Earlier today I read Jeremy Bowen’s analysis on the BBC site of the unfolding war between the United States, Israel, and Iran. It left me with a deep and unmistakable unease. Not simply because of the scale of destruction already unleashed, but because of the pattern behind it—a pattern Bowen described with a clarity that is rare in public discourse. He wrote of decisions made on instinct rather than thought, of advisers who fall silent, of institutions bypassed, of consequences unimagined until they arrive. A war waged without strategy, without preparation, without humility.
As I read, I felt something shift inside me. The crisis Bowen described was not merely geopolitical. It was psychological. It was moral. It was a vivid example of what happens when power is exercised without inner order—when the people making decisions are governed not by reflection, but by impulse; not by imagination, but by grievance; not by humility, but by pride.
I am old enough now to recognise the pattern. We have seen versions of it before, though rarely in such concentrated form. To understand this moment—and to avoid despair—we have to step back, look at history, and then look deeper still, into the structure of human nature itself. This essay is my attempt to gather those fragments into a coherent whole.
Geopolitical analysis: when narrative meets reality and the façade cracks
1. The trap revealed by Bowen: war by instinct.
Bowen’s analysis makes something painfully clear: the United States has manoeuvred itself into a position where every exit is bad. The trap is visible, structural, and entirely predictable.
- Declare victory → hollow, transparent, strategically meaningless.
- Escalate → ground forces, amphibious landings, a long war of attrition Iran has spent decades preparing for.
- Negotiate → requires concessions neither side is psychologically ready to make.
This is the classic Clausewitzian nightmare: the political aim is undefined, so the military means expand to fill the vacuum. Force is used first, and only afterwards does anyone ask what it was meant to achieve.
And the trap is not hidden. There is no fog of war here. The impulsiveness, the misreading of Iran, the belief that a regime forged in the Iran–Iraq War would collapse like a fragile petro‑state — all of it was visible from the start.
Reality always arrives. And when it does, rhetoric collapses under its own weight.
2. A war without a plan—and the catastrophic misreading of Iran
Bowen shows that this war is being fought “from the bones”—from instinct, not from thought. There is no clearly defined political objective, no serious attempt to understand the adversary, no sense of the end state. Iran, meanwhile, has spent decades preparing for exactly this kind of confrontation: dispersing assets, hardening infrastructure, cultivating proxies, deep strategic patience, and turning geography itself into a weapon.
To expect such a state to fold quickly was not merely naïve. It was historically illiterate.
3. The credibility trap
Previous US administrations — Republican and Democrat — all reached the same conclusion: Iran could be contained, but not destroyed.
That consensus was not ideological. It was strategic realism.
Breaking with it was not boldness. It was hubris.
Now the United States faces the credibility trap:
- Back down → appear weak.
- Escalate → risk losing even more.
This is how great powers make decisions that, from the outside, look senseless — but from the inside feel inevitable.
4. Loyalty over competence: the silencing of truth
Bowen highlights a deeper structural flaw: the inner circle built for loyalty, not competence.
- No one contradicts the leader.
- No one challenges assumptions.
- No one risks telling the truth.
Silence becomes the culture. Deference becomes the norm. The system loses its ability to self‑correct.
You cannot run a country — let alone a war — on instinct and impulse. That is how rational states drift into irrational outcomes. The results can even be catastrophic.
5. The military instinct — and the need to restrain it
In 1962, the generals wanted to strike Cuba immediately. They were certain it would work. They were certain it was necessary. They were certain they could control the consequences.
Kennedy, having seen war firsthand, understood something they didn’t: military confidence is not strategic wisdom.
He knew:
- once force is unleashed, events outrun intentions
- the people who pay the price are never the ones in the room
- the role of a statesman is to restrain the military instinct, not amplify it
That kind of restraint — born of experience, humility, and imagination — is almost entirely absent today.
6. The loss of historical memory
This is one of the most dangerous elements of the present moment: the absence of lived historical memory in those making decisions.
Kennedy had the Pacific.
Eisenhower had Normandy.
Even Johnson, for all his flaws, had the shadow of Korea and the early Cold War.
They felt the cost of escalation in their bones. They had seen what happens when events slip beyond control—when mobilisation timetables, alliance commitments, pride and fear combine into a machinery no one can stop.
Kennedy had just read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August before the Cuban Missile Crisis. He understood how the First World War had not been chosen in a single moment, but assembled—step by step—by men who thought they were still in control. He was determined not to let history repeat itself.
He also did something almost unimaginable today: he kept Eisenhower in the loop. A sitting president, in the middle of the gravest crisis of the nuclear age, consulting his predecessor out of respect for his experience of war and world affairs. There was humility in that gesture, and a shared seriousness about history.
Today’s leadership class—across much of the West—has grown up in an era where war is something that happens on screens, not in their own lives. That distance breeds a kind of strategic carelessness. Decisions are made in a vacuum, without the visceral sense of consequence that shaped earlier statesmen.
When you don’t feel the weight of history, you repeat it.
Barbara Tuchman later called this pattern The March of Folly: the recurring human tendency to pursue policies that are clearly against one’s own interests, even as the evidence mounts. We are watching another chapter being written.
7. Suez, again — but this time with China watching
Bowen ends with a comparison to Suez — the moment Britain discovered the limits of its power and the beginning of its eclipse by the United States.
He suggests this war may be remembered as a similar inflection point in the US–China rivalry.
And the comparison is sobering if not chilling:
China has not fired a shot. It has not spent a dollar. It has not taken a risk.
Yet it stands to gain the most from a weakened, distracted, economically strained United States.
History is full of moments where the real victor is the one who stays out of the fight.
8. The trust deficit: diplomacy after a decapitation strike
Even if Iran negotiates, why would it trust the United States not to strike again?
The war began with a surprise decapitation strike. That kind of opening move destroys the foundation of diplomacy — the belief that agreements will be honoured.
Diplomacy without trust is not diplomacy. It is theatre.
9. The deeper question: belief or avoidance?
This is the question Bowen cannot answer, but which hangs over the entire crisis:
Does the US leadership genuinely believe it can still force a decisive outcome, or is this now about avoiding humiliation rather than achieving victory?
History suggests that when leaders cannot admit error, they double down. Not because they believe in the strategy, but because they cannot bear the alternative.
This is the essence of The March of Folly: the refusal to change course even when the evidence is overwhelming.
Bowen reminds us that previous US administrations — Republican and Democrat — all reached the same conclusion: Iran could be contained, but not destroyed.
That consensus wasn’t ideological. It was strategic realism.
Breaking with it wasn’t boldness. It was hubris.
And now the United States faces the credibility trap:
- If it backs down, it looks weak.
- If it escalates, it risks losing even more.
This is the logic that has pulled empires into ruin throughout history. From the outside, the decisions look senseless. From the inside, they feel inevitable.
10. Midgley: the human machinery behind folly
Philosopher Mary Midgley helps us see the human architecture beneath the crisis. She distinguishes between:
- Instigators, whose motives become unbalanced—ambition without humility, pride without restraint, certainty without doubt.
- Followers, who drift into complicity through lack—lack of imagination, lack of reflection, lack of moral courage.
Neither group is monstrous.
They are simply unbalanced or unthinking.
And when such people occupy positions of power, the consequences are predictable. The machinery of harm is built not from evil geniuses, but from ordinary human failings left unchecked.
11. Arendt: the thoughtlessness that enables harm
Hannah Arendt deepens the diagnosis. She observed that great harm is often done not by villains, but by people who have stopped thinking.
Thoughtlessness is not stupidity.
It is the failure to:
- imagine consequences
- see the humanity of others
- step outside one’s own narrow perspective
This is precisely what we are witnessing: decisions made without imagination, without proportion, without the ability to see beyond the immediate emotional impulse.
The danger is not only in what is done, but in what is not done: the questions not asked, the doubts not entertained, the alternatives not considered.
12. Augustine: evil as absence, not presence
St Augustine offers the most profound insight of all. For him, evil is not a force. It is a privation—an absence of something that should be there.
The crisis we face is not driven by some grand, coherent malevolence.
It is driven by lack:
- lack of humility
- lack of order
- lack of imagination
- lack of restraint
- lack of love for the common good
This is why the situation feels so unstable. We are watching the consequences of absence, not the presence of some dark genius.
13. Disordered loves: when virtues lose their balance
Augustine’s idea of disordered loves explains the moral architecture of this moment. Harm arises not from loving the wrong things, but from loving things in the wrong order.
When:
- pride outranks humility
- impulse outranks wisdom
- loyalty outranks truth
- victory outranks justice
- strength outranks restraint
the result is predictable: disorder, escalation, and folly.
Tuchman’s March of Folly and Augustine’s disordered loves are, in a sense, describing the same phenomenon from different angles: the way human beings, individually and collectively, let their priorities slip out of alignment until catastrophe becomes almost inevitable.
14. The restless heart: power without inner peace
Augustine’s “restless heart” describes the temperament behind the disorder.
A restless leader:
- cannot tolerate limits
- cannot sit with uncertainty
- cannot reflect
- cannot imagine consequences
Restlessness plus power = instability.
This is the psychological engine of the moment we are living through: a leadership class that cannot be still long enough to think, to read, to listen, to imagine. Action becomes a substitute for thought. Escalation becomes a substitute for strategy.
15. Humility: the ordering virtue
Humility is not weakness. It is the virtue that keeps all others in balance.
Without humility:
- ambition becomes domination
- instinct becomes recklessness
- confidence becomes arrogance
Humility is what allowed past leaders to step back, to imagine catastrophe, to restrain themselves. It is what allowed Kennedy to say “no” to his generals, and “yes” to history. Its absence now is what makes this moment so dangerous.
16. Hope: the refusal to let disorder win
And yet—we must not despair.
Hope, in Augustine’s sense, is not optimism. It is steadiness:
- the refusal to let fear dictate our actions
- the refusal to collapse into cynicism
- the refusal to let the world’s disorder become our own
Hope is the stance that allows us to see clearly without being crushed by what we see. It is not a prediction that things will turn out well. It is a decision to remain human, proportionate, and thoughtful even when they may not.
17. Courage: the quiet strength to remain human
Courage is not heroics. It is the daily refusal to be swept away by the world’s noise.
Courage is:
- thinking when others react
- imagining consequences when others refuse to
- staying humane when others harden
- remaining proportionate when others exaggerate
This is the courage that sustains hope. It is quiet, undramatic, often unnoticed—but it is the difference between drifting with the current and standing, however modestly, against it.
18. Presence: inner order made visible
When humility, hope, and courage come together, they create presence—the quiet steadiness that others feel.
Presence:
- calms
- steadies
- widens perspective
- restores proportion
Presence is influence without force. It is leadership without noise. It is the atmosphere created by a person whose inner life is ordered, even when the outer world is not.
19. Legacy: the quiet imprint of a steady life
Legacy is not achievement. It is the imprint your presence leaves on others:
- the steadiness you give them
- the clarity you offer
- the humanity you preserve
- the proportion you model
This is the legacy that matters—and the legacy that endures. Not the legacy of headlines or monuments, but the legacy of having lived in such a way that others, however few, saw more clearly and stood more steadily because you were there.
20. Conclusion: diagnosis as the first step toward healing
We are at a dangerous moment in history. But danger is not destiny.
By tracing the crisis back to its roots—to the absence of humility, imagination, and thought—we recover the possibility of healing. Because if the crisis is rooted in human nature, then the remedy is too.
Humility, imagination, courage, presence—these are not abstract ideals.
They are lived virtues.
And they are still possible, even now.
Especially now.