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American “Micro-Militarism: Or How Defeat in the Iran War Will Accelerate American Global Decline

 SCHEERPOST, April 25, 2026 , Alfred McCoy

Writing more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian Plutarch gave us an eloquent description of what modern historians now call “micro-militarism.” When an imperial power like Athens then, or America now, is in decline, its leaders often react emotionally by mounting seemingly bold military strikes in hopes of regaining the imperial grandeur that’s slipping through their fingers. Instead of another of the great victories the empire won at its peak of power, however, such military misadventures only serve to accelerate the ongoing decline, erasing whatever aura of imperial majesty remains and revealing instead the moral rot deep inside the ruling elite.

There is mounting historical evidence that America is indeed an empire in steep decline, while President Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran is becoming the sort of micro-military disaster that helped destroy successive empires over the past 2,500 years — from ancient Athens to medieval Portugal to modern Spain, Great Britain, and now the United States. And at the core of every such ill-fated war-making decision lay a problematic leader, often born into wealth and prestige, whose personal inadequacies reflected and ramified the many irrationalities that make imperial decline such a painful process.

During that demoralizing downward spiral, imperial armies, so lethal in an empire’s ascent, can err by plunging their countries into draining, even disastrous “micro-military” misadventures — psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the loss of imperial power by trying to occupy new territories or display awe-inspiring military might. Although such micro-militarism often chose targets that proved strategically unsustainable, the psychological pressures upon declining empires are so strong that they all too often gamble their prestige on just such misadventures. Not only did such disasters add financial pressures to a fading empire’s many troubles, but in a humiliating fashion, they also invariably exposed its eroding power while exacerbating the destabilizing impact of imperial decline in the capitals of empire (whether Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, London, or Washington, D.C.).

In our moment, when the bombs stop falling and the rubble is finally cleared from the streets of Tehran and Beirut, the impact on U.S. global power of such a de facto defeat will become all too clear — as alliances like NATO atrophy, American hegemony evaporates, legitimacy is lost, global disorder rises, and the world economy suffers.

Let me now turn from the disasters of the present imperial moment to the lessons of history to explore the sort of lasting damage that Donald Trump’s micro-military misadventure in the Middle East might be inflicting on this country’s declining imperium…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

America’s Defeat in the Strait of Hormuz

Another date likely to prove all too significant when it comes to the history of imperial decline is February 28, 2026. The place was Washington, D.C., home to what had been history’s most powerful imperial state that had dominated much of the globe for nearly 80 years through a mixture of military alliances, deft diplomacy, and economic leadership. By then, however, cracks had distinctly begun to appear in its edifice of power as U.S. global hegemony faced an increasingly strong economic challenge from China, its massive military suffered two searing defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its economic globalization produced an angry populism at home.

After a populist campaign based on promises to restore both working-class prosperity and America’s global power, Donald Trump took office a second time in January 2025 promising a “golden age of America,” a “thrilling new era of national success” in which the country would “reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world.” Born to wealth and privilege himself, Trump returned to office convinced of his unique “genius” for leadership and believing that “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Wielding raw economic and military might to compel obeisance from friend and foe alike, the president, inspired by a delusional sense of divine mission, began attempting to bend the world to his will. But during his first year in office, nothing seemed to work as planned. Indeed, most of his initiatives produced the sort of backlash that only served to show how far the United States had fallen from 1991, when the break-up of the Soviet Union made it the world’s sole superpower.

On April 2, 2025, on what he called “Liberation Day,” Trump announced a roster of punitive tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing largely from Chinese imports that faced an initial duty of 34% — later raised to a fully punitive 100%. But at their October 2025 meeting in South Korea, China’s leader Xi Jinping forced Trump to back down by cutting U.S. access to his country’s storehouse of strategic rare earth minerals.

In January, with his tariff initiative losing its luster, Trump plunged the NATO alliance into crisis by demanding that Denmark give him the island of Greenland, threatening to impose new tariffs on European allies unless they complied. Within a week, however, vociferous European resistance had led him to retract that threat at the Davos economic summit, claiming he was satisfied with NATO’s offer of a “framework of a future deal.”

On February 28th, 2026, with his tariff initiative failing and his Greenland gambit checkmated, Trump joined Israel in a seemingly bold strike on Iran that soon had the makings of the sort of fateful “micro-military” maneuver that appears to go with imperial powers in decline.

In the first few days of war, U.S. and Israeli bombing killed Iran’s leadership, destroyed its navy, and eliminated its air defenses, leaving the country seemingly prostrate before the might of America’s air-power juggernaut. After a week of devastating bombardment that seemed to stun the world with its lethality and precision, on March 6th Trump demanded that Iran offer an “unconditional surrender” and signal its capitulation by “the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader.” In exchange, he promised that the U.S. would “work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.”

But much as Nasser had done at Suez in 1956, Iran’s leadership reversed the war’s geostrategic balance by closing a critical maritime choke point in the Strait of Hormuz. By striking five freighters with drones in the first week of war, Iran’s leaders, taking a leaf from Nasser’s geopolitical playbook, effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic, cutting off gas, fertilizer, and oil shipments that plunged the world economy into an unprecedented energy crisis. By the end of March, Iran’s chokehold over the strait was so tight that it began collecting “tolls” from freighters to permit passage.

Blindsided by the Strait’s unexpected yet utterly predictable closure, on April 5th, Easter Sunday, an unsettled Trump posted a social media message saying: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” He added: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” Two days later, Trump threatened that, unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, he would attack its civilian infrastructure so severely that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

After the collapse of subsequent negotiations between the two sides at Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 12th, Trump plunged ever deeper into the Iran quagmire, ordering the U.S. Navy to “begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” and “interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.” With characteristic bluster, he added: “We are fully ‘LOCKED AND LOADED,’ and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!”

Even if Trump destroys Iran’s infrastructure or eventually negotiates a face-saving peace deal, by every metric that really matters, Washington has already lost its war with Iran. Like all weaker powers in asymmetric warfare, Tehran has been willing to absorb relentless punishment, while inflicting pain that the dominant power can ill sustain. The U.S. will soon run out of targets in Tehran, but Iran has a whole world of damage that its cheap drones can do to the elaborate, exposed petroleum infrastructure on the south shore of the Persian Gulf.

Like Britain at Suez in 1956, Washington will likely pay a heavy price for its “micro-militarism” in the Strait of Hormuz. Close allies, the bedrock of U.S. global power for 80 years, have refused any military support for Washington’s war of choice, prompting Trump to call them “cowards.” In response to his thundering threats of civilian and civilizational destruction (both war crimes), Trump has been condemned by world leaders. Oblivious to the dangers of war in a region that is the epicenter of global capitalism, Washington is now proving ever more dangerously disruptive of the global economy, making China look like a far more stable choice for world leadership. Moreover, while the U.S. military has proven its tactical agility in destroying targets, it clearly can no longer capture meaningful strategic objectives.

With its alliances in tatters, its world leadership forfeited, and its aura of military might evaporating, the only trajectory for U.S. global hegemony now seems to be downward (like so many great powers of the past). By the time Trump’s micro-military misadventure in the Strait of Hormuz is over, the decline of U.S. global power will have accelerated drastically and the world will be trying to move beyond the old Pax Americana toward a new, distinctly uncertain global order.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change (Dispatch Books). His new book, just published, is Cold War on Five Continents: The Geopolitics of Empire & Espionage.

https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/american-micro-militarism-or-how-defeat-in-the-iran-war-will-accelerate-american-global-decline/

April 30, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international