By Seth Cropsey
Tuesday, September 01, 2026
As the Iran war drags into its sixth month without a
clear pathway to resolution, one could forgive chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff General Dan “Raizin” Caine for making a clear policy intervention. Yet it
is remarkable that military professionals and the general public do not
recognize this intervention as such. Equally remarkable is the process of
intervention — specifically the lack of countervailing military advice.
Six months without a serious policy choice should
indicate to any policymaker or military officer that the American policy system
has failed. The question is why. The standard answer, in which there is some
truth, is to blame the lack of an interagency process. But the deeper issue
during a war is necessarily that of military planning. The legacy of the
Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986 has made it nearly impossible for the president
to receive a coherent menu of policy options in a conflict rather than the idealized
end of policy advice. The result is an increasingly militarized policy process.
This is a problematic but manageable issue against Iran, considering the United
States’ relative advantages. Against a first-rate adversary, however, this is a
mortal weakness.
China will learn the limitations of America’s
policymaking system rapidly following this Middle Eastern adventure. The more
rigid American policymaking becomes — and the more a constrained military
advice system is reinforced — the more likely it is that China will present the
United States, under this administration or the next, with a series of options
that encourage capitulation.
***
The Iran war’s frenetic veering between talks and strikes
since early April is an indication of a policy process that has fundamentally
stalled. This stalling is not primarily a civilian problem. It is a military
one.
A series of leaks and off-the-record comments suggest
that the choice for war with Iran was a decision made by an executive with
limited strategic discipline. The underlying motivation was, admittedly, sound
enough. Iran had suffered extreme damage to its nuclear and missile programs
during the Twelve-Day War, in no small part because President Donald Trump
authorized Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran’s key nuclear facilities.
Iran has been locked in an inflationary spiral for years, which has caused rising
domestic discontent against the regime. This discontent exploded in early
January with large-scale protests that threatened state integrity. The United
States may well have acted then, executing a more limited series of strikes
with long-range airpower against core regime targets while waiting for assets
to move from Venezuela to the Middle East for the full conflict to begin.
Instead, it chose to wait and build up an enormous force package in the region,
including multiple carrier strike groups, fixed-wing aviation supported by a
transatlantic tanker bridge, and long-range strike aircraft ultimately launched
from the U.K.
Israel may well have exaggerated the Iranian regime’s
instability. More likely, the Israelis oversold to themselves — and by
extension to the Americans — their ability to topple the Iranian regime without
“boots on the ground.” And this was likely possible, but only until January.
After that point, Iranian reprisals against identified and suspected Israeli
agents made it increasingly difficult for the Mossad to coordinate operations
across the country. Indeed, the majority of Mossad case officers working the
Iran file were seldom actually in Iran, instead handling assets remotely after
building yearslong relationships online and training them in third countries.
This covert action apparatus was clearly effective enough to stress the Islamic
Republic. Otherwise, Iran would not have executed more than 30,000 of its own
citizens. But after the January protests were suppressed, such covert action
was severely curtailed.
This explains the American policy debate in run-up to the
war. Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio, alongside
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, were vocal skeptics of the Israeli plan, which
involved leveraging remaining in-country assets and enabling a Kurdish ground
offensive. However, Rubio and Ratcliffe endorsed a more tailored operation to
cripple Iran’s drone production and broader military-industrial base.
Critics of the administration have blamed it for not
sticking to this plan; particularly for broadening its objectives and killing
Iran’s top leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. However, even the
plan’s original scale and objectives, namely the elimination of Iran’s
ballistic missile and drone program alongside more extensive damage to its
nuclear capabilities, required the paralysis of the Iranian regime. This
demanded some attempt at decapitation, and Iran’s top leadership echelon offered
a prime opportunity. The more fundamental issue, by contrast, was President
Trump’s strategic slippage. The public record indicates that he could not
select between objectives — the destruction of the Iranian regime or the more
proximate damage that could be caused to its military capabilities. Hence the
United States pursued the latter while its rhetoric reflected the former.
This issue became acute once Iran established a choke
hold over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran added a third strategic variable into the
situation, a third potential objective for the U.S. The confirmed degradation
of Iranian offensive capabilities mattered little alongside the optics at the
strait. President Trump, however, was unwilling to pay the price to reopen the
strait for fear of casualties. (Such an effort would have involved either a
concerted air campaign and a light ground force deployment, or an attempted
escort mission through the strait, or most likely both.) Hence the negotiation
process, which had begun in early April, continued intermittently for the next
five months.
The first six weeks of the war can be blamed on
presidential indecision, exacerbated by a timid policy process. The subsequent
five months cannot.
President Trump has presented time and again his
strategic parameters. He has no desire to capitulate to Iranian demands, which
include de facto Iranian control over a crucial global waterway and the release
of all Iranian frozen assets. Nor does he have the desire to escalate, thereby
risking Gulf State oil infrastructure and triggering a global economic
catastrophe that would have direct ramifications for his own political
position. (The latter is evidently beyond the purview of a military officer, but
it is relevant to the president and therefore must be taken into account when
crafting policy.) The result, after halting negotiations and a framework for a
deal that fell apart soon after it was signed, were intermittent strikes on
Iranian coastal installations. It is worth dwelling on the decision-making
process that led President Trump to call off a much more expansive series of
strikes, for it reveals the deeper problem of civil-military relations in the
United States.
Since early April, there have been three options
available to the United States to pressure Iran. They are not mutually
exclusive, but each has a different emphasis. Option one has been the blockade
on Iranian oil exports, belatedly implemented after the U.S.-Iran “cease-fire”
began. This would undermine the Iranian economy, but it’d takes time. Iran is
certainly feeling economic pressure but has built a shadow economy to survive
it. Such an economic strategy would therefore require patience. Option two includes
a resumption of the countrywide air campaign to neutralize remaining Iranian
missiles and drones. The focus of this campaign would be on the coast, but it
would necessarily include nationwide pressure to suppress Iran’s remaining
longer-range ballistic missiles that can be launched from the country’s
interior. Option three involves hitting regime infrastructure to raise the cost
of resistance, whether this includes transportation facilities or energy
storage.
In this debate, policy advice from the Pentagon has
largely been absent. This extends the relationship that the Biden
administration established between policy and civilian defense officials, by
which the largely politically ineffectual Lloyd Austin had been supplanted by
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. Indeed, the void
left by an absent defense policy establishment will eventually be filled one
way or another.
Nor is the answer to these questions obvious. Escalation
carries all the risks of broader war that President Trump seeks to avoid, but
letting the conflict drag on makes it an unresolved strategic canker sore. The
president deserves to be offered a menu of policy options, including the full
explication of trade-offs that each option entails. President Trump has gotten
none. Implicitly, the military has been making policy.
General Caine has injected himself into this debate,
arguing vociferously against U.S. Central Command’s Admiral Brad Cooper, who
advocated resuming the bombing campaign for around two weeks. Caine referenced
depleted stockpiles and the risks that resumed fighting posed to deterrence in
Asia. First, however, the stockpiles in question, according what has been
leaked to the public, were either irrelevant for a contingency in Asia or were
depleted long before the 2025 or 2026 Iran operations. Trump responds well to
imagery, so Caine might have selected this argument not on strategic merits but
on psychological ones. Second, Caine’s objection to Cooper’s strategy sailed
through absent much of a fight. Cooper, who is running the war but is isolated
at CENTCOM, was incapable of pressing a different course of action. Caine, as
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is proximate to the president and could
advance his preferred alternative.
Caine is unmistakably offering policy advice rather than
a simple evaluation of military reality. His line of argument has a specific
set of political implications — either maintain the blockade with Iran or
negotiate an exit. The latter aligns with the preferences of other civilian
leaders in the Trump administration, including undersecretary of defense for
policy Elbridge Colby, a noted “restrainer” who prioritizes China. The point is
not to evaluate whether Caine’s policy preferences are correct. There is a
strong argument for them, as distasteful as the president might find them, much
as the consequences of Cooper’s proposed military course of action must have
given President Trump immediate pause. However, we must recognize that Caine’s
policy intervention carries serious implications for the future of American
strategy.
***
Caine’s intervention was possible because of the
structures that the Goldwater–Nichols Act has imposed on the U.S. military.
Specifically, it has narrowed the sources of professional military advice that
the president may receive absent concerted effort, thereby also narrowing the
options the president is presented with during a crisis. But the military’s job
is to provide these options, not to select among them.
Goldwater–Nichols was, according to the congressional
staffers who drafted the legislation’s language, the outgrowth of Operations
Eagle Claw and Urgent Fury. The former, the attempted rescue of American
hostages in Iran, catastrophically failed. But this failure was largely due to
extreme secrecy (the late General Robert Barrow, then the commandant of the
U.S. Marine Corps, was not told the purpose of the Marine helicopters requested
by the mission planners) and planning errors. Had one service been responsible
for planning and execution, the operation may have been conceived radically
differently. Moreover, joint planning and joint execution have little to do
with a poor concept and shoddy implementation. The U.S. invasion of Grenada,
which the latter describes, was plagued by interservice coordination issues,
but these were mostly issues about hardware. For instance, the lack of a shared
communications system between the Army and Navy made Naval Gunfire Support
extremely difficult to coordinate. Such problems could be fixed through
acquisition changes, not a new command structure.
Nonetheless, Goldwater–Nichols attempted to solve the
problem of military failure with extensive bureaucracy. The most obvious result
was the gross reduction in relevance of the service chiefs and service
secretaries and the elevation of the combatant commanders. The former were
reduced to bureaucratic holding commands. The latter became the center of
action, with ambitious officers offered promotion incentives to serve on
combatant-command staffs and the Joint Staff rather than with the services,
where they could exercise and hone their operational skill. Combatant
commanders, at least in times of low-intensity large-scale land wars, became
proconsuls.
Even more pernicious has been the growth in power of the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Joint Staff, which functionally replicates
the duties of the State Department and much of the civilian Defense Department.
It has enmeshed itself in every regional and thematic issue imaginable. It is
capable of running the Pentagon without civilian input at all if necessary. It
has arguably done so for the better part of two administrations.
This structure is possible only because the concentration
of talent in the Joint Staff parallels that in the combatant commands, to the
detriment of the services. The incentive structure is obvious. The chairman of
the Joint Chiefs is the president’s sole legal source of military advice. The
president has the right to seek additional opinions, but there is no structured
mechanism for him to do so. Hence the ambitious officer is far better served in
combatant commands or Joint Staff billets than any billet directly relating to
the services — unless he aspires to manage a complex acquisition program for a
few years, after which his work will be summarily lambasted and transformed.
The Iran war demonstrates the remarkable second-order
effect of Goldwater–Nichols. Not only are the services largely irrelevant
compared with the combatant commands, but the combatant commands themselves are
increasingly in the shadow of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. This is likely
a natural structural evolution. Combatant-command relevance grew out of the
Cold War’s bipolar global competition and was sustained by bureaucratic inertia
in the 1990s and 2000s, despite years of pervasive War on Terror–linked combat.
Trade-offs in force management were less relevant than actual operational
command. The talent shift was obvious. Officers such as the hard-charging Tommy
Franks, the warrior-intellectual David Petraeus, and the warrior-monk James
Mattis went to combatant commands, typically CENTCOM.
This began to change in the mid-2010s. The budget cuts
under sequestration wiped out a decade of post–War on Terror modernization
funding. And the growing assertiveness of Russia and China compelled the
Pentagon to reconsider major-power rivalry. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is
the secretary of defense’s adviser on global force management, giving him
leverage over global resource allocation. First Joseph Dunford, then Milley,
and now Caine have embraced this role. Their proximity to the president — particularly
the mercurial Trump — has made them especially politically relevant.
As a result, the chairman can shut out any pieces of
military advice he doesn’t like. When Admiral Cooper passed his memorandum to
the White House, Caine could in all likelihood control the debate around it and
shape executive decision-making. Absent Goldwater–Nichols, Cooper would have a
recourse. His naval superior, for example, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral
Daryl Caudle, would have direct access to the president and the National
Security Council. Whether the chief of naval operations would agree with a
combatant commander on any specific issue is unknowable — and Goldwater–Nichols
has created significant incentives against assertive service chiefs, meaning
that perhaps they would fall in line — but at least there would be a process
for different military opinions to be aired.
***
The Iran war’s outcome remains in doubt, but the United
States still has inherent advantages. Despite the economic pressure Iran can
apply, the U.S. remains in an excellent medium-term energy position.
Paradoxically, the more Iran disrupts global energy supply, the more viable it
becomes for American firms to expand production domestically, and the more
leverage the U.S. gains over global oil and gas production. In turn, Iran must
tread carefully in the Gulf, lest pressure on the U.S. and its Middle Eastern
allies trigger a severely punishing reaction from the Trump administration. So
long as Washington does not simply capitulate, this is a contest of attrition,
and Iran has fewer long-term options than the United States. The dangers of
military intervention in policymaking might therefore not be acutely felt in
the current conflict. They would be significantly magnified in the event of a
U.S.-China confrontation that involves the risk of large-scale war.
China’s regional ambitions are clear. Whether by strength
or guile, it wishes to shatter the American security system and, among other
things, absorb Taiwan into its political orbit and break the First Island
Chain. This would undermine America’s position across Asia and destroy the
global economy. The United States has an enormous, nearly existential interest
in preventing this eventuality. The question is which means of resistance the
U.S. should adopt.
The man on the spot, the combatant commander for the U.S.
Indo-Pacific Command, would present a variety of military options to the
president. Questions related to global weapons stockpiles would constrain but
not eliminate American options. In fact, they might encourage the United States
to consider the realities of the U.S.-Chinese military balance. The crucial
variable becomes the intervention of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Absent
countervailing policy advice from the secretary of defense, it is eminently
possible that the man primarily responsible for America’s future is a uniformed
unelected official. The president deserves access to every source of expert
military advice he can get. The current system and civil-military relations
limit his sources and pose a great danger to national security.
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