Michael A. Cohen: "There Is an Inherent Bias Toward Exaggerating the Benefits of Using Military Force"

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Gist with Mike Pesca

Episode: Michael A. Cohen: "There Is an Inherent Bias Toward Exaggerating the Benefits of Using Military Force"
Date: June 22, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Michael A. Cohen, Non-Resident Fellow, Stimson Center

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Gist features a thought-provoking conversation between host Mike Pesca and Michael A. Cohen of Tufts University and the Stimson Center. The discussion centers on Cohen’s recent research project, "Is War Worth It?", which analyzes the strategic, political, and human costs versus the benefits of U.S. military interventions—focusing specifically on the U.S.-Iran war and drawing parallels to other recent conflicts. Cohen unpacks the cognitive biases that often lead policymakers to overestimate the efficacy of military force, and together with Pesca, interrogates how poorly defined goals, lack of preparation, and insufficient public engagement undercut both recent and historical U.S. wars.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Initial Framing: The Iran "Investment"

• Pesca examines recent headlines about $300 billion reportedly going to Iran—which, upon closer inspection, appears exaggerated and largely coming (if at all) from Gulf States rather than the U.S. ([01:03]-[03:56]).
• Key Point: Even indirect support or business with Iran, especially for oil, is problematic since money and oil are fungible commodities potentially funding terrorism or nuclear advancements ([03:56]).

Quote:
"What I'm saying is the $300 billion, all the money going to Iran, quite bad. But it does show what an excellent investment Iran made in provoking the US into attack."
—Mike Pesca ([04:17])

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2. Research Purpose: Inherent Bias in Assessing War

• Cohen describes the motivation behind his study: policymakers and the public systematically overstate the positives and understate the full spectrum of costs involved in using military force ([16:11]).

Quote:
"There is this inherent bias... particularly policymakers. There’s a bias toward exaggerating the benefits of using military force... and minimizing or disregarding the costs—not just direct costs, but second and third order effects..."
—Michael A. Cohen ([16:13])

• Second/Third Order Effects Example: The closure of the Straits of Hormuz and consequent global economic fallout.

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3. Case Study Comparisons: Venezuela & Iran

Venezuela Operation

• Limited Benefits, Significant Costs:
  • The U.S. removal of Maduro yielded minor direct benefits.
  • Backlash: Decreased trust in the U.S. among Latin American countries, stronger China/EU ties in the region ([18:12]-[19:18]).
• Hubris Post-Venezuela: The ease of Venezuela's operation may have led to overconfidence, influencing the subsequent, more fraught Iran intervention ([16:59]).

Iran War Assessment

• Immediate and Predictable Consequences:
  • The closure of the Strait of Hormuz was a foreseeable outcome, yet not sufficiently planned for by the administration ([21:56]-[24:14]).
• Objectives vs. Outcomes:
  • Official objectives: Destroy nuclear, missile, and naval capacity; weaken terrorist proxies ([25:09]).
  • Reality: Nuclear program only partially damaged (“much of [that] goal achieved last year with Israeli strikes”), missile capabilities largely intact (Iran retains 70% capacity), naval destruction deemed strategically unimportant, and proxy groups already weakened by Israeli action ([26:59]-[27:35]).
• Missed Opportunity:
  • Cohen suggests the war might have been avoided altogether had the U.S. not withdrawn from the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018 ([27:58]).

Quote:
"If we hadn’t pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018... we would never had to go to war in the first place."
—Michael A. Cohen ([27:58])

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4. Was the War Executed as Well as Possible?

• Pesca and Cohen examine whether an improved, more competently executed Iran war could have led to a different outcome, highlighting failures in preparation (e.g., not restocking the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, lack of demining preparation) ([23:25]-[24:37]).
• Cohen counters that even a “perfect” execution wouldn't have made the objectives worth the enormous costs ([24:47]).

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5. The Ripple Effects: China and Global Perception

• China’s Takeaways:
  • Debated whether the Iran war's outcome would intimidate or embolden China regarding Taiwan.
  • Cohen’s view: China likely draws less direct inspiration from U.S. military operations, but notes that U.S. depletion of munitions and exposure of economic vulnerabilities might shift the strategic calculus ([35:04]-[39:43]).

Notable Dialogue:
"They could read this and they could say, boy, if we closed off shipping in the South China Sea, we'd have huge leverage over the U.S..."
—Michael A. Cohen ([36:45])
"With great powers, isn't madman [strategy] worse than predictable, stalwart...?”
—Mike Pesca ([38:27])

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6. The Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon Dimension

• Israel, in response to Hezbollah attacks, escalated beyond U.S. support parameters, straining the alliance ([40:37]-[44:46]).
• U.S. pressured Netanyahu to scale back in Lebanon; Cohen sees this as a failure of alliance management and strategic calibration on Israel's part ([44:06]).

Quote:
"This is just poor alliance relations, alliance management by Netanyahu. And it's hurt Israel, it's hurt their ability to use force as they want to, and it's hurt their relationship with the United States, who is... their single most important ally in the world."
—Michael A. Cohen ([45:30])

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7. Broader Lessons: Patterns Across U.S. Wars

• Inherent War Bias: U.S. culture and government often overestimate what can be achieved through force, underplaying costs and indirect effects ([16:11], [45:46]).
• Public Support Matters: Wars where leaders get ahead of public opinion or fail to engage the public tend to be strategic failures (i.e., Vietnam, Iraq, World War I, and now Iran) ([50:08]-[52:50]).
• Historian Perspective: Successful interventions tend to have:
  • Limited, clear objectives (e.g., Gulf War, Grenada)
  • Consensus on necessity (World War II as the exception)
  • Fewer unintended long-term costs

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On War Optimism Bias:
  "There is an inherent bias toward exaggerating the benefits of using military force."
  —Michael A. Cohen ([16:13])

• On Iran’s Investment:
  "Iran made one of the savviest moves by not listening to the US... The United States has in fact shown that we will reward you... for just not losing to us."
  —Mike Pesca ([04:17])

• On War Objectives:
  "None of these objectives were all that important and there were a lot better, easier ways to achieve them."
  —Michael A. Cohen ([27:42])

• On Strategic Failures:
  "The wars that are unsuccessful... are when presidents and policymakers get ahead of public opinion."
  —Michael A. Cohen ([51:49])

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• Breaking Down the "$300 Billion to Iran" Narrative: [01:03]-[04:17]
• Introduction of the "Is War Worth It?" Research Project: [16:11]-[18:06]
• Assessment of Venezuela Operation: [18:06]-[21:35]
• Assessment of Iran War Objectives & Outcomes: [24:37]-[29:11]
• Strategic Lessons for China and US Power Projection: [35:04]-[39:43]
• Israel, Hezbollah, and Failure of Alliance Management: [40:37]-[45:46]
• War Optimism Bias and Historical Patterns: [45:46]-[52:50]

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Tone and Language

The conversation is candid, incisive, and often laced with Pesca’s dry wit and Cohen’s academic precision. Both speaker's willingness to critique conventional wisdom and scrutinize their own conclusions creates a space for nuanced, evidence-based debate, free from partisan dogma.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rigorous, multidimensional analysis of how cognitive biases, poor strategic planning, and failure to anticipate secondary effects can doom military interventions—drawing cautionary lessons from Iran, Venezuela, and U.S. military history. Michael A. Cohen’s research challenges listeners and leaders alike to weigh the true costs and benefits—beyond simplistic, optimistic justifications—before embarking on or supporting wars. Pesca’s probing questions elicit sharp, accessible insights into why so many American wars have failed to live up to their ambitions.

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For a deeper dive, access the full transcript or follow more of Michael A. Cohen’s work in his books and columns.

Transcript

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[Mike Pesca]

It's Monday, June 22, 2026 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Remember the jcpoa, the Obama deal that Trump didn't like so much that he tore it up? Remember the pallets of money? Big visual images. Trump's good at that. The pallets of money on the plane and how they got $1.5 billion with those pallets of money. And there was even more after the sanctions were loosened. They maybe got 50 billion DOL dollars and Trump criticized this. And Trump talked about how these funds were used to give terrorists money to do their terrorism. And you know what? These were, these were good points. And I'm not just saying it now in retrospect, to do the little okie doke, whoopsie, do that. I'm about to do that. You know is coming. I said it at the time. These were good points. You give them so much money, front loaded money. It was definitely the downside to the deal. They use this money to do bad things in the region. Well, if those were good points, that $1.5 billion was bad to give to murderous mullahs in a regime bent on the destruction of US and that other country in the Middle east that we don't like to talk about too much. We want to be popular domestically. Those were good points. Then what do you do with the $300 billion that Iran will now be getting? Well, there are a couple of thoughts on it. Here's one. As exemplified by by Charlie Sykes on his show. To the contrary. His guest was Ed Loose.

[Guest Analyst]

It could be when. When we get into detail and I, you know, they know the details. I think this was a headline number that the Iranians requested, and they called it an investment vehicle, which is reparations by any other name.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Yeah, that war is going to kill them.

[Guest Analyst]

Reparations are pretty bad word. And it does imply you are the defeated power. I mean, obviously, the United States isn't militarily defeated, but by the fact that, by virtue of the fact that Iran is still standing, the US has been strategically defeated. A lot of this money, I suspect, will be sort of Wyckoff Kushner arranged Saudi Qatari Emirati deals to invest in oil production in Iran and attempt through that method having failed with the stick, but with the carrot to bind the Iranian regime into being slightly less badly behaved. Terrorism sponsoring, you know, evil regime. Okay.

[Mike Pesca]

It seems now that the 300 billion will not be coming from the United States. So that's good. It's not a reparation. But if it comes at all, were to come at all, as it's supposed to be, from the Gulf states to the murderous mullahs in Iran who are still trying to build conventional weapons as an umbrella for their nuclear weapons, they.

[Commercial Announcer]

That's bad.

[Mike Pesca]

Just as the $50 billion that they got in sanctions relief and the $1.5 billion was bad. I don't know. You could even make the case that it's 200 times as bad, less inflation. The only thing stopping this from being bad, and this is Lindsey Graham's take on the 300 bill. At first he was like, I can't believe we're giving them money. It's like the Marshall Plan while Hitler was in power. That's a good point. It was a good point then, and I'm not just saying it was a good point then, to do the okie doke turnaround that you know, I'm going to do. But Lindsey Graham now says, well, the 300 billion doesn't exactly come from us, so that's okay. But also the saving grace of this 300 billion is Iran's going to violate the deal, so we're not going to give it to them, but just to put it on paper or to set it in action or to tell the Gulf states, yeah, you might want to be doing business with Iran, even if it's for oil production. By the way, oil and money, both fungible commodities. You give them money for oil production, they can offset the spending on terrorism and nuclear pursuit. But also if you give the money for oil production, they'll produce oil and make money and use that for terrorism and the pursuit of nuclear. So what I'm saying is the $300 billion, all the money going to Iran, quite bad. But it does show that what an excellent investment Iran made in provoking the US into attack. Wow, that is a great business strategy. Sure, some of the founders of the old business aren't around to see the riches, but the next generation is. Iran made one of the savviest moves by not listening to the US not listening to the international community, pursuing illegally under international law, nuclear weapons, getting hit, getting bombed, having their facilities set back, having their current leaders or then current leaders killed, but just not giving up in a fight with the United States. The United States has in fact shown that we will reward you. Sure, through intermediaries and cutouts, we will reward you quite handsomely for just not losing to us or not even losing to us in a timely manner. Excellent job everyone involved in, in all of these decisions on the show today. We're going to stick with this. We have Michael Cohen of Tufts University on the show, Michael A. Cohen, and he has written along with colleagues the big assessment that we want to ask that he's been asking about other wars. Was the Iran war worth it? All right, it might seem like a leading question if you just get to the binary of yes or no. Let us consider the question something along the lines of were there any ways the Iran war was worth it? And if not, how not worth it was it? Michael A. Cohen, up next. I've been working on creating a more peaceful nighttime routine for deeper sleep. That is until my two puppies come and they live in my room. Anyway, the biggest upgrade or the puppy defense fund wasn't aromatherapy. 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True work built like it matters, because it does. Well, I'm going to take you on a roller coaster ride of expectation and excitement when I tell you that for the first time ever, Will Smith and Michael Cohen have combined on a project. Okay, it's not the actor, it's not the Trump fixer, but here's the roller coaster. It's getting more exciting because it's the researcher and the non resident fellow of the Stimson center and they have combined to issue a report answering the question is the Iran War worth it? Weighing the costs and benefits of the US decision to go to war. We're going to talk to Michael A. Cohen as we have many times in the past. We're going to talk about this, not just this report, by the way. You might know the answer, you might intuit the answer, but we're going to talk about this overall act of assessing conflict as they occur or even afterwards because we got to learn from our mistakes or and this is my big thing, recognize that some of the things we thought were mistakes might be successes. Michael A. Cohen, welcome back to the gist.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Great to be here, Mike, Always a pleasure.

[Mike Pesca]

You, you got it. And thanks for bearing with me as I made the inevitable Michael Cohen and Will Smith.

[Michael A. Cohen]

I'm sort of used to it by now actually at this point.

[Commercial Announcer]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Is that why you combined is of all the researchers, you're like, I'll take Will Smith. Rosie Perez was also available. She's a graduate student at Tufts.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Let me give a shout out to Will. He's a researcher at Simpson Center. He put an enormous amount of work into this, into this paper and you know, he deserved to have co authorship of it. So I give him a big shout out a lot. Could not have done this without his, his incredible assistance.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes, yes. Also punch Chris Rock at the, at the Oscars and hit. I mean I look in the World Series. So it's all about.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Exactly I said this look, you know, for all whatever his. What do you do with research he did at that home run against the, against the Blue Jays.

[Mike Pesca]

So yeah, you know, so the Simpson center and some of the stuff that you do at the Stimson Center. This isn't a one off, right? You look at this and you look at this with some amount of rigor. Tell me the value of this beyond what I just said. Learning from history.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Well, yeah. So we base out of this project a few months ago and it's called is War Worth It? It's a pretty simple question, but it's a complicated answer. And part of the reason we did this is because there is this inherent bias in the way that people think about the use of military force, particularly policymakers. There's a bias toward exaggerating the benefits of using military force, exaggerating the impact that war will have or the positive impact war will have, and then also minimizing or disregarding the costs. And I don't mean just the direct cost, but I'm talking about the indirect costs, the second and third order effects of using military force. And it's hard to think of a better example of that than then the Iran war in which the second and third order effect of going to war against Iran was the closure of the Straits of Hormuz, which has had this cascading effect on the, not just the US economy, but the global economy and just a host of various economic sectors. So that's really kind of what the idea is here, is to sort of give a sense of, when we're talking about war, we really want to ask the question what are the benefits, right? Even if you achieve the benefits, are they worth it? Are they beneficial to your country? And then what are the costs? And again, not just the ones, the immediate costs of loss of life or you know, whatever money the Pentagon spends on bombs, but the second and third order effects. And that's what we're trying to do here. Just for the record, we did one on Venezuela when that happened about back in January. And one of our, actually one of our conclusions was one of the potential costs or risks of that decision to go to war was that it might infuse the President and the those around him with a sense of hubris about the efficacy of using military force. And arguably that is a lot of what led to he was going to war against Iran. The belief that, oh, we were successful in Venezuela, we can be successful in Iran. It hasn't quite worked out the same way.

[Mike Pesca]

By the way, what'd you find out about Venezuela? Were they successful in Venezuela according to your assessment?

[Michael A. Cohen]

So the benefits are pretty minor.

[Mike Pesca]

Hubris aside.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Hubris aside, the benefits of the operation are pretty minor, pretty hard to argue they really benefited US national interests, but the costs have actually been pretty severe. Put aside the hubris part of it, one of the rationales for seizing Maduro and decapitating the leadership in Venezuela was, oh, this is going to send a message to the Chinese and the Russians and other folks that want to play a more active role in Latin America. Well, guess what's happened in the three or four months since that operation. A lot of Latin American countries have said, well, we can't trust the US Anymore. They're a rogue state. They just do whatever the hell they want to do. And it's actually led to increased economic ties between a number of Latin American countries and China and the EU and others. So it's had a real backlash effect, which again, is something this administration just didn't think much about when they went to war in the first place. Or I should say that's when they seized Maduro in the first place.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. I am not here to argue your conclusions on Venezuela, especially Chinese involvement, EU involvement with Latin American countries seems fine by me. But, you know, there's been reporting that in Venezuela, US Oil companies are now set to drill. And if some more of that money goes to, not just to the people of Venezuela and trickles down from the once unbelievably corrupt Maduro regime, sure, his predecessors were part of that regime, but they're now in. They're now partners with the United States. But if some of that oil actually goes into the world markets and is part of Exxon, a US Company, and so forth, that's some good that came out of it. And of course, there was actual costs, but not the cost of lives of executing that. And the third thing is I think that it's pretty good. Good if we put a foreign malefactor who is probably violate, certainly violating international standards of humanitarian decency, if not committing war crimes, if we put such a person on notice and then can effectuate an arrest, that bolsters our credibility a little bit. These are factors I don't know.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Well, look, I mean, there's a flip side to that because the credibility sense, we've actually undermined our credibility in Latin America with a lot of potential allies in Latin America. And it has driven a lot of these countries to view the US Very warily and sort of be concerned about what the US Is doing. And just one example has really sort of hastened stronger economic ties between Latin American countries, mainly in South America with the eu. So whatever benefit you can point to, and I think the benefits you talked about, they exist, but they're probably not that significant, I think are outweighed by the cost. But again, this is a question. Look, this is actually a good conversation to have because this is exactly why we did this project. We want to weigh those questions. We want to weigh the issue of, like, is this benefit that you point to about, you know, increasing oil production in Venezuela, does that outweigh these other costs? And that's really what we're trying to do here is say, okay, you have to look at this thing in the totality and say, here's one side of the ledger, here's the other side of the ledger. Now you can sort of make a better decision about whether this was a good idea to go to war.

[Guest Analyst]

Right?

[Mike Pesca]

So on to Iran, where you talked about the second order effect of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, which is affecting oil markets worldwide and consumers. But, you know, it's so close. It is technically a second order effect, but it's so close and so inevitable. I almost think of it as first and a half order effect.

[Michael A. Cohen]

You mean the closure of the, of the straits?

[Mike Pesca]

Of course it was going to happen.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Well, now, that's an interesting argument because it's pretty clear that the administration did not prepare for that likelihood. You know, there were warnings for a very long time that this could happen if Iran did this, the administration didn't prepare for it. But one of the points we would make is you do need to prepare for these things. You do need to consider this. In other words, what objectives are you trying to achieve? Are they vital to US national security interests? We argue they're not really that vital. The objectives that we sought to achieve, which we have not achieved, by the way, um, but that those, those were not worth the potential costs. And if you don't think about those potential costs, then you're not really getting a full idea whether this war is a good idea. And I, I'm only disagreeing with you. I think the argument would be, okay, so we go to war, we stop Iran from having missile production, we annihilate their navy. You know, these were the objectives stated by the administration. We gave her the nuclear program, although it was supposedly already obliterated last year. Right. Is that worth it? If Iran closed off the Straits of Hormuz, which is what actually ended up happening, and I would argue that the cost that we have paid, the cost, not just economic costs, but the cost of global economy. The costs, reputational costs, diplomatic costs. Our conclusions is they more than outweigh any potential benefit which we got from actually fighting the war. Which in our view those benefits are marginal at best.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, yes, of course you have to anticipate inevitable reactions to your action. And so I think that it may be a little bit difficult to accurately assess if a well executed Iran war was worth it versus this Iran war beyond not really anticipating too well the Straits of Hormuz. I mean, you get into a situation where Trump says everything in its opposite and he has both affirmed and denied that this was on the table or presented to him. How could it not be? But there are other factors. Like he didn't he the United States government made no real efforts to restock our Strategic Petroleum Reserve beforehand. They made no efforts to train and equipped the Navy with demining the straits.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Yes, right.

[Mike Pesca]

These are things that if you were going to take this action, and I suppose it was on the table since the bombing in June, since taking Venezuela, it's unfathomable not to have taken these actions. And so that is the question, are you assessing this war or are you assessing a version of this war which was executed more competently?

[Michael A. Cohen]

So that's a great question. And I mean, you know, the way that we did this was we said, okay, what is the administration? What are they saying are the objectives?

[Mike Pesca]

That's another problem, isn't it? Right. They made a terrible case for the war. If you listen to some of their proxies, you take an Elliot Cohen, you take other people who by the way, Cohen since turned around or at least he's clear eyed that agreeing with you, it's not working. Maybe there are better arguments than the silly ones that Trump put forward or truth forward and that Hegseth did. But I interrupted you. Go ahead.

[Michael A. Cohen]

No, no, it's really, this is, I think part of the issue. So we went back and we looked at what did the President say about the war, what his objectives were. Right. And it's as you said, it's tricky because there's lots of different explanations. But the four that were clearly stated and are still up on the Pentagon website are to basically destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure, destroy its missile capabilities and missile production, annihilate its navy and prevent it from supporting its terrorist proxies in the region. I will just mention there was a fifth one, which is to stop Iran from providing IEDs to harm American combat troops, which seems to have been taken out of a George bush speech from 2007 because we obviously haven't had combat troops in Iraq for say 15 years. The other one that was not really an objective but a hoped for outcome was regime change. The administration talked a lot about regime change, at least Trump did. But they did not say this was objective of the war. They just said it was a hoped for outcome. And I do think that President believed that when the Israelis killed the Ayatollah, this would lead to a change in leadership in Iran. The exact opposite has happened. The Iranian regime actually is in some ways stronger than it was before the war. But just to go back to those objectives, were those objectives, first of all, were they worth. Was the juice, worth the squeeze? Okay, that's the first question. And the second question is, were there other ways to achieve those objectives? So the nuclear thing, for example, Trump has said repeatedly, we obliterated Iran's nuclear program program in June. By the way, that's not completely true. It's not totally inaccurate either. We did a lot of damage with the Israelis to the Iran nuclear program. And in fact, very little of our bombings since the war began in February have have been aimed at the nuclear program. Right.

[Mike Pesca]

We don't target them. Right.

[Michael A. Cohen]

We really haven't targeted them very much on the missile stuff. You know, we've targeted their missile production. And yet Iran maintains 70% of its missile capabilities. Okay, that suggest it was not successful. Did we annihilate the Iranian navy? We did some significant damage to it. We really destroyed a great many of their naval assets. Did not stop Iran from shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. And I would argue that annihilating Iran's navy is at marginal importance to the United States. Doesn't really matter all that much. Their navy is not how they can

[Mike Pesca]

mean to the end. If you told me beforehand, hey, Iran's navy is now wiped off the chessboard. I would say something like, okay, how does that advance our interests? Not exactly. That's one of our interests. Right.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Mike, I wish you had been inside the halls of power to ask that question, because if you had, no one could have answered it properly. It doesn't really do much to make Americans safer. Right. And then the fifth one, as far as the terrorist proxies, look, in all honesty, Israel has done a lot of that work over the past two and a half years. They've weakened Hamas, they've weakened Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, who were big, who were Iranian proxies, basically sat this war out for the most part. So, you know, from our perspective, like, none of these objectives were all that important, and there were a lot better, easier ways to achieve them. I mean, we don't mention this report, but we probably should maybe mentioned in passing if we hadn't pulled out of the nuclear Iran nuclear deal in 2018, which Trump did, we would never had to go to war in the first place. That would have significantly curtailed Iran's nuclear infrastructure. So even if you argue this war could have been fought perfectly, our argument is that none of these objectives were all that important and were worth it. And now look at what's, look where we are now, right? We have a ceasefire extension that they're negotiating between Iran and the US what is the one concession that Iran is being asked to make? Does it have anything to do with the four objectives we laid out beginning of the war?

[Mike Pesca]

No, no, nothing to go back to the status quo.

[Michael A. Cohen]

It's to go back to the status quo. Exactly. It's to open the Strait of Hormuz.

[Mike Pesca]

You don't think that ridding Iran of the capacity to make a nuclear weapon is unbelievably important to the United States and the world's interest?

[Michael A. Cohen]

Absolutely, it's important. I'm, I'm a, you know, so that

[Mike Pesca]

was one of the objectives. Right. And you said they weren't that important to the US Interest.

[Michael A. Cohen]

No, because they weren't that. Well, let me restate that then. To be clear, we achieved much of that goal last year when the Israel and the US Attacked Iran. Second, I would argue that if you really want to, and by the way, to a point made earlier, we haven't really done much to attack their nuclear infrastructure. Right. They still have their high lineage uranium. Right. If this war had been predicated on the idea that we're going to go in there, we're going to seize their nuclear material, I may have different perspective on this, but we didn't do that. We have barely focused at all on their nuclear material. And I would argue that diplomacy has shown itself to be a much more effective way to curtail the Iranians nuclear ambitions than going to war. Here's the other parts I want to mention. This is sort of important. By killing the Ayatollah. Now, I know this may seem hard to believe. He was not the most hard liner element inside the Iranian regime. Those around him were much more hardline and now have been empowered by this. And in fact, he was, I think, generally skeptical about the need to go forward with building a nuclear weapon. What this has done, this war has done by basically removing him is it's empowered those in the regime who are pro nuclearization, who do think it makes sense to do this. So if anything, it's changed the calculation in Iran about the efficacy of building nuclear weapons and also empowered those who actually do want to move forward in building a nuclear bomb. So from that perspective, it's kind of, it's worked against us.

[Mike Pesca]

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[Mike Pesca]

And we're back with Michael A. Cohen to answer that question. How much was the Iran war? Not worth it. Let us now take into account this next dimension. You know, one of the arguments for people who is saying this Iran war is mostly a disaster is that China is now looking at how we wage war and taking notes and gaining an upper hand. But I remember listening to a few learned academics and military men saying China is looking at this and perhaps getting intimidated because the United States, even if it only sunk the Iranian navy and reduced the missile stocks by 30%, let's say it still has massive amounts of power, which we knew on paper, but now we're seeing it kinetically in the field. And that's not nothing because we quote, unquote knew the Russian army had a massive amount of power. But when we saw it in the field in Ukraine, it was a disaster. So at least we're showing the world that there is a close correlation between the purported power of the United States and the actual power. And if we're not undertaking foolhardy missions, it would seem this is the argument that a China, a Russia, certainly, but a China might say, ah, our efforts to take Taiwan will be met with some serious and furious force. What do you think of that?

[Michael A. Cohen]

So, okay, let me say the outset. I've always been very skeptical that the Chinese ever intend to invade Taiwan for a variety of reasons because they read

[Mike Pesca]

the is war worth it?

[Michael A. Cohen]

Well, if they did read the is worth it, they would know that it probably isn't, isn't going to be worth it for them. My basic reason for this is I think people overestimate how difficult it is to invade Taiwan. This would be the most ambitious amphibious operation pretty much in world history since evolution. Yeah, yeah, right. Since the boat was created. Right. So I think people underestimate that. I think they underestimate the enormous economic cost it would, it would put on China. I just have never really bought this notion that they're going to invade Taiwan. Now, would they try to put pressure on Taiwan in a way that would try to wring certain concessions out of them, particularly if Taiwan ever tried to declare independence. Sure, I can see that happening and I don't really. I guess I'm going to push back on. What you said about this sends a message to the Chinese. You can read this two ways because to me, the message that the Chinese could certainly Take away from this, and by the way, this is a lot of literature on this in the political science world that, like, the messages that we think are translated to, transmitted to other countries are not the ones that are often transmitted. Just so we're clear. Like, it's not a one to one kind of a thing. They could read this and they could say, boy, if we closed off shipping in the South China Sea, we'd have huge leverage over the U.S. in other words, the U.S. will basically back down if we can do things that will affect them, their economy. Okay, that's one takeaway they could have. The other takeaway, and this is a direct one, is that we have basically whittled down our stocks of munitions. We do not have enough, I think, interceptors and certain kinds of missiles. We won't be able to produce them for at least two or three years. If the Chinese wanted to mess with Taiwan tomorrow, there's not a ton we could do to stop them in the way that we could have before the Iran war. So I'm not saying China's gonna do that, but I think they could look at this and they could say we have actually a little more leverage on Taiwan than we did before because of this war. But I think in general, I don't know that the Chinese are really looking at this and making their decisions based on what we did in Iran. They're making their own decisions based on their own analysis of their interests and of what they think the US Will do if they invade Taiwan or threaten Taiwan. I mean, if I were the Chinese right now, I would look at this administration and I would say this president probably is not gonna aggressively respond if they go do something with Taiwan. But, you know, that hasn't led them to do anything so far. And who knows if they ever will? I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say, that I'm skeptical or I'm just dubious of this idea that you can draw too much of a conclusion for other areas, other places in the world, based on what the US did here. I mean, the one conclusion you can draw is that the U.S. that this president is impulsive and doesn't think through his actions. And that, look, there's a certain, there's a madman theory out there. I'm sure you've heard this, that applied to Dixon. It says, this guy's nuts. We don't want to get involved. We don't know what he's going to do. So maybe that works to the administration benefit, but that's a difficult thing. To calibrate, to put it mildly.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah. I think it's mostly a post hoc rationalization of not thinking things out beforehand.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

But you know, Trump himself prides himself on his unpredictability. And with places like Taiwan, that is not good for deterrence. Predictability would be better for deterrence. On the unpredictability guy 100 it's maybe good for deterrence if you're a wannabe tin pot dictator in our hemisphere who might say, I don't know, he might pull a Venezuela on us, or maybe I could position myself as a Delsey Rodriguez. But with big, major great powers, isn't madman worse than predictable, stalwart mad Men?

[Michael A. Cohen]

Mad Men is the kind of thing where it's not a good theory. I mean, it's a theory that, that works every time until it doesn't. And when it doesn't, things can go very, very. So I don't love that as a, as a, as a theory of international affairs. I'll just say in general. I mean, the one thing if I'm the Chinese, I might take away from this is that the pressure points on the economic, pressure points on the US Are real and are ones that China could theoretically push in order to, you know, get what they want from the United States. I'm still unconvinced China wants to do that, that they're going to undermine their economic relationship with the US and the rest of the world by going to war with Taiwan. But, but, you know, I think they could certainly, if they decided to do it, that is one thing they could take away from this particular conflict.

[Mike Pesca]

So there are wars within this war. And one is there's wars within a war within a war in that Hezbollah is a proxy state and they have essentially taken over Lebanon, though they've receded. And Israel is now fighting a kinetic war with Hezbollah on behalf of. Well, not Hezbollah is fighting on behalf of Iran. Iran is now linking negotiations to the Israel Hezbollah side or front, if you want to consider it that way. What are we to make of what the United States has done? Consider it a failure, if you will, for the prospects of either defeating Hezbollah or Israel achieving some sort of safety regarding its northern border. Or is this just a war that's going to go on forever? And sometimes Hezbollah gets a little bit stronger, sometimes Hezbollah gets a little bit weaker, but Iran's going to have to deal with them for years to come?

[Michael A. Cohen]

Look, I think there's two, there's sort of two parts to this argument. I think the Israelis were well within their rights and responsibilities, frankly, to respond when Hezbollah attacked them. This is a particular pet peeve of mine. Since October 7th, the Israel and Hezbollah have been basically two separate kind of wars. Both of them were initiated by Hezbollah. October 8th, they began shelling civilian targets randomly in northern Israel, leading to a mass evacuation of Israelis. The Israelis did not respond in real force until a few months later. When they did, they did a lot of damage to Hezbollah. They killed the leader, wiped out a great. The beeper attack, wiped out a great many of its fighters. And then this war, also Hezbollah initiated this, this war. They, you know, at a sympathy or affinity with the Iranians, with their supporters, they attacked Israel again. So I think Israel is right within the rights to attack. The problem with the Israelis is they really have pushed this too far. And in particular, what they've done put aside whether whatever the right and wrong question is, Netanyahu and the Israeli government gotten so far beyond what the US Government's willing to support. Right. Which is why you had this incident last week where allegedly Trump called up Netanyahu and yelled at him and said, stop fighting in Lebanon. Everybody hates you. Which is sort of true, actually. And that's just in the US but also it seems everybody hates.

[Mike Pesca]

Israel's already priced that in, I think.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Right. But I mean, but it's. But for the war, for what it's worth, that's also true in Israel because of the war. Right. I mean, Netanyahu's popularity has declined in Israel and he's in danger of losing the election when it comes in October, if not sooner. So my issue is that the Israelis have not calibrated this use of force smartly. Right? They have. They went, they went beyond just attacking targets with airstrikes. They invaded, they put troops on the ground. They've continued the war trying to wipe out Hezbollah, and in the process, they have pissed off the US and they've gotten ahead of what the US this administration, which is a very supportive of Israel, they've gotten ahead of what Trump is willing to support. That's a mistake. And that suggests, like, that you have lost control of your own military operations because it's dependent on this superpower who is not dependable and is not going to back you up 100%. Not to mention the fact that the war has further eroded Israel's domestic support in the US Eroded their support among Democrats. And, you know, if a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, and I don't think Bibi will be prime minister then, but any Israelite prime minister is going to deal with a Democratic party that is not friendly toward Israel. And that is partly because of the war in Gaza, partly because of the ridiculous anti Semitic attacks against Israel, because of what happened in Gaza, but also somewhat Israel's behavior. But certainly this war and the fact that there's no question that the Israeli government, let's say, pushed the US into going to war. You know, I reject this notion that this is a war fought on behalf of Israel. The President has agency. He decided to go to war nonetheless, we all know that Netanyahu put pressure on him to do this and he agreed. So I just think that they have done. Israelis have been enormous damage to the relationship with the United States, enormous damage to their own military leverage in Lebanon and their ability to fight wars without, you know, U.S. interference. So, you know, even if I think what they're doing is, is appropriate and right and a legitimate self defense, the way they've handled it is just piss poor.

[Mike Pesca]

I guess the argument has to be something like, well, they thought they'd be more effective and maybe they thought they would, quote, unquote, defeat Hezbollah. They had this window and either no one was paying attention or for some part of the time the US Administration was backing them or indifferent to them. And maybe they judged Hezbollah to be far weaker than Hezbollah was. I don't know why they would have done that. They usually have pretty good intelligence. And unlike the United States, when it came to the Ayatollah, where Trump was thinking something like, well, it's worth a shot, Israel doesn't usually conduct its policy or its wars like that.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Well, but again, you know, look, Hezbollah started this war. I don't know that Israel goes to war in Lebanon if not for the fact that Hezbollah starts the war. I really don't. But I do know that the Israelis have pushed us way further than they probably should have. And I just think that, look, this is the bottom line. This is the arrogance in Netanyahu. He thinks that he's running the show here and he's not. The US Is running the show. And he got ahead of what his super benefactor was willing to accept. And that's why you have this incident with Trump, basically telling him to stop and basically demanding they don't have a massive retaliation to the Iranian attacks the other day in northern Israel. So I just think that this is just poor alliance relations, alliance management by Netanyahu. And it's hurt Israel, it's hurt their ability to use forces as they want to, and it's hurt their relationship with the United States, who is let's be honest, their single single most important ally in the world, you know, exponentially. That's the most important as far as

[Mike Pesca]

the overall project, the Is War Worth It Project. You began by saying that oftentimes we overestimate the positive impacts of war. We don't consider the second and third order effects. That's definitely true. And the United States has embarked on a series of wars. Sometimes I look at other countries and say it must have been be nice to win a war here. We are the most powerful by far country. We haven't won a war in a long, long time. In the popular imagination, right? Vietnam wasn't worth it. Afghanistan turned out not to be popular and successful. Iraq. You can make a narrow case that people there are better off than they were when Saddam was the leader, but at what cost? Not just to the United States, but millions dead. We could go through the list. And then of course, there's the rally around the flag effect. There is the support our troops effectively. There is the fact that the war makers control a lot of the images and the narratives and who gets to embed with troops, thus affecting public perception. I grant you all of that. And yet I do think that the assessment of war is, you're certainly right in the Academy that they almost always think that war is not worth it. But if you go to the Naval War College or the Army War College or learned people who don't have a knee jerk reaction and say things like Vietnam were worth it, they will point out that different military exercises were worth it. And I think a lot about the big ones, because if you get the big one wrong, you're in a terrible position. Do you know about the Nye Commission after World War I? Nye, sure. Right. So this was the idea that was quite popular in the United States, that the United States involvement in World war, World War I was just pushed by the munitions industry. And Eisenhower hadn't yet given us the phrase the military industrial complex, but that's what it was looking at. And many of these senators, they spent a long time and generated hundreds of interviews and there was a drumbeat of this war wasn't worth, worth the cost. All it did was make Dupont a lot richer.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

And they weren't necessarily wrong on the specifics. But in retrospect, historians, learned people such as yourself would say that that's the sort of sentiment that made the United States ill prepared for World War II and in fact probably added to emboldening the rise of fascism. So that's my pushback. I do think that you're generally right. I do also think the academy has a knee jerk war is almost always wrong reaction. And the costs of getting that assessment wrong can be enormous.

[Michael A. Cohen]

Can I. Actually, I'm going to push back a little bit because we started this project by doing a survey of security scholars, mostly academics. Something tanked most academics. And we asked them, tell us which wars you think the US has fought that had been successful, which would have been unsuccessful. Tell us what foreign wars you think had been successful and unsuccessful. And I was. The results were sort of striking first. I mean, the most obvious one people said was the success was the Gulf War. Right, people, that was overwhelming and that was 1990.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, how far back did you go? Did you go to World War II?

[Michael A. Cohen]

We went as far back as people wanted to go. So World War II was up there as well. Obviously World War II, Gulf War were two of the ones that were obviously foreign wars. People mentioned the Six Day War. They mentioned Falklands War with the British against Argentina. Interestingly, they mentioned the Korean War, I'm sorry, the World War I, which they judged most judged to be a success, I would argue was a failure because for the reasons, some of the reasons you said, but also because it didn't really lead to peace and it helped usher in World War II to some extent. They talked about Panama as being a success. They talked about some of the Balkans wars being successful. So there was Grenada. Oh, that was, that was, that got a lot of votes too. Grenada's vote, huge success as well. So. But what were those wars have in common? I mean, World War II being obvious exception. They were somewhat limited in what their objectives were and their objectives were clearly laid out. That was certainly true with the Gulf War. The ones that were viewed as a failure, like the Iraq War. Right. The theory of success was. Was hard to identify. Vietnam, same situation. Afghanistan, similar situation. So I think one of the reasons we did this project was to say, okay, what are the characteristics of those wars that people think are successful or that we think are successful or that were worth it? And what are the characteristics of those that were not successful? So I do think that there is a predisposition to view wars unsuccessful. I think for good reason often because usually more often than not they don't work out. People think they're going to work out, but doesn't mean that not all wars can be successful, I think. And one of the things we want to, one thing we want to achieve with this project is to kind of quantify those results and say, okay, let's say if we weigh cost versus benefits, in what situation do the benefits outweigh the costs? Now, I can make the case again, like on the Gulf War, the benefits more than outweigh the costs, which actually were rather minimal, both in loss of life and. And the economic costs. Some wars, like the Iraq War, is interesting. We won the Iraq War, at least initially, right? I mean, we knocked off Saddam, we achieved our objectives. Didn't work out so well after that. Right. And that's when the cost part of it comes in. So that's why you sort of do this kind of experiment, to kind of weigh these different factors. I will say one more point about World War I, because I think it's really interesting. We did this symposium a few weeks ago where we did like a. We did a few case studies, and we did a World War I. We did the Iraq War, we did the Yom Kippur War fought by Israel and Egypt in 1973. One thing we were struck by is how the wars that are unsuccessful, like the Iraq War, like World War I, like Korea, like Vietnam, why are they unsuccessful? Because often it's when presidents and policymakers get ahead of public opinion. Right. Why did World War I fail? Because Wilson wanted to fight a war for democracy. Americans weren't that interested in fighting war for democracy. And when the war was over, they didn't want to join the League of Nations. They wanted to avoid these alliances in Europe. And that led to a period of isolationism in the US Why was Vietnam unsuccessful? Because it destroyed the Democratic Party. It destroyed Truman's presidency. I mean, it destroyed George Bush's presidency. Right? So, I mean, I would argue it's done enormous damage to Trump's approval. And even the wars that are successful to Gulf War, I mean, people forget this. Now, you probably remember this because you're old like me, but right after the Gulf War, George Bush is at 91%. This is in 1991. What happened to him a year and a half later, he lost. He was a 34%, I think, is what he got. 30% he got in the election. So I think that's one takeaway that we've had, like, if you get ahead of Republic opinion is that's a bad place to be. And in the case of Trump, he never prepared the country for the war. He never made a case for the war. Even before the war started, people forget. He gave a State of the Union address three days before the war started, in which he mentioned Iran for a minute and a half, 100 minutes in, or like 80 minutes into 100 minute speech. Right. He didn't make the case for war. And so when it happened it had no public support. And now you see, he has no public support, which is part of why he has no leverage over Iran. Right. He has no leverage to continue the war because there's no support in the country to do so.

[Mike Pesca]

Michael A. Cohen is a non resident fellow at the Stimson Center. That's the least impressive of his qualifications. He's a columnist for msnbc, publishes the newsletter Truth and Consequences, and is the author of so many wonderful books, including Clear and Present Safety, the World Has Never Been Better and why that Matters to Americans. You know, a few years ago, if you can not tell by the tone

[Michael A. Cohen]

of the title, you know. Yeah, well, that was before Trump. So, you know, stuff has happened since then.

[Mike Pesca]

Michael A. Cohen, thank you so much.

[Michael A. Cohen]

This was great. But I wanted to say for record, Mike, this was such a great interview. You asked so many great questions. I really appreciate you having me on. This is wonderful.

[Mike Pesca]

That's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the Gist. Jeff Craig produces How to Be Astaire is our booking producer. Kathleen Sykes runs the Just List. I talk about, well, a lot of things. The New York primary elections tomorrow. Dariel Isa Avila Chevalier, who I talked about on the show. That's a big part of today's Just List. We also talk about what we talked about with Michael Cohen. And at the top of the show, the $300 billion to Iran. Four other stories every day. Mutant mice are part of it on the gist [e-mail] Michelle Pesca oversees all of this enterprise. Umpru G Peru do Peru and thanks for listening.

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