Two years ago, I wrote an article titled “Nationalist Failures,” arguing “right-wing populism makes the US and Israel weaker.” Until recently, there was a plausible case I was wrong; Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dealt powerful blows to its enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, while the US, less than a year into Donald Trump’s second term grabbed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and brought him to jail in Brooklyn, a display of dominance that spurred visions of power plays in Greenland and elsewhere.
The Iran War, though, has revealed some of the underlying weaknesses I feared. Nations led by right-wing demagogues skilled at dividing their own people will falter during a major war. Such leaders, infatuated with high-tech military prowess and contemptuous of brakes on their own powers, will make hubristic mistakes, disregarding contingency planning, such as with Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and failing to prepare for advances in asymmetric warfare, like cheap drones that can exhaust expensive defenses. The antipathy that nationalist leaders hold toward diplomacy and alliances is a further weakness, leaving their countries with few friends when needed in times of conflict and crisis.
Right-wing nationalism’s insularity regarding foreigners also results in unrealistic, self-aggrandizing views about how populations will behave. Early in the Iran War, on March 2, I was disquieted by a video I saw on X, which purported to show “thousands of Iranians in Tehran chanting ‘Bibi Joon’ or ‘Bibi Lovy,’” expressions of love and appreciation for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What was disquieting was that hawkish Israelis were promoting this dubious video as real, an indicator of dangerous self-delusion and overconfidence as to how the war would go.
The video had several scenes taken from high vantage points, with crowds far below (in one case not even visible) and yet with clear audio seemingly unaffected by the distance. The crowds didn’t seem to move much, and at one point the skyline briefly shimmered. One could be confident that at least some of the footage was AI-generated; insofar as any of it was real, it would’ve been spliced together from multiple segments, which were curiously similar in that each had a right-to-left motion across a sweeping vista. In any case, there was no reason to think the audio was recorded simultaneously with the images.
Accepting the idea that Iranians had massively taken to the streets to chant not just their opposition to the government—for which thousands had been killed weeks before—but approval of an attacking power, would require evidence a lot more credible than this. I was primed for skepticism, moreover, by recalling similar claims last June, with video of Iranians on rooftops supposedly cheering for Israeli missiles over Tehran; Farsi-speakers on social media soon pointed out that the Iranians were cheering for their county’s interceptors. Any “strategy” that assumes that people will overthrow their government under a barrage of missiles faces considerable challenges, including that even people who hate their government may regard a foreign foe firing missiles at them as no better, if not worse.
Right-wing nationalism runs on opposition to cosmopolitanism, a broad interest in peoples and cultures. The nationalist theory is that embracing immigrants, trade, and foreign ideas, will undermine a nation’s cohesion and create security risks; foreign students attending American universities might be spies, for example. The flip side is overlooked: having people in the US with knowledge of foreign languages and cultures provides a talent base that American employers—including intelligence agencies and the military—can draw on; and overall enhances our ability to understand threats and opportunities around the world.
In mid-March I described Trump’s initiation of the Iran War as “a world-historical blunder that will echo through history.” A reader replied that this was “way over the top” and premature, pending future analyses of costs and benefits of an outcome yet to be seen. But as of late-March, it’s evident that Trump’s move was in fact a blunder; that any developments that mitigate that blunder will reflect improvised adaptation, particularly by the US military. Listening to Trump describe this war as a “little excursion” and point out that he calls it a “military operation” to avoid the requirement to get approval for a “war,” underscores how unsound his decision was, strategically and constitutionally.