David M. Shribman: The many questions of war

War is a great engine of change, sweeping aside assumptions, toppling established power relationships, driving new forces into play, rearranging long-held theories and challenging orthodoxies. That happened in six years of fighting in World War II, in the seven days of the 1967 Middle East War, and, we are discovering in recent days, in five weeks of upheaval in Iran.

With a ceasefire in the Iran war and with the parties to the fragile agreement already in disagreement about its sweep and its meaning, some clarity about the conflict, and about the new global order it may have created, nonetheless is setting in.

The reach, and the limits, of American military and technology superiority have been glimpsed. The power of asymmetrical warfare ― and of what Wake Forest University political scientist Charles Walldorf calls "asymmetric resolve" ― have been reaffirmed. China and Pakistan have assumed unfamiliar new roles in global diplomacy. The power of American domestic politics to affect American foreign policy has been reinforced. The Strait of Hormuz has joined the English Channel, the Suez and Panama Canals, the Dardanelles, the Malacca Strait and, ominously, the Taiwan Strait among the world's most vital waterways ― and its possible flashpoints for conflict.

"The Iranians discovered that they had a very valuable tool that they hadn't been using ― the Strait of Hormuz," said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at New York Law School. "And they used it in a way that punished Americans and threatened the world's supplies of energy."

As the ancient Chinese military theorist and philosopher Sun Tzu may or may not have said ― no one knows for sure, but no one doubts the force of the observation: The nature of war is constant change. This war ― perhaps over, perhaps merely interrupted for a spell ― is no different.

The Iran war taught that there are limits to what bombs might achieve in military engagements, but that there also are limits to the power of bombastic rhetoric.

The American assault from the air and the technological firepower of its new-wave weapons wreaked amazing destruction in Iran, essentially negating or at least limiting its opponent's drone and missile arsenal, its navy and its antiaircraft capabilities. It brought Iran to the bargaining table, but it also took the United States there.

Hardly anyone ― except sharp-thinking counterintelligence analysts who understood Iran's capacity for isolated terror attacks on American soil that comprised a constant but little-acknowledged and, fortunately, unrealized threat ― took seriously Iran's boasts of retaliation. Hardly anyone believed Donald Trump actually would persist in ordering an attack so comprehensive that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."

Even though, to reprise pitcher Dizzy Dean's mid-1930s boast that is rendered variously in some form of "It ain't bragging if you can do it," the Trump remarks spurred a furious backlash. It came not only from the Vatican, which can be counted on to deplore wonton wartime destruction, but also from the ranks of MAGA's once-most-prominent voices.

Pope Leo's critique of the threat ("truly unacceptable") may have had unusual sting because of his American identity, but it was relatively mild compared to reactions from the commentator Tucker Carlson ("vile on every level") and former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene ("This is evil and madness").

It was ironic the Greene comments came as Georgians voted to select her replacement in the House ― a poignant reminder of what Americans learned in conflicts from the War of 1812 to the Mexican War to the Vietnam War: how the separation between domestic and foreign policy can shrink during wartime. In this case, Republican Clay Fuller, who had the president's endorsement, prevailed in a hard-fought contest but did so with a victory margin of about 12 percentage points in a district Trump won by 37 points in 2024.

That 25-point shift is what Thomas Jefferson would describe as a "fireball in the night" for Republicans hoping to retain power on Capitol Hill in this fall's midterm congressional elections.

It also stands as a reminder of how democracies, even those under siege, are ill-equipped to sustain long-term military engagements with little, or vaguely expressed, consequences for the people at home. It's a lesson the U.S. learned in Vietnam, then in Afghanistan, and now in this conflict, when prices on gas-station signs across the country exerted a power far greater than Iranian antiaircraft guns.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps faced no such overt opposition to the war and might have carried on.

"It is a thuggish group that has gained power by being the praetorian guard of the supreme leader and have had immense financial advantages," said Daniel Thomas Potts, a professor of ancient Near Eastern archaeology and history at New York University. "They're not going to give that up, and they have a tolerance for pain that people in the West couldn't bear for five minutes. They're used to feeling shortages. They're used to being cold in the winter when they can't get kerosene for their heaters. All they need is some bread, tomatoes and some cucumbers and they can get by."

For all his determination, Trump is possessed of a short attention span, as attested to by the various activities he engaged in beyond conducting the war; calling for an overhaul of college athletics is hardly a pressing issue while Americans are engaged in combat. He's not alone. Gloria Mark, an attention researcher at the University of California, Irvine, has identified dramatic decreases in public attention spans in the past two decades, finding that internet users who once remained on a topic for about 2 1/2 minutes now were switching screens after about 47 seconds.

At the same time, even opponents of the Iran conflict must have been astonished by Americans' reluctance to make wartime sacrifices and their impatience with gas prices that soared beyond the psychological barrier of $4 a gallon.

One final thought, in the form of a question American leaders must now confront (along with the vital matter of the disposition of the uranium Iranians are almost certainly still determined to refine into a weapons-grade product): Has Iran's success in blocking the Strait, and its potential to play that card again, actually increased its power in the world economy?

The answer to that may speak to the ultimate unanticipated effect of a war that began with the hope of diminishing the influence of a rogue state in global affairs.

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David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.