When disaster and misfortune strike an empire, they tend to do so in droves. This is even more true if the empire is suffering from military overstretch, financial crisis, or a social and political crisis, and right now America is in the middle of all three at once. And when a previously dominant empire weakens in such an obvious way, the various enemies of that empire generally pick up on the message. This is particularly true if they have formed a balancing coalition where they coordinate with each other. In 2024, America’s most fearsome allies – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea – are tied together by a mix of formal and informal alliance structures, which makes any strategy of divide and conquer impossible. That makes the current conflagration between Israel and Lebanon just the latest and most urgent among America’s various bleeding wounds.
Events there are already slipping from Washington’s grasp. Like the rest of us, they are reduced to a spectator, watching on as Israel assassinates the leadership of Hezbollah and bombs Beirut, inevitably inviting some sort of retaliation from Iran. America’s ability to intervene directly is quite limited, not least because, thanks to its commitments across the Pacific and Gulf, the US Navy is currently suffering from a massive crisis of readiness and would struggle to supply the carriers necessary. The enemy itself does not really fit the American way of war, either. With around a hundred thousand fighters, many of whom have gained serious combat experience over the last decade fighting against Isis, Hezbollah is no mere militia or disorganised terror group. Having prepared for almost two decades for a conflict with Israel (and by extension the United States, as both countries rely heavily on airpower), Hezbollah now commands the most formidable network of air defence tunnels in the world. Even if the United States wanted to pick a fight in southern Lebanon today, this number of enemy combatants, fighting from prepared positions in familiar terrain, probably makes a decisive military solution to the situation nearly impossible.
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