The high-priest of realpolitik, Henry Kissinger, nuanced asymmetric forces by insisting that, “The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.” The unsentimental and shrewd Kissinger recognised the limits of US power and therefore believed in a cold admixture of pressure tactics and negotiations where credibility of “Peace with Honour” mattered more than outright militaristic victory.

The old fox sensed early that the asymmetric war with the North Vietnamese was conventionally unwinnable and so negotiated an exit (Paris Peace Accords) that still retained a modicum of credibility and “muscularity.” The Soviets didn’t read Kissinger in Afghanistan and paid dearly. Presumably having read Kissinger, even the Americans forgot the invaluable lessons of asymmetric conflict i.e., that networks beat hierarchies hands down. Even the technologically most advanced and powerful American military war-machine had to abandon Afghanistan after 20 years of the longest and the most expensive war.

Simply put, a decentralised insurgency (even with a ragtag militia of mujahedins) with a legitimacy gap with the local populace is simply insurmountable for an invading foreign power. Donald Trump is no student of history nor a believer in the strategic theory of balance-of-power. Trump believes that wars are indeed winnable with overwhelming force and that US military power is decisive and underutilized towards that purpose. Trump’s childlike glee in describing American weaponry includes language like “the most powerful weapons on the earth;” “nobody would dare challenge us;” “so advanced, it’s unbelievable;” “we have weapons nobody even knows about”; “so powerful on the seas nobody can challenge us;” “the most powerful weapons ever built” etc., is puerile or innocent at best.

Such hyperbole notwithstanding, both the military superpowers, the US and Russia, are embarrassingly stuck in seemingly endless quagmires in Iran and Ukraine respectively. They were supposed to end much earlier, with their imagined capitulations. In both Iran and Ukraine, the superpowers underestimated the asymmetric adaptation and the........

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