The End of American Military Dominance?

The war in Iran pitted two of the world’s mightiest militaries against one weakened by years of strikes, sanctions, and sabotage. And yet it was the smaller country that appears to have emerged with the advantage. In Ukraine, similarly, Russia expected an easy victory, only to be repeatedly thwarted by apparently outmatched Ukrainian forces. These outcomes may seem surprising. But Paul Scharre argues that they should not be. The innovations that have in recent years transformed battlefields have also leveled the playing field between powers great and small. And as Scharre wrote in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the U.S. military is unprepared for a new age of warfare in which drones, AI, and other emerging technologies undercut the dominance it has become used to.

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Scharre, the executive vice president of the Center for a New American Security, served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan and then went on to craft Pentagon policy on drones and autonomous weapons systems. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with him about what the wars in Iran and Ukraine should tell us about the future of warfare more generally, about what China is learning from those wars, and about what the United States must do to adapt.

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Sources:

“America’s Drone Delusion” by Justin Bronk

“The Perilous Coming Age of AI Warfare” by Paul Scharre

“Losing the War of the Future” by Paul Scharre

This episode of The Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Elise Burr and Kanishk Tharoor, with audio engineering by Christopher Koch and Markus Zakaria and original music by Robin Hilton. Special thanks to Irina Hogan.

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