The Iran War
To End the Iran War, We Must Look Beyond Munich
Other historical analogies offer more relevant lessons.
(Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sulgrave Institution of the U.S. and Great Britain/Creative Commons)
In 1919, John Maynard Keynes left the Paris Peace Conference convinced the Allies were making a blunder of historic proportions. In The Economic Consequences of the Peace, he prophesied that the terms imposed by the victors were so punitive they would wreck the defeated Germans’ economy and set the stage for another world war.
He was right, and there is a lesson here for President Trump’s war with Iran. Supporters of U.S. militarism frequently rely on the Munich analogy to justify Middle Eastern wars. The argument goes like this: Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement in 1938 emboldened Hitler to amp up his aggression well beyond the Sudetenland. What was supposed to deliver “peace in our time” instead led inexorably to a global conflagration—one that might have been averted, had the British leader only shown a little backbone.
What is less often recognized is how and why Hitler came to power in the first place. I call this the Versailles analogy. In 1918, Germans lost not only the war, but also their sense of national pride and dignity. As Keynes predicted, ordinary Germans became destitute amid rampant inflation—clearing the way for an unscrupulous demagogue to take power.
This history has been largely ignored; the constant refrain for the Middle East is simply “do not appease evil.” The Munich case has been invoked to justify a litany of aggressive and counterproductive policies. Gamal Abdel Nasser was deemed “Hitler on the Nile”; ultimately he would stumble into the Six-Day War. Saddam Hussein was “Hitler on the Euphrates” (though only after receiving U.S. support during his war with Iran); Hussein too contributed to the outbreak of major Mideast conflict.
Commentators frequently accuse politicians and diplomats of being Neville Chamberlain without actually knowing what Chamberlain did. In 2008, when presidential candidate Barack Obama signaled a willingness to engage Iran diplomatically, he was widely accused of appeasement—even by then-President George W. Bush during a trip to Israel. (The Bush camp alleged that the president’s comments were directed at Obama.) In one memorable televised exchange, a radio host echoing Bush’s criticism was pressed by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to explain what Chamberlain had actually done in 1938. After a few minutes of evasion, the host admitted he had no idea.
Despite criticism, upon entering the Oval Office, Obama pursued the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Although his administration’s response to the “Arab Spring” was largely harmful to U.S. interests, the JCPOA remains one of the most significant achievements of nuclear non-proliferation in history. The agreement, it is true, did not address the Axis of Resistance, Iran’s ballistic missile program, or its other malign regional behavior. But it did deal with the single most critical threat to global security: Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
At that time, the Pickaxe Mountain facility—which probably holds much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium today—did not even exist, and the Strait of Hormuz was a free waterway. Yes, Obama met Tehran’s need for cash by releasing frozen funds, but he secured something vital in return: stringent international oversight of Iran’s nuclear material and activities.
As the U.S. continues to dig itself into a deeper hole by implementing an “economic D-Day” against Iran, we can learn from several other historical examples where maximum economic punishment did not produce the desired results. Cutting Imperial Japan off from energy resources contributed to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Embargoing Castro’s Cuba helped trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis—arguably the most dangerous moment in recorded history. Sanctioning Saddam Hussein decimated Iraq’s middle class and prepared the ground for the second Iraq War, which cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
My point is not that economic sanctions are never useful, especially as an alternative to war; but that we must think carefully before launching an economic onslaught that could devolve this lose-lose conflict into something even more serious involving the Strait of Hormuz, the destruction of vital civilian infrastructure, the radicalization of the general public, and—if things deteriorate enough—the use of unconventional weapons by someone.
History also provides a template for navigating a stalemate. The War of 1812 ended without a decisive victory; British troops had burned the White House, and American forces had failed to take Canada. Yet Britain didn’t try to cripple the young republic economically, and a bankrupt United States had no appetite to keep fighting. The Treaty of Ghent recognized this impasse and simply restored the prewar borders. The U.S. and Britain then spent the next century working out how to coexist, eventually forging a seemingly unbreakable “special relationship.”
Instead of issuing new threats—from seizing Kharg Island to bombing civilian infrastructure—Washington should accept that there is no military solution. Instead of climbing further up the escalation ladder, we need to step off and implement what you might call a “Ghentleman’s agreement.”
Essentially, such an approach would return the U.S. and Iran to the status quo antebellum. Crucially, it would rely on trust-building reciprocal steps rather than a signed treaty. If a treaty is possible, all the better. But at this stage, neither side puts much faith in the other’s signature. The United States can take unilateral steps to deescalate, such as withdrawing its strike groups, and the Iranians can reciprocate by inviting inspectors—supported by the world’s nuclear powers—back into the country.
Why would either side agree to this? Because the current war is a lose-lose proposition. For one, the risk of unconventional escalation is real. Israel operates under the Begin Doctrine—an unofficial policy of preventive war to eliminate unconventional threats—which means that, left to its own devices, the country is unlikely to tamp things down anytime soon. Second, although the Islamic Republic has demonstrated it can absorb blows from the world’s most powerful military, it remains in severe economic peril and faces the threat of internal uprisings. As Iran’s pragmatic Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf recently acknowledged, “No matter how strong our military power becomes, if we are hungry, we will not be able to endure.”
Why would the United States agree to “appease” Iran? Because by almost any measure, this war has already been a disaster, and one year more of this war will not make it any less so. As the former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently told me, it ranks among “the biggest, most costly foreign policy blunders in the history of our country.”
The true human cost is still being uncovered: The Pentagon recently updated its database to reflect a total of 624 wounded service members after introducing a new reporting category to track ongoing overseas operations. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Congress the war has cost about $37.5 billion. But the Harvard economist Linda Bilmes notes that this figure covers only munitions already fired, not the cost to replace them. By her accounting, short-term operational costs are roughly $120 billion, and rebuilding destroyed American bases adds another $250 billion. That puts the hard cost near $370 billion—roughly 10 times Hegseth’s figure—before accounting for a single long-term expense like lifetime veterans’ care. Factoring in these indirect, long-term costs and macroeconomic fallout could easily push the total price tag past $1 trillion. With our national debt having just crossed $40 trillion and 20 percent of American children lacking adequate food, should we really push deeper into another trillion-dollar war?
Before every ballgame, Americans sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” often mistakenly believing it to be about the War of Independence. It was in fact written about the War of 1812. (Francis Scott Key penned it after watching the defense of Fort McHenry from the British side, where he had successfully negotiated with the British for the release of an imprisoned American doctor.)
It is fitting that this song became our national anthem. It commemorates a war in which the nation’s capital burned, and where James Madison—the “Father of the Constitution”—accepted a stalemate to save the republic.
The man he wisely appointed to lead the Peace Commission for the Treaty of Ghent was none other than John Quincy Adams, one of America’s greatest statesmen. As we navigate our current crisis, we would do well to remember Adams’s timeless warning: “America… goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
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