Zeichen der Zeit

At his Substack, Matthew Turpin contrasts the concept of conducting a successful military campaign, as the US is so clearly doing in Iran, with the wider requirement of conducting a successful war, which moves from operational military competence to the political realm of designing a strategy and articulating a war’s aims and goals to the public. “If the war itself is poorly designed, inadequately explained, and improperly resourced, it is difficult for even brilliantly executed military campaigns to achieve the aims of the war or to retain public support when there are setbacks,” Turpin writes. Beyond that, Turpin says leaders should reach out to domestic political rivals and foreign allies before launching a military campaign to build consensus for a strike domestically and create a coalition of foreign allies to assist. Unfortunately, Turpin writes, Trump did neither.