If Thursday’s U.S. airstrikes on Iraqi Shiite militia targets near Baghdad conjured up feelings of deja vu, don’t fret: Nearly three months ago, we all saw the same exact movie play out in real-time.
Last December, a Shiite militia group lobbed rockets at an Iraqi military base where U.S. troops were stationed, killing one American contractor and leaving part of the facility damaged. President Trump chose to respond by ordering bombing runs against five militia targets in Iraq and Syria, killing more than 25 militiamen. We all know how that story ended. In early January, the Trump administration struck a car carrying Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi Shiite militia commander Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, culminating days later in a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles on a joint Iraqi-U.S. air base. While the ballistic missile attack didn’t claim any lives, more than 100 U.S. service members suffered from traumatic brain injuries.
Thursday’s events were even more serious in a way. This time, three coalition soldiers, two Americans and one Briton, were killed in a rocket attack allegedly perpetrated by one of the same Shiite militias that conducted the attack in December. Within hours, U.S. jets retaliated by striking five locations that stored weaponry that U.S. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said “would enable lethal operations against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq.” One can only hope that this escalation doesn’t result in another direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
Over the ensuing days, we will hear a lot from Pentagon officials about how these strikes will allow the United States to maintain deterrence against Iran and its proxy forces in Iraq. Indeed, Defense Secretary Mark Esper used this same language immediately after U.S. missiles neutralized Soleimani’s vehicle near Baghdad International Airport in January. More than a week later, Esper told NPR that the Trump administration “reset deterrence” with Iran by killing its top general. The word “deterrence” is clearly top of mind in the bowels of the Pentagon bureaucracy.
But you can’t help wonder if Esper and his advisers understand what deterrence actually means.
The aim of deterrence is straightforward but absolutely critical: to persuade an adversary that taking a certain action would result in pain so powerful, so immense, and so life-threatening that the costs of the action far outweigh the benefits. The U.S. has historically been quite effective at establishing deterrence, a success owed to Washington’s superior military capability.
In Iraq, however, deterrence is not being maintained or even established. If it were, Shiite militia groups such as Kata’ib Hezbollah would think twice before sending over a dozen projectiles toward a base that housed U.S. troops. Iran, with direct but at times nebulous connections with these militias, would counsel its Iraqi proxies to hold off on doing anything that would generate a U.S. military response. None of that occurred in this instance. Despite understanding that the death of an American would generate retaliation at a place and time of Washington’s choosing, the militias went ahead with the attack anyway. This is not how deterrence is supposed to work.
Listening to Esper and McKenzie over the last 24 hours, one envisions a public relations specialist advising the two men to use the term “deterrence” over and over again in the hope that the public will conclude that those smart officers in the Pentagon have the situation in Iraq well in hand. Yet as the Pentagon is learning this week, saying and doing are two completely different things.
The only thing the Trump administration has established in the Middle East is more unpredictability, a core ingredient to miscalculation, confusing signals, and outright hostility.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
