In The Big Stick, Eliot A. Cohen argues that the United States needs to maintain its global primacy and leadership on the international stage—above all to guarantee its own interests. Contrary to those who have become overly enamored with “soft power,” Cohen believes that the U.S. can only succeed if it has the ability and the willingness to use military force. Mackubin Thomas Owens writes in his review:

Cohen also assesses the four major challenges we face: the rise of China, the continuing threat from assorted jihadist movements, “dangerous states” such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and the challenge posed by “ungoverned space” and the “commons”—that is to say, the maritime realm, space, and cyberspace, which no one state or alliance rules or controls. China clearly tops his list of challenges, but we ignore others at our peril.

The problem is that the American hand, as strong as it is, is hard pressed to respond to all the challenges simultaneously. An important role of strategy is to establish priorities, and deciding how to allocate military power in response to these diverse threats will be the great strategic challenge for the foreseeable future. . . .

Indeed, the Obama administration’s retreat from primacy provides a preview of . . . a fragmented globe in which our friends and allies are making the best deals they can because they no longer have faith in the United States while our adversaries act aggressively, constantly probing for weaknesses.

The idea that the use of military power is at odds with the arc of history is equally absurd. Its use must be governed by prudence, but it cannot be unilaterally dismissed as an instrument of statecraft. For too long, American policymakers have acted as if diplomacy alone is sufficient to achieve our foreign-policy goals; but to cite Frederick the Great, . . . “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.” Policymakers need to relearn the lesson that diplomacy and force are two sides of the same coin.

Between the explosion of thousands of Hizballah pagers on September 17 and now, Iran’s geopolitical clout has shrunk dramatically: Hizballah, Iran’s most important striking force, has retreated to lick its wounds; Iranian influence in Syria has collapsed; Iran’s attempts to attack Israel via Gaza have proved self-defeating; its missile and drone arsenal have proved impotent; and its territorial defenses have proved useless in the face of Israeli airpower. Edward Luttwak considers what might happen next:

The myth of Iranian power was ironically propagated by the United States itself. Right at the start of his first term, in January 2009, Barack Obama was terrified that he would be maneuvered into fighting a war against Iran. . . . Obama started his tenure by apologizing for America’s erstwhile support for the shah. And beyond showing contrition for the past, the then-president also set a new rule, one that lasted all the way to October 2024: Iran may attack anyone, but none may attack Iran.

[Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s] variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hizballah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hizballah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenseless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hizballah, clearly it cannot even defend itself, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.