I’d love to be able to vote for retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor as Defense Secretary, but since that’s not possible I’ll have to be content to follow the many interviews with the much sought-after colonel, who’s all over the Internet (but rarely on the mainstream networks). In addition to his battle experience in the Gulf War and Yugoslavia, he has written extensively about military strategy and tactics.

In his interviews, he shows an impressive command of politics, geopolitics and history. And, like so many of our esteemed American military leaders of the past (such as Eisenhower) he has a sober understanding of the horrors — and indeed often the stupidity — of war. Unlike the gung ho cosplayers currently mismanaging the Defense Department in Washington.

The following statement by Macgregor is an excerpt from a recent interview with him on the Global Insights Network:

The interviewer asked him how he believes the Iran War will affect the “global order.”

Here’s his response:

“The international order that has governed global relations since 1945 was not built by accident. It was constructed deliberately through enormous diplomatic effort by American leadership that understood something that the current administration appears not to. That the rules-based international order serves American interests more than it constrains them.

“The institutions of that order, the United Nations, the international legal framework, the alliance networks are not obstacles to American power. They are force multipliers. They allow America to act with the legitimacy and the coalition support that unilateral action can never achieve. They provide the infrastructure through which American power translates into global outcomes.

“When America undermines those institutions, when it sanctions the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court it helped create. When it bypasses the Security Council processes it designed, when it launches military operations that it cannot justify under the international legal framework it helped write. It is not asserting strength. It is liquidating assets. 

“The authority that makes American power globally effective is not a material resource like oil or steel. It is a political resource built through decades of demonstrating that America operates within the rules it asks others to follow. Once spent, it cannot be quickly replenished. Countries that conclude America is not a reliable rule follower adjust their strategic calculations accordingly. They diversify their relationships. They reduce their dependence on American guarantees. They  find alternatives. That process is already underway. The Gulf States are having conversations with China that they would not have had 18 months ago.

“European governments are making defense decisions independent of American preferences that would have been unthinkable 5 years ago. Pacific allies are quietly stress testing what their security situation looks like without American guarantees that they are no longer certain they can count on. None of this changes the underlying material power equation. America remains the largest economy and most capable military on earth. But the ability to translate that power into global outcomes through institutions, through alliances, through the legitimacy that comes from playing by rules you helped write is being damaged in ways that will outlast this administration, this war, and this moment in history. 

“The world order that America built is not dying because of Chinese or Russian power. It is being dismantled by American choices and the people who will live in the world those choices produce are not the ones making them. Let me give you the honest summary of where things stand.

“Iran has not started a war in centuries. The country being portrayed as the aggressor in this conflict has a behavioral record that is the opposite of what is being claimed. America is not losing power from this war. It is losing the ability to use the power it has through the systematic destruction of the institutions, the legal frameworks and the alliance relationships that translate raw power into global outcomes. The straight of Hormuz is closed because Iran learned from America how to weaponize a choke point. 

“The economic consequences are compounding daily. America cannot open the strait. No coalition is forming to help. China looks like the responsible adult. American allies around the world are questioning guarantees they previously trusted. The pivot to Asia, the correct strategic priority, is being undermined by an asset deployment to a peripheral theater that serves Israeli strategic interests more than American ones. The Gulf States asking for escalation are asking for the action that would trigger their own destruction. And the negotiated settlement that could end this exists on paper, but reaching it requires acknowledging things that the political architecture of this war makes impossible to acknowledge. 

“The world order that America built is being damaged by American choices, not by external adversaries, by decisions made in Washington driven by domestic political relationships that have placed specific alliance commitments above honest American strategic interest.

“History will record this moment. The question is what lesson it records. Whether this was the moment American leadership recognized the trajectory and changed course or whether it was the moment the trajectory became irreversible.”

The full interview (below) is well worth watching.

https://youtu.be/uJZFmGhHhGI?si=wdXqL5hYRWvtJP6m

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