Das Trugbild des Sieges

“Wars can remove regimes in months,” writes national security practitioner Carey Zott at *Freedom Frequency*. But “rebuilding administrative capacity takes decades.” No matter how thorough or crushing American power might be in places like Iran, such firepower on its own cannot bring about lasting change, this piece warns. Zott explains that the leaders of groups such as ISIS, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have prepared entire networks held together by ideology and institutions. Removing top leaders of radical groups does nothing to dismantle the network, Zott writes, and killing terrorist chiefs often results in a power vacuum that others—equally radical—rush to fill. The lesson for the United States is to concentrate not just on military victory but on making postconflict strategy a priority, Zott writes. “Without that effort, kinetic success risks becoming a mirage.”