The delusion of easy victory from the air may have seduced the US into another war

Air superiority is supposed to deliver a quick triumph. But history has shown that promise to be written on the windMiddle East crisis – live updatesTo explore the roots of Donald Trump’s Iran military strategy and the pugilistic rhetoric of his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, means looking back 105 years. In 1921, a year before Benito Mussolini and his blackshirts marched on Rome to launch the Fascist era, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, proposing a revolution in warfare.Victory in the future, he said, would no longer come from the grinding trench combat of the Great War. Instead it meant large-scale aerial bombardments, targeting not just combatants but civilians and civilian infrastructure and logistics. Continue reading...