truth is that if you are bombing and destroying things the enemy can do without or simply rebuild and if the enemy has the time and the money, and you don’t, then the race isn’t being run.
Destroying the enemy is not the object of war, it is the object of warfare. They are not the same. You destroy the enemy to impose your will upon what they protect. If you want a change in behaviour from a regime whose most prized behaviour is fighting you, you need to find what they prize most and step on their neck until you gain compliance. Very obviously, the threat of force only very rarely has any deterrent effect these days. Bin Laden conducted 9/11 with no fear of US military might. Iran ran its nuclear program with no fear of reprisal and continues to do so. HAMAS perpetrated 7/10 knowing full well that Israel would be walking their tunnels unopposed in a matter of months, for whatever perceived advantage that might create on the global stage.
It is no revelation that no amount of military skill can compensate for political stupidity or misjudgements, and that applies as much to almost all parties in current conflicts, as it supposedly does to the current US administration.
We fight wars to alter conditions or behaviours, and nothing else. Only some conditions and behaviours accept change within an acceptable level of violence, and violence, as in military action, comes at a cost—economic, moral and physical.
History remains our only guide, and so-called strategic theory can only be a product of statements that explain extant phenomena and allow a degree of prediction.
William F. Owen
Editor-in-Chief, Military Strategy Magazine
Volume 11, Issue 2
Fall 2026