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

Foreign Affairs | Robert A. Pape

The United States military faces severe limitations in the Strait of Hormuz as the global democratization of precision warfare technology enables adversaries like Iran to disrupt maritime commerce at low cost. This technological shift dismantles the post-Cold War era of American unipolarity, allowing weaker actors to challenge Washington's escalation dominance.

Historically, the 1991 Gulf War established a paradigm of absolute U.S. preeminence, where the rapid defeat of Iraq's massive conventional forces convinced global markets and rivals that resistance was futile. However, three decades of globalization transformed once-exclusive military capabilities into cheap, commercially accessible components, allowing the assembly of precision weapons like the Iranian Shahed-136 drone from civilian supply chains. Consequently, the collapse of barriers between military and civilian technologies has permanently eroded the strategic foundations of international stability, ushering in a highly volatile era characterized by frequent crises, rising costs for protecting global commerce, and intensifying competition over critical maritime chokepoints.

Comment

The proliferation of the Shahed-136 loitering munition demonstrates how commercial off-the-shelf microelectronics have democratised precision strike capabilities. By integrating consumer-grade GPS receivers and civilian-market processors, such platforms bypass traditional export control regimes like the Missile Technology Control Regime. This reliance on globalised semiconductor supply chains allows secondary powers to mass-produce asymmetric denial weapons without possessing a domestic military-industrial base. Consequently, the technological barrier to entry for precision interdiction has collapsed, neutralising the qualitative advantages historically held by Western naval forces in contested littoral zones.

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