The Limits of American Power: U.S. Strategy and the Delusion of Force
Foreign Affairs · William H. McRaven ·
William McRaven, a retired four-star admiral and a major figure in American military affairs, uses history and his personal experiences to make an authoritative case that American leaders frequently overestimate the potential of military force to achieve political ends—and that new technologies like AI will exacerbate this problem.
The war in Iran is far from the first time that U.S. policymakers have failed to appreciate the limits of American power. But the Trump administration’s use of military force against the Islamic Republic since February 28 offers a particularly glaring example of a mistake that has often characterized American strategy in recent decades. The war was launched without a clear rationale and with a constantly shifting set of objectives—from changing Tehran’s regime and squelching its nuclear ambitions to, more recently, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which wasn’t closed until the war started. The results, not surprisingly, have been bad both for U.S. interests and for the Middle East.
Still, to focus only on the blunders in Iran is to miss a deeper problem in U.S. foreign policy—one that preceded and will outlast Donald Trump’s presidency. Although the particular missteps in Iran may stem from the shortcomings of this president and the team around him, the overestimation of the potential of military force has been a growing feature of American strategy since at least the end of World War II. A tendency to wish away the limits of power accounted for some of the greatest mistakes of U.S. statecraft during the Cold War, with Vietnam the clearest and most consequential example. Yet despite an apparent commitment to internalizing the lessons of that overreach, this American delusion—our excessive faith in the capacity of military power to achieve victory and thereby fundamentally political ends—has gotten worse rather than better, especially in the past quarter century.
And unfortunately, there is good reason to worry that the delusion will deepen in the years ahead. Presidential power is becoming increasingly personalized as the constraints on it continue to erode. The politicization of the military (along with the diplomatic corps and intelligence communities) is making it less likely that policymakers will receive the best advice, including frank warnings about risks and costs. And the rise of artificial intelligence and new weapons technologies reinforces a sense of complete battlefield awareness and mastery, feeding superpower hubris. The risk of overreach has never been higher, at a time when the damage from overreach is becoming more difficult to repair.
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