Midweek Update #20: Each Day The US Weakens Itself

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Midweek Update #20: Each Day The US Weakens Itself<br>What It Means For US-China Relations

Phillips P. OBrien<br>Jul 22, 2026<br>∙ Paid

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Hi All,<br>Before I get into the midweek update and what is happening in the US-Iran War (or Trump’s War as it should be known by historians), I just wanted to bring to your attention the appointment of a new Ukrainian Chief of the General Staff last night. Mykhailo Drapatyi was promoted from Joint Forces Commander to replace Oleksandr Syrskyi as Commander in Chief of Ukrainian forces, a move that was widely hailed. I turned to good friend Mykola Bielieskov as soon as I heard the news and he responded “Best choice of Zelensky”.<br>Phillips’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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As this is such an important change, the Substack Live I had scheduled with Shaun Pinner for later in the week will be moved up to today. We will do it at 17:30 Ukraine time, 15:30 UK time, and 10:30 US East Coast time. Shaun, being a long-time member of the Ukrainian armed forces, is an excellent person with whom to discuss this change. In the meantime, there might even be a definite decision about the future of Mykhailo Fedorov for us to discuss.<br>If Ukraine is moving forward in its war, the US is moving backwards and on a daily basis. It is painful as a student of strategy to watch the US weaken itself relentlessly like this. These attacks on Iran, in their latest phase of the war, have been going on for 11 straight nights now. The USA keeps hammering away against an Iranian military that Trump claimed months ago to have “obliterated”. Yet, the Iranians continue to fight back, with what might be called a sideways strategy which is distressingly effective. Indeed as the USA weakens itself, the Iranians seem to be improving their position.<br>The upshot is a decline in America’s global position, a decline which the USA is aiding and abetting with its present strategy. When it comes to the Asia-Pacific, that degradation has reached a stage where the US might never recover. There will be a section at the end for PS that will go into this.<br>Share

Each Day The US Weakens Itself

The US has now spent 11 straight nights attacking targets across Iran. The purpose behind these attacks seems to be Trump’s hope that if he does something, anything, to damage Iran, that the Iranian regime will get the message and give him peace terms that he can sell as “not a catastrophic loss”. These terms remain what they have been since March, some kind of concession on the nuclear question and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz without tolls. The amazing and depressing thing is that each night of these attacks is making things worse for the USA. It is bringing the US further away from achieving anything material and actually putting Iran in a stronger position. It reaffirms the pointlessness of the use of military force in this (and most) situations.<br>The USA is engaged in a war of choice to defeat itself. It certainly is a special moment. Maybe the best way to understand what is happening is to break it down into a series of points. The first is that the US has no actual military operation to achieve what it wants, beyond a full invasion and deposition of the Iranian regime.<br>The One (Bad) Military Option<br>What could the US achieve here? The answer would be even with the whole might of the US military, it is not clear. The US is trying to damage the Iranian regime to such a degree that it will give in, to coerce it. However that is practically impossible to imagine without a change in that regime. So, the only way Trump can reasonably hope to achieve his political goals is to overthrow the Iranian regime and replace it with a new and compliant one. That will not happen with air strikes for a number of reasons. So the only way for Trump to “win” the war is for a full-scale invasion, and that means taking Tehran and installing a new government. Taking Kharg Island (mooted again this week as a possible target for US invasion) achieves nothing towards this but puts US forces in vulnerable positions. If the US cannot protect its troops from air attacks in Jordan, there is no way it can do so in Kharg.<br>The problem with any full scale invasion is that we are talking about using hundreds of thousands of troops, masses of munitions (it is not clear that the US even has enough left at this point) and has no end-date in mind. General Barry McCaffrey estimates it would take 600,000 US troops and would take a year. I would say even longer. However it is irrelevant, because it is not happening.<br>That Means Every Day Of Operations Weakens The USA<br>This process of weakening is happening in a number of ways. First, the US is simply further depleting its stockpiles of vital weapons and doing so in efforts that can achieve nothing political....