By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
Sterling Hayden as Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic dark satire, “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”
Mandrake – do you recall what Clemenceau said about war? He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought.
That trenchant observation – spoken by Sterling Hayden’s Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper to Peter Sellers’ Group Captain Lionel Mandrake during the early minutes of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satirical masterpiece “Dr. Strangelove” – have been rattling around my brain for much of this past week. I’m not entirely sure why, but my suspicion is that it has to do with the not-quite-monthlong war in which Israel and the United States are pummeling Iran with all manner of airborne ordinance.
While we argue over whether this is a “just” war, there’s also the parallel issue raised by Georges Clemenceau (France’s prime minister from 1906-1909 and again from 1917-1920).
Monsieur C’s second tenure as PM overlapped with the closing years of World War I, where “strategic thought” consisted principally of opposing armies hunkering down in vast, interminably long trenches, emerging periodically to be slaughtered by massed machine guns and artillery. (As apt illustration, I commend you to Kubrick’s own “Paths of Glory” or the hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking fourth series of “Blackadder.”)
In short, the British, French and German generals’ notions of strategy became defined by protracted periods of static stalemate. The victorious politicians were scarcely better, saddling Germany with the onerous terms of the Versailles Treaty, but at least they managed to achieve an armistice and force Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate. Call it an early 20th-century example of regime change.
Jumping 100 or so years ahead to the present day, we can debate who is more to the point: Monsieur Clemenceau or General Ripper. Ripper’s thesis argues that modern warfare is so complex and multilayered, that only a cohort of multi-starred colleagues possess the strategic capacity necessary to get the job done. Coordinating the movements of B2 stealth bombers and carrier strike groups, drones, smart bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles is, inherently, belongs in the military arena.
Under this premise, strategy – the long-term, broader-based, big picture counterpart to tactics – is best served by those who are formally and pragmatically schooled in its application.
Clemenceau’s assertion that “war is too important to be left to the generals” depends on civilian politicians having sufficient and sustained strategic acumen. So how, then, do the U.S. president and Israel’s prime minister stack up on this regard?
Not as well as one might hope. Trump, who while campaigning promised not to entangle America in messy foreign wars, plunged headlong into this one to the tune of an estimated $1 billion per day – relegating Congress to the role of bystander and its Constitutional prerogative to declare war.
Victory is either Iran’s “unconditional surrender” or some variation on obliterating its stock of ballistic missiles and other primary assets (Iranian navy, we hardly knew ye), and destroying or physically removing its supply of enriched uranium. The war will have been won, our president has stated, when he “feels it in his bones.”
As the principal instigator of the present war, Netanyahu – whose moniker of “Mr. Security” took a grievous hit on October 7 – rightly regards Iran as an existential threat. Few rational observers can deny that the country must never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
Bibi has emphasized the targeting killings of the Iranian regime’s principal leadership, most notably the (now late) Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It’s the “cutting-the-head-off-the-snake” methodology, yet what has it genuinely achieved? Witness how Khamenei was quickly replaced by his son, Mojtaba, who is proving to be even more of a radical extremist than his father, though his prospects for an extended Supremacy are decidedly unfavorable.
More recently, Israel has been intent on destroying Iran’s energy-delivery infrastructure, bombing oil fields and key natural gas installations – the latter action prompting Trump to tell Bibi “No more of that.” Meanwhile (as of this writing on March 20) Iran has effectively choking off the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world’s oil supply no longer can transit safely.
With the oil prices spiking well over $100/barrel and American drivers staring wide-eyed at soaring gasoline prices wishing they’d bought that hybrid after all, so-called strategic thinking has ceded pride of place to international sticker shock. If Clemenceau were filling up in America today, he’d take one look at the gas pump and cry sacre bleu! as he pushed his last few $20s across the counter at Thornton’s.
Andrew Adler is Managing Editor of Community.