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The United States is operating without a coherent doctrine of war. Flexibility without purpose reflects deeper systemic misalignment between strategy, legitimacy, and political consent.

PREVIEW Forty nations can meet. They can issue statements. They can demand compliance. None of that changes the outcome. Because the Strait does not respond to pressure. It responds to risk.

Kharg Island looks like a decisive oil target. It isn’t. It’s a trap. Modern energy systems don’t break where they’re struck—they adapt, redistribute stress, and expand the battlefield. The real fight isn’t over oil infrastructure. It’s over risk, flow, and control.

The U.S.-Iran war:The United States measures progress in days. Iran measures it in endurance. That is the mismatch. And in war, mismatches determine outcomes. Because the actor who controls time does not need to win the battlefield. It only needs to ensure that the war does not end on the opponent’s terms. The United States may control the tempo. But Iran is shaping the duration. And in this war— Duration is decisive.

Wars do not become unsustainable only when they are lost militarily. They fail when their political foundation erodes. That process is already underway.

KEY POINTS * The United States is engaged in a war without formal congressional authorisation * This is a strategic legitimacy problem, not merely a legal one * War in a republic requires alignment between authority, law, and public consent * Public support began low, creating an immediate structural constraint * Authority is expanding faster than legitimacy * The core issue is regime coherence, not battlefield performance

This is not a war China needs to win. It is a system already producing pressure. One side is engaged in the fight. The other is positioned to benefit from the system's evolution. And in prolonged conflict— Advantage does not always go to the side that acts. It often goes to the side that can wait. Because the decisive variable is not always force. It is alignment.

Strategic Context The United States appears to have approached this conflict with a decapitation model: Remove leadership → trigger collapse. This model applies to personalist regimes in which authority is concentrated. It fails in systems designed for resilience. Iran as a System, Not a Regime Iran’s political structure distributes power across institutions. Decision-making is not dependent on a single leader. Leadership is replaceable. The system is designed to endure disruption.

Key Points * The global system depends on secure maritime trade routes * U.S. power has underwritten that system since World War II * This role is a strategic choice, not a permanent condition * Internal pressures are now constraining external commitments * Chokepoint disruptions reveal systemic vulnerability The system is shifting from stabilising to burdening

For decades, American strategy treated the region as the decisive theatre of international politics. But historically, this arrangement was unusual. For most of history, great powers did not guarantee open trade to other states. They pursued strategies rooted primarily in their own geopolitical interests. The post-1945 maritime order was thus not a permanent feature of international politics. It was a strategic choice made possible by American power and American political consensus.

The Indo-Pacific economy depends on energy flowing thousands of miles across maritime chokepoints. These have been protected for decades by American sea power. Yet, in a returning geopolitical world, the United States may have little reason to sustain that system.

The war with Iran is not yet a Sunni–Shia war. But history suggests that conflicts in the Middle East rarely remain purely geopolitical. If the current confrontation widens, the deeper sectarian fault line of the Islamic world may once again shape the struggle for regional power.

Wars that weaken domestic legitimacy can undermine national power even if they produce battlefield success.

Strategic Implications These assumptions also shape American defence policy. For several decades, U.S. strategic planning has increasingly focused on the Indo-Pacific as the central theatre of global power competition. This assumption underlies force posture decisions, alliance structures, and the designation of China as the primary pacing threat. Yet if the geopolitical conditions that sustained globalisation weaken, some of these assumptions may prove less certain. The durability of alliances—including Japan’s long-standing partnership with the United States—may depend far more on structural changes in the international system than on the simple continuation of present trends.

Author Comment This essay explores a structural question in strategy: why major wars tend to emerge during periods of institutional strain rather than political stability. If crisis periods weaken legitimacy and intensify internal division, external conflict can become more than a geopolitical contest. It becomes a test of whether the political system itself can sustain strategy. Strategists from Carl von Clausewitz onward have emphasized that war is inseparable from the political structure of the state that wages it. When institutions face internal stress, the relationship between government, military power, and the cohesion of the people becomes especially important. Looking at the current conflict involving Iran through this lens raises an important strategic question. Do crisis wars tend to restore political legitimacy within a republic—or do they accelerate the erosion of it? I welcome thoughtful perspectives from readers and fellow strategists.

A republic that loses confidence in its own cultural identity will eventually struggle to sustain a coherent strategy.Political institutions do not sustain themselves automatically. They depend on a deeper foundation of shared identity, cultural cohesion, and legitimacy.

Preview — March 10, 2026 Strategy often fails not because power is lacking, but because the analogy guiding it is wrong. Treating Iran like Venezuela — assuming sustained pressure will fracture elites and produce a compliant successor — is a dangerous misread. Iran’s authority rests on dense clerical, security, and ideological institutions, as well as a civilizational legitimacy that survives leadership shocks. Policymakers should stop applying convenient historical templates and instead interrogate the deeper institutional and cultural forces that actually sustain regimes.