The four years of America’s Civil War changed the look of war forever. It went from a Napoleonic conflict, with tourists on the battlefield, to the trenches of World War I and mass civilian casualties of World War II.
The Ukraine War has been going on just as long as our war did, four years and a month.
It has changed the face of war just as completely.
The change can be summed up in one word. Drones.
At the start of the war, drones were lightweight observers of the action. Today, they are the action. Russia can’t move forward because drone swarms kill everyone, and everything, that moves. Ukrainian civilians keep dying only because drone swarms can still overwhelm some defenses. Armies win by remote control.
America is now learning this lesson in the Gulf. Our Army, Navy, and Air Force have been rendered obsolete by Iranian drones that can hit anything from anywhere. All the infrastructure around the Persian Gulf is vulnerable.
Israel is learning this lesson, too. They’re still being hit by drones and missiles after their Air Force supposedly took everything out. People are dying and leaders are powerless to stop it.
Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin are all in the same boat. Only the Ukrainians, who have been dealing with this escalation for four years now, can even mitigate it. They can’t stop it, but they can mitigate it. They can survive it and will survive it.
What does this mean for our future?
The Lesson is Clear
Offensive wars are obsolete.
Drones are cheap, and the parts are too readily available, for any armed force to subdue them completely. That’s an important lesson for China, which still wants Taiwan. It means only the Iranian people can overthrow the Mullahs. But it also means that, with enough popular support, they can.
Now imagine a Trump Administration that rejects elections and chooses to enforce its rule over us by force of arms. That’s where they’re headed. But drones mean that strategy can’t work. They’re too easy to make and too easy to hide. A nation that believes in the Second Amendment can easily strike any concentration of force at any time, rendering it useless.
I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed, as they said in Dr. Strangelove. But King Donald has no more hope of conquering this country than King George did. All he can create now is rubble, and the only place he or his successors might rule is the rude end of a sewer pipe.
It’s quite the opposite of what the Spanish Civil War taught our forefathers. Fascists won that battle and became convinced the whole planet could be subdued with troops and guns and secret police. They were overcome by the side that could make more guns and bring in more troops, but those days are over.
The lesson is clear. Peace or death.
