The delusion of easy victory from the air may have seduced the US into another war

Air superiority is supposed to deliver a quick triumph.

But history has shown that promise to be written on the wind
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To explore the roots of Donald Trump’s Iran military strategy and the pugilistic rhetoric of his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, means looking back 105 years.

In 1921, a year before Benito Mussolini and his blackshirts marched on Rome to launch the Fascist era, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, proposing a revolution in warfare.

Victory in the future, he said, would no longer come from the grinding trench combat of the Great War.

Instead it meant large-scale aerial bombardments, targeting not just combatants but civilians and civilian infrastructure and logistics.

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