Iran war could lead to US empire’s end
THE silver lining in the US and Israel’s barbaric, unprovoked war against Iran could be that the US would be severely wounded by this misadventure, which involves the Strait of Hormuz’s critical role in the world economy. This would signal the decline of the US empire that has ruled the world since the end of World War II to usher in a new era of liberation of humanity from this scourge.
It would be the equivalent of the defeat of the then mighty British Empire by the Egyptians in 1956, which involved another choke point of global oil supply and commerce, the Suez Canal.
Thus did distinguished scholar Alfred McCoy argue in an article posted in several news and opinion sites, among them in the Fair Observer, titled “Imperial Decline in the Strait of Hormuz: The Iran War as America’s Very Own Suez Crisis.”
McCoy is an influential contemporary scholar of US empire, state power and Philippine political history. A history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, McCoy has spent decades examining how colonial rule, elite networks and global geopolitics shape modern states.
McCoy first gained prominence for his studies of the Philippines, particularly his landmark book, “An Anarchy of Families,” which argues that the country’s political system is dominated by powerful dynasties that have captured state institutions. McCoy dealt a body blow to Marcos’ reputation — which helped convince US policymakers to abandon him — when he wrote an extensively researched article in The New York Times of Jan. 23, 1986, exposing the dictator’s fake wartime medals and guerrilla role in the war.
In recent years, McCoy has turned to the study of American global power. In “In the Shadows of the American Century,” “To Govern the Globe,” and his latest, “Cold War on Five Continents,” he advances a sweeping argument that US dominance — like that of earlier empires — is subject to cycles of rise and decline shaped by war, economic strain and geopolitical competition. His essay, “Imperial Decline in the Strait of Hormuz,” reflects that broader thesis.
Historic turning point
McCoy’s essay argues that the current US war against Iran may mark a historic turning point in global power, comparable to the 1956 Suez Crisis that signaled the decline of the British Empire. Drawing on historical analogy, McCoy suggests that what appears as military strength may in fact mask strategic weakness, and that Washington’s intervention could ultimately accelerate its geopolitical decline rather than restore its dominance.
The article begins by invoking the Suez Crisis as a cautionary precedent. In 1956, Britain and France launched a powerful military assault against Egypt after President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Their forces quickly overwhelmed Egypt’s military capabilities. Yet Nasser executed a decisive countermeasure by blocking the canal, disrupting Europe’s oil lifeline. The result was not Egyptian defeat but British humiliation. Economic pressure, diplomatic isolation and financial crisis forced Britain to retreat, exposing the fragility of its imperial power. McCoy uses this episode to introduce the concept of “micro-militarism” — the tendency of declining empires to launch limited military interventions in an attempt to regain lost prestige.
He argues that the US intervention in Iran bears the hallmarks of such micro-militarism. Even if the United States were to achieve tactical military success, the broader consequences could prove destabilizing and self-defeating. To support this claim, McCoy reviews seven decades of American regime-change efforts, both covert and overt, and shows that they have consistently produced long-term instability rather than stable political outcomes.
The historical record, as he presents it, is deeply discouraging. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup in Iran to overthrow a democratically elected government that had nationalized oil resources. The restored Shah’s rule, marked by repression and inequality, ultimately triggered the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In Guatemala, a CIA-backed intervention in 1954 replaced reformist governance with military dictatorship, leading to decades of civil war and mass death. In the Congo, US involvement in the removal of Patrice Lumumba contributed to decades of kleptocratic rule and catastrophic violence. These examples illustrate a recurring pattern: External intervention disrupts fragile political systems, unleashing forces that produce prolonged instability and human suffering.
More recent military interventions follow the same trajectory. The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 resulted in a costly, two-decade effort that ultimately failed, with the Taliban returning to power. The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to prolonged conflict, massive casualties, and the emergence of a fragile and authoritarian political order. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention in Libya in 2011 toppled Muammar Gaddafi but left the country fragmented and unstable. Even failed interventions, such as those in Cuba and Venezuela, often strengthen the regimes they target by allowing them to consolidate power and tighten internal control. McCoy likens such interventions to smashing a delicate mechanism and then attempting to reassemble it — a process that rarely succeeds.
Strategic disruption
Turning to the present conflict, McCoy argues that Iran has already demonstrated an ability to offset US military power through strategic disruption. By attacking shipping and energy infrastructure in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has effectively choked a critical artery of the global economy. This narrow waterway carries a substantial share of the world’s oil and natural gas, and disruptions there have immediate and far-reaching consequences. According to the article, Iranian drone strikes have sharply reduced tanker traffic, driven up energy prices and disrupted global supply chains, including agricultural inputs such as fertilizer.
The scale of economic impact is enormous because of the concentration of resources in the Persian Gulf. The region holds roughly half of the world’s proven oil reserves, and its infrastructure represents massive capital investment. Any sustained disruption threatens not just energy markets but the broader global economy. In this sense, Iran’s actions resemble Nasser’s strategy in 1956: transforming a military disadvantage into a geopolitical advantage by targeting a critical choke point.
McCoy also challenges the perception of overwhelming US military superiority. While US and Israeli forces have conducted thousands of air strikes, he argues that such operations are limited in scale relative to historical benchmarks like World War II. More importantly, he highlights the asymmetry in military resources. The United States relies on expensive, technologically advanced systems such as interceptor missiles, which are costly and difficult to replace. Iran, by contrast, can produce large numbers of inexpensive drones. Over time, this imbalance favors Iran, as sustained conflict would strain US resources while allowing Iran to continue applying pressure at relatively low cost.
The article then examines the question of ground intervention. McCoy suggests that the United States is reluctant to deploy troops because it would face formidable resistance from Iran’s military forces and paramilitary groups. Instead, Washington has attempted to exploit internal divisions within Iran, particularly by encouraging ethnic minorities such as the Kurds to rise up against the central government. However, this strategy appears unlikely to succeed. The Kurds, historically used and abandoned by external powers, are cautious and unwilling to engage in another uncertain conflict. Their reluctance underscores the limits of US influence even among groups that might be expected to align with its objectives.
McCoy also presents a global perspective. He argues that the Iran war reflects a wider pattern of declining US influence across Eurasia, the region long considered the center of global power. For decades, the United States maintained its dominance through alliances in Europe and along the Pacific Rim. But in recent years, key states have begun to assert greater autonomy. European countries are rearming independently, Russia is challenging Western influence, Turkey is pursuing a more independent foreign policy, and countries like India and Pakistan are recalibrating their alignments. This trend is evident in the very little international support for the Iran intervention, in contrast to earlier conflicts such as the Gulf War or the invasion of Afghanistan.
Broad coalition lack
The lack of broad coalition support suggests that the United States can no longer mobilize global consensus as it once did. Instead, it increasingly is isolated, relying on unilateral or limited partnerships. This shift, McCoy argues, signals the emergence of a new world order in which the US is no longer the sole hegemon. The Iran war, rather than reversing this trend, may accelerate it by exposing the limits of American power and the costs of its interventions.
Just as Britain’s ill-fated intervention in Egypt marked the end of its imperial era, the US war in Iran may come to be the defining moment in the decline of American global dominance. Even if the US achieves short-term military objectives, the longer-term consequences — economic disruption, geopolitical realignment and the strengthening of adversaries — may outweigh any gains. The article suggests that future historians could view this conflict as a turning point, when the limits of American power became unmistakably clear.
McCoy’s argument though is not that history repeats itself, but that it offers patterns and analogies that illuminate the present. The Suez Crisis provides a lens through which to understand the risks of imperial overreach, and the Iran war may represent a similar moment for the US. In both cases, the lesson is the same: Military power alone cannot sustain global dominance, and attempts to assert it in the face of structural decline may hasten the very outcome they seek to prevent.
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Iran war could lead to US empire’s end
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