These are the three social evils Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned would destroy America from within: Militarism, materialism, and racism. Decades later, they help explain the divisions in our country that led to the January 6 attack by protesters on the U.S. Capitol. Of the three, however, the role our recent wars have played in exacerbating these conditions is often the most overlooked.
Video produced by Khody Akhavi.
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Israel is in talks with Somaliland officials to form a strategic security partnership, which might include granting Israel access to a military base or other security installation along the Somaliland coast from which it can launch attacks against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
With war raging in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa is a particularly important geoeconomic and geopolitical puzzle piece. Its location near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which connects ships traveling through the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, makes it a strategic location from the perspective of global shipping, 10% to 12% of which travels through the strait annually.
For Israel, Somaliland’s strategic importance stems from its close proximity to Yemen. Israeli military officials have long sought to destroy the capability of Houthi rebels to attack Israel as well as its assets in the region. The Houthis’ aggression has grown since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023; the group has conducted nearly 500 attacks against ships and against Israel in the years since.
Although the Houthis have thus far stayed out of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, the group’s close relationship with Iran — from which it receives arms, military equipment, and training — keeps it in Israel’s crosshairs.
News of Israeli-Somaliland security talks comes less than three months after Israel became the first country in the world to recognize Somaliland’s independence, which has been contested by Somalia ever since the breakaway region claimed full sovereignty in 1991. Upon Israel’s recognition on December 26, Somalia’s president claimed, without evidence, that the normalization of relations between Israel and Somaliland came with a quid pro quo to open an Israeli military base on Somaliland soil.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Somaliland’s minister of the presidency denied that any negotiations had occurred between his country and Israel on the question of a military base, but didn’t close the door to the possibility of one. “We haven’t discussed with them if [the security partnership] becomes a military base, but definitely there will be an analysis at some point,” said Minister Khadar Hussein Abdi.
An Israeli military base or other security presence on Somaliland would risk significantly expanding the war in the Middle East to the fragile Horn of Africa region, which is already home to plenty of factionalization, armed violence, and proxy conflicts.
Alliances are forming on the question of Somaliland’s independence, with the United Arab Emirates joining Israel in supporting the breakaway state (though the UAE still doesn’t recognize it). Some experts say the UAE — which built and operates the commercial-military Berbera port on the coast of Somaliland — helped facilitate this recognition. Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, have thrown their support behind Somalia, including through security arrangements and arms sales. Turkey’s largest base outside its own territory is in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.
Questions now abound over whether the United States might also recognize Somaliland independence, something President Trump has reportedly contemplated, and a policy position being pushed in Washington by a Somaliland lobby, as reported by Drop Site.
Beyond Somalia’s intense disagreement with Somaliland over the latter’s independence, the Somali government is also in a decades-long fight against the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab, which has made some territorial gains in recent months. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, the United States has engaged in heavy counterterrorism activity in Somalia, and President Trump has conducted more air strikes on the country than his three predecessors combined.
Meanwhile, directly to the west, Ethiopia and Eritrea are preparing for what could be another military confrontation between the two.
Neighboring Sudan, meanwhile, is in the middle of a brutal civil war that has forced the displacement of 14 million people, more than any other current conflict in the world. This civil war has become a major proxy conflict, with different African and Middle Eastern players supporting opposite sides. South Sudan is also at risk of returning to civil war, as violence between the government and opposition forces intensifies; the latest clash in early March left at least 169 people dead.
Extending Israel’s military presence to Somaliland is only likely to exacerbate these already intense regional crises and proxy conflicts, and bring the widening Middle East war to African soil.
Recent data released by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) suggests that a strong majority of Iranian Americans support diplomacy to resolve tensions between the U.S. and Iran — a finding at odds with the dominant conversation online suggesting that most Iranian Americans are in favor of the Iran war.
The data was collected through a survey of 505 Iranian Americans conducted by Zogby Analytics between Feb. 27 and March 5. Among the most notable results were that a clear majority of Iranian Americans — 61.6% — support diplomacy to move toward de-escalation and a negotiated path forward.
Screengrab via niacouncil.org
“If anything, a lot of people were surprised because they thought Iranian Americans overwhelmingly favored this war,” NIAC president Jamal Abdi said in a Wednesday press briefing. “In fact, it is divided in half. There was really no mandate for the war.”
As Abdi noted, the survey results show that Iranian Americans were nearly evenly divided on whether the U.S. should have initiated war with Iran, with 49.3% opposing the attacks and 48.9% supporting them.
Those who oppose the war are primarily concerned with harm inflicted on innocent civilians and the potential for further destabilization of the country, while those in support hope the war will make regime change more likely and reduce threats imposed by Iran’s nuclear program, according to the poll.
Screengrab via niacouncil.org
During the press briefing, Abdi also said that prominent Iranian Americans have attempted to “shape public perceptions about this war” by “proclaiming that war is the only path that anybody who disagrees is an Iran regime lobbyist.”
The reality is much more nuanced. This newly released data attempts to dispel some of the misinformation surrounding the opinions of the Iranian American community — a community that has faced trauma and division, Abdi said.
“This trauma has been preyed upon by outside interests who want war,” Abdi said during the press briefing. “We think it's really important to end this predatory relationship and expose to the public where our community actually stands, and encourage members of our community to stand up and be vocal and feel that they can be a full participant in U.S. democracy without fear of political violence or online cancellation or death threats and attacks.”
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.
The U.S. military is always busy studying the last war so it can be sure it’s ready to fight that last war the next time. Okay, that’s a little cynical. But just a little. Combat always throws off sparks of innovation that can lead to new or improved strategies, tactics, and weapons. But those changes tend to happen at the margin. War is fundamentally a grim business — nasty, brutish, and usually too long. Big League changes tend to creep, not sweep, the battlefield. That’s why the U.S. military, in its Professional Military Education courses, is always on the hunt for quicker, better, and/or cheaper ways (you can only pick two) to prevail. There are reams of “lessons learned” studies and “after action” reports designed to distill the most recent war’s wisdom.
Speaking of schooling, the Pentagon’s military education program now finds itself amid its own tug-of-warrior-ethos-education. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently machine-gunned military fellowships at places like Harvard and Princeton universities (he’s a graduate of both) for being out of whack with “American Values” (PDF). Not everyone thinks this is smart. Of course, it’s unlikely the U.S. war effort in Iran, or in any future conflict, will suffer from a lack of Ivy League diplomas in its ranks. Nonetheless, given the SECDEF’s emphasis on education, it’s never too soon to check out early returns from Iran and hazard some incipient intelligence:
There’s nothing like a war to put new military hardware to the test. Early top scorers in the U.S. military’s arsenal include the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) kamikaze drone and the long-range Precision Strike Missile (PrSM). The most expensive weapon system in world history — the F-35 fighter — got its first combat kill against a crewed aircraft (even if it was an Israeli F-35 downing an Iranian trainer).
Speaking of cost, it’s worth noting that the LUCAS drone boasts “Low-Cost” as part of its official name. That’s because each drone costs only about $35,000, a bargain in Pentagon terms. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s a copy of Iran’s Shahed-136. “This was an original Iranian drone design,” Admiral Brad Cooper, who is overseeing the war as chief of U.S. Central Command, said. “We captured it, pulled the guts out, sent it back to America, put a little Made-In-America on it, brought it back here, and we’re shooting it at the Iranians.” (“Boomerang” would be a good nickname for it.)
Sure, shiny new weapons get all the ink when war breaks out. But we can’t overlook the tried-and-true arms the U.S. is using against Iran. For the first time since World War II, a U.S. submarine torpedoed an enemy vessel to the bottom of the sea. And lumbering Eisenhower-era B-52 bombers attacked Iranian targets.
The first six U.S. combat deaths came in the war’s opening hours when an Iranian drone exploded through the ceiling of a command post in Kuwait. While concrete barricades protected those inside from ground-based attacks, the command post’s roof was vulnerable to an overhead strike. Unlike high-flying missiles that can be shot down by the U.S. missile defenses now protecting U.S. troops in the region, slow-and-low-flying drones can sneak under such shields. Although the type of drone involved in the strike isn’t known, a Shahed-136 is suspected.
The opening days of the U.S.-Iran war have made clear that the U.S. still relies too much on so-called “exquisite weapons.” Because they are so expensive, few are bought and stockpiles are quickly depleted. Even for countries like the U.S. and Israel, war becomes unaffordable when you are forced to shoot down cheap drones with $4 million missiles. The nation’s biggest defense contractors saluted when President Trump ordered them to increase munitions production March 6. The Pentagon insists it has sufficient ammo of all kinds to wage its war on Iran as long as necessary. Even so, it has reached out to Ukraine seeking help to defend against Iran’s drones — and is ordering 30,000 more of its own.
War works best when there’s a simple, achievable goal. Things bog down when such clarity is diffused by multiple, and shifting, aims. Operation Epic Fury has muddled into Operation Epic Confusion as the Trump administration has launched a barrage of rationalizations for the war.
The conflict began with Trump telling the Iranian people that their future is “yours to take,” a call for regime change that Hegseth denied two days later. Along the way, other reasons for the war have included the imminent but unspecified threats Iran poses; the need to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons and missile programs; its support for terrorism; freedom for the Iranian people; a pre-emptive, knock-out blow because Israel was going to attack, anyway; Iran’s effort to assassinate Trump; and (of course), Tehran’s efforts to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 U.S. presidential elections.
By March 6, a week after the first shots were fired, Trump unilaterally declared total war on Iran. “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” he said. “Surrender,” of course, means the loser capitulates. But what if Iran refuses to throw in the towel? In that case, Trump will decide when the war should end, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender,” she declared. “Whether they say it themselves or not.”
Nifty piece of work, that. If they can redefine “surrender,” they can redefine “victory.”
The soldier you want in the foxhole ain’t the same person you want at the Pentagon podium. Unfortunately, Hegseth, a former infantryman who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, is late of Fox News, and still thinks he’s in the Fox Hole. At times like this, the nation craves a steady and sober mouth on the tiller (The Bunker can’t believe he’s saying this: like Dick Cheney).
But Hegseth has been a Multiple Launch Rocket System spewing incendiary rhetoric around the world since the war began. “They are toast … death and destruction from the sky all day long,” the Pentagon pugilist said March 4. “We are punching them while they’re down,” Hegseth added, pledging that U.S.-Israeli “violence of action” will prevail.
Hegseth is sounding less like Lieutenant Colonel Bill (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning”) Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now” than reprising the role of the late and great Robert Duvall in the remake: “Apocalypse Right Now, Dammit.” Hegseth’s words don’t sway public opinion in Iran — they’ve got enough real trouble there right now — but they do unnerve the Americans whom Hegseth is supposedly serving.
Air strikes are the 21st century’s version of assassination. If there’s no Brutus handy to knife Caesar from the inside, bombs from the outside will have to do the job (“Et tu, B-2?” so to speak). That’s how the Israeli air force, with targeting help from the CIA, killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, on February 28.
But this so-called decapitation strategy has its downsides. As David Ignatius noted in the Washington Post, it’s like a “fire and forget” missile. It’s designed to knock off a leader in the hopes that someone better — at least in the decapitator’s estimation — will fill the job. Unfortunately, the U.S. and Israel have recently killed a lot of potential successors to Khamenei. Beyond that, U.S. intelligence doesn’t think that even an extended U.S. military campaign would help put the Iranian opposition into power. Turns out that when it comes to “fire and forget,” it’s a lot easier to pull the trigger than to remember what comes next.
In the opening hours of the war, a single Kuwaiti F-18 fighter shot down three — three! — U.S. F-15E fighters. Each was apparently downed by a short-range missile that would have required the Kuwaiti pilot to eyeball his targets before firing his missiles. Thankfully, all six crew members safely bailed out. The only F-15s we make today are F-15EXs, which cost about $150 million a copy.
“We know that this was not from hostile enemy fire,” former F-16 pilot and Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. Interesting word choices there. The common phrase is “hostile fire,” or “enemy fire.” There’s growing suspicion that the shootdowns were due to hostile allied fire, which hardly qualifies as truly friendly fire. “To make the same mistake three times over seems highly improbable, especially at close range,” Thomas Newdick at The War Zone wrote March 6. Stay tuned.
Just ask North Korea.
(So far.)
→See you in court!
AI pioneer Anthropic has sued the Trump administration for declaring the company a risk to the Defense Department’s supply chain, Matt O’Brien of the Associated Press reported March 9.→Bandaging bolts out of the blue
Lawmakers encouraged the U.S. military to address the new kinds of wounds that drones are increasingly inflicting on the battlefield, Brandi Vincent reported in DefenseScoop March 6.
→And speaking of boomerangs...
The Trump-created U.S. Space Force’s push to boost procurement of complicated orbiting systems is being hamstrung by a lack of skilled government managers following workforce reductions by the Trump administration, Sandra Erwin reported March 3 at Space News.
Thanks for visiting with The Bunker this week. Kindly consider forwarding this on to allies who can subscribe here.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.
