At a press conference in 2015, Barack Obama predicted that Russian intervention in Syria would end in ignominy and Moscow would be “stuck in a quagmire.” 1 Rather than repeat America’s own tough experience in recent Middle Eastern wars, however, the Russian operation helped Syrian president Bashar al-Assad seize the initiative and recapture Aleppo. Since the 9/11 attacks, major American wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have all been strategic failures. During the same period, however, US rivals Russia and Iran achieved significant success during campaigns in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq. Why does the United States lose, whereas Russia and Iran win? The answer does not lie with military spending, given the dramatic US advantage in defense budgets. Instead, the explanation is cultural. War today is primarily civil war, and when states intervene in foreign internal conflicts, cultural factors are a stronger predictor of battlefield outcomes than material resources. That puts the United States at a disadvantage for three reasons. First, America’s idealistic domestic culture encourages a crusading vision of war and unrealistic goals, whereas Russia’s and Iran’s domestic cultures spur a more pragmatic approach. Second, US military culture prioritizes conventional interstate war over intervention in foreign internal conflicts, whereas Russia and Iran have a broader view of the military’s mission. Third, Washington often intervenes in distant countries where there is a chasm between American culture and the target state’s culture, while Russia
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