As the conflict between the US and Israel and Iran draws to a close, yielding not a harmonious peace but a tenuous truce, it starkly illuminates the limitations of military might and coercive diplomacy within a rapidly shifting global balance of power.
Evidently, the unrivalled force and technological supremacy wielded by the United States and Israel, manifested in high-precision airstrikes, decapitation strategies, and unparalleled devastation inflicted upon Iranian infrastructure and civilians, failed to translate into a definitive strategic victory.
It ultimately failed to coerce the Iranian regime into submission or alter its geopolitical calculus, which remains the fundamental benchmark of victory championed by the Trump administration.
While the aggregate sum of American hard power remains largely intact, despite the staggering economic toll and the $132 billion Washington expended in pursuit of an elusive triumph, it is US prestige that has suffered the more profound and unquantifiable injury.
This damage is measured not in fiscal deficits, but in the eroding capacity of the world’s preeminent superpower to impose its hegemony over medium-sized and smaller states. Indeed, the war in Iran offers a poignant case study in how material power and intangible prestige can sharply diverge.
International relations theorist Robert Gilpin (1930-2018) once observed that while power constitutes a state’s tangible economic and military capabilities, prestige represents the reputation of that power and the perceived credibility of its commitments.
Furthermore, political theorists note that the preservation of power and prestige is intrinsically bound to the cyclical rise and fall of states and empires. During their ascendance, states vigorously amass the foundational elements of their strength, expanding their capacity to project national interests, sway allies, and deter adversaries.
Conversely, as the structural balance of power shifts towards emerging rivals, declining superpowers become increasingly obsessed with safeguarding their prestige, often resorting to reckless measures simply to prove their enduring relevance. This phenomenon, rooted deeply in the frailties of the human condition, inevitably incurs catastrophic costs, frequently culminating in strategic miscalculation and war.
It is this psychological trap that historically precipitated the collapse of past empires in what may be termed “prestige wars”. Such was the case with the demise of the Athenian Empire, brought low by its ill-fated and unnecessary expedition to conquer Sicily (415-413 BCE) during the Peloponnesian War against Sparta.
A strikingly similar scenario was replicated by Spain during the Thirty Years War in Europe (1618-1648), which permanently eroded Spanish influence across the continent to the benefit of rival powers like the Netherlands and, later, England. As has been frequently noted, it was also the same miscalculation that famously triggered the ultimate undoing of the British Empire during the Suez Crisis of 1956.
These historical examples, alongside the initial repercussions of the Iran war, demonstrate that there is a downward spiral in the decline of great powers. This leads to strategic overextension and the initiation of “prestige wars”, which frequently conclude in astronomical costs, further reputational damage, and ultimately, rapid structural collapse.
DEBACLES: While damaged prestige is not a novel challenge for the US, past instances were largely limited to debacles with circumscribed regional repercussions, such as in Vietnam, Somalia, and, later, Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, with the latest debacle in the Gulf, the consequences carry far broader ramifications for an already shifting global balance of power. These ramifications are not confined strictly to global energy and financial markets; instead, they have much more to do with the strategic gains and losses in the great power games that kicked off with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
On the one hand, the war has fundamentally disrupted what Finnish President Alexander Stubb has called the “triangle of power”. It has shifted geopolitical leverage further away from the Global West in favour of the Global East. The US has also shrugged off any normative consensus within the Global West, leading to deeper fragmentation and confusion in the so-called democratic camp.
Without firing a single shot, China and Russia have successfully translated the conflict into massive diplomatic capital. As for middle powers like Iran, the war has proven that survival equals strength. This lesson will undoubtedly echo across the Global South as it tries to chart its own way forward in the future world order.
Adding insult to imperial injury, the war has shattered the security paradigm that governed the Middle East for decades. The US is simply no longer a reliable security partner. For several of its allies in the region, chief among them the Gulf states, it has become abundantly clear that while the US possesses the power to initiate a war, it lacks the capacity to end it in a way that ensures regional stability.
Most importantly, the war has redefined the metrics of power for modern warfare. It has highlighted that meaningful power must transcend legacy symbols of prestige like stealth fighter fleets, multi-billion-dollar carrier strike groups, and exorbitantly expensive air-defence systems to focus more on low-cost technologies capable of providing vital lifelines to combat forces.
One cannot be certain whether US President Donald Trump recognised the irony or the deep historical resonance of signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Iran at the Palace of Versailles in France last week, the same venue that witnessed the capitulation of Imperial Germany at the end of World War I.
Granted, this was a far less dramatic affair than the conclusion of the Great War, amounting to little more than a peace treaty finalised over dinner. Yet, the historical parallel remains inescapable.
Germany was not militarily vanquished in World War I, but its power was severely eroded. Similarly, while the United States was not militarily defeated in the Iran war, its political leadership compromised its standing for an unfavourable peace agreement and one that merely restored the Middle East to the status quo ante while profoundly diminishing the prestige of a global superpower.
The writer is head of the Strategic Foresight Programme at Future for Advanced Research and Studies, Abu Dhabi.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 June, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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