Iran and the New Rules of Global Power: The Making and Unmaking of American Dominance

Foreign Affairs | Robert A. Pape

The Iranian Shahed-136 drone exemplifies a profound shift in global warfare, where cheap, commercially sourced components now allow weaker actors to bypass traditional military barriers and challenge superior powers. This technological diffusion has effectively dismantled the absolute escalation dominance that the United States enjoyed following its decisive victory in the 1991 Gulf War.

During the post-Cold War era, Washington's military preeminence rested on exclusive access to advanced semiconductor, satellite, and sensor ecosystems. However, decades of rapid globalization have transformed these once-scarce defense assets into mass-market civilian commodities, drastically lowering the cost of precision guidance. Consequently, adversaries can now assemble highly effective precision weapons using off-the-shelf electronics purchased through standard commercial supply chains. This shift exposes critical vulnerabilities in maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, driving up the systemic costs of protecting global commerce and ushering in a highly volatile international order.

Comment

The reliance of the Shahed-136 drone on commercial-off-the-shelf microelectronics exposes the structural limits of multilateral export control regimes like the Wassenaar Arrangement. By integrating civilian-grade satellite navigation receivers and silicon-based inertial sensors, these low-cost platforms bypass the specialized industrial bottlenecks that historically restricted precision-strike capabilities to major powers. This commercialisation of guidance systems means that saturation attacks can now be sustained indefinitely by middle powers against sophisticated air defence networks.

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