Air superiority is supposed to deliver a quick triumph. But history has shown that promise to be written on the wind
To explore the roots of Donald Trump’s Iran military strategy and the pugnacious rhetoric of his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, means looking back 105 years. In 1921, a year before Benito Mussolini and his blackshirts marched on Rome to launch the Fascist era, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, proposing a revolution in warfare.
Victory in the future, he said, would no longer come from the grinding trench combat of the great war. Instead it meant large-scale aerial bombardments, targeting not just combatants but civilians and civilian infrastructure and logistics.
“[It] is much more important to destroy a railroad station, a bakery, a war plant, or to machine-gun a supply column, moving trains, or any other behind-the-lines objective, than to strafe or bomb a trench.
Every war ever started was going to be over within a month, with an overwhelming victory, and the conquered people hailing them as liberators.
Remember, the Trump administration has insisted it is not a war. I guess it is instead a 3 day special military operation?
And like Putin, Trump will keep doubling down forever, instead of rationally withdrawing from the war and thereby admitting defeat.