As the US strikes Iran while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, questions grow about selective enforcement of international law and a long record of flawed intelligence assessments.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has probably looked at what is happening in Iran and asked: “Why didn’t Russia get similar treatment from the US when its murderous dictator invaded Ukraine?”

This is the problem when one leading world power assumes the role of international policeman and law enforcer. That power inevitably chooses which laws to enforce against which perpetrators and with what level of punishment.

Moreover, that power does the enforcing with limited judgment and often flawed intelligence.

Since World War II the US has made far more bad assessments of other countries’ capacities than good ones.

In 1950-1953, it fought against the North Korean communists – taking three years to beat them back and then retreat to where they had started from. US intelligence underestimated the North Koreans’ resolve and underestimated the capacity and willingness of the Soviet Union and China to support them.

The same in Vietnam, where it won, or at least did not lose, virtually every battle, but lost the war. US intelligence and its military grossly under-estimated the North; overestimated domestic resolve and its soldiers’ morale and underestimated domestic political resistance to the war.

In Afghanistan it took 20 years of fighting before again achieving nothing but the return of the hellish Taliban.

In the first Gulf War President George H W Bush successfully........

© Pearls and Irritations