America has amnesia. Iran war shows Trump admin doesn't get what 'might' delivers | Opinion

• Sandy Bolzenius argues that a "might makes right" foreign policy is a demonstrably false assumption.
• Historical examples, from ancient Persia to modern civil wars, show that military superiority does not guarantee victory.

Sandy Bolzenius is a U.S. Army veteran and a member of Veterans for Peace, Central Ohio.

Our nation's Feb. 28 attack on Iran shows that some lessons have not been learned.

United States Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller hammered down on the Trump administration’s reliance on military power to push its agenda during a Jan. 5 CNN appearance,

“We're a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” he said.

Throughout the January interview, Miller’s poor understanding of the historical consequences of the "might makes right" dictum was on full display.

Host Jake Tapper reminded Miller that sovereign states have the right to decide their own policies.

Miller disagreed, contending that all rights lie with the most powerful entity.

On the matter of Venezuela post the U.S. invasion in January, he was unequivocal. Americans are in charge, he claimed, “because we have the United States military stationed outside the country.”

Tapper then asked if the standoff between Trump’s demand for Greenland and Denmark’s refusal to hand it over would involve force. Given the supremacy of U.S. might, Miller shot back, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”

Vengeance for the invasion

Besides its baked-in moral degeneracy, "might makes right" is a demonstrably false assumption.

Ask the rulers of ancient Persia, the largest empire of its era. Their attempt to conquer small independent Greek city-states instead united the Greeks, who forced the Persians to retreat. A century later, one of those city-states, tiny Macedonia, conquered all of Persia.

Its young prince— history's Alexander the Great — cited vengeance for the Persian invasion.

Miller would be wise to consider more recent examples as well.

Czar Nicholas II reigned supreme over Russia and employed a network of Okhrana agents to ferret out challengers to his rule. In 1917, he lost his crown and later his life to revolutionaries who had no military and had to organize in secret.

The ensuing Russian civil war ended when the newly formed Red Army defeated the White Army despite the latter’s international allies who sent money, arms and trained soldiers.

During the Chinese civil war, Chiang Kai-shek’s advantages included imperial forces, government arsenals, the public purse and, once again, powerful international allies. Nevertheless, in 1949 he lost to Mao Zedong and his ragtag army, many illiterate peasants.

If military might determined the victor, each of these conflicts would have ended very differently. Notably, Americans supported the losing side in both civil wars.

What might hasn't gotten America

Our own history of wars as a superpower offers further proof that might does not make right.

Since World War II, U.S. military incursions have been dismal failures.

The Korean War produced a stalemate that exists today.

The Vietnamese drove us out after 20 years of relentless bombings. The same with the Afghanis, in part due to our assistance in yet another war.

Throughout the 1980s, when the Afghans were fighting the Soviet Union, the U.S. provided then-ally Osama bin Laden a powerful platform, weapons to arm his followers and the circumstances that created the Taliban, who rule Afghanistan to this day.

The U.S. has long relied on military might to pursue its interests as this scanty sampling indicates: blitz operations in Grenada, Libya and Panama; CIA coups in Guatemala, Chile and Iran; and in the year since Trump stepped back into the presidency, bombing missions in seven countries.

Overwhelming forces racked up American victories, yet superficially. While often protecting corporate interests, they also led to fatalities, autocracies, destabilized economies and anti-American resentment.

The wrong we've collected

The evidence is clear.

Might does not make right. It makes wrong.

Given the historical record of hubris-driven wars, it also makes stupid. Once started, wars spin out of control.

No one can predict any war’s duration, fatalities, extent of destruction, ultimate battle zones or levels of resentment that so often boomerang on the aggressors.

Top U.S. policy advisor Miller should know this. Indeed, a brief study of his target of Iran, once known as Persia, demonstrates how reckless reliance on military superiority ultimately backfires on presumed superpowers.

Roughly 2,500 years of catastrophic warfare for all parties are not enough to convince our leaders of the might makes right fallacy.

Sandy Bolzenius is a U.S. Army veteran and a member of Veterans for Peace, Central Ohio, Chapter 183

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