Quick: how many wars in the Middle East have gone according to plan?
You know the answer. But that’s not the point.
The point is how the United States decides what its military is for - and how much of it we think we need.
For decades, that question has been framed in fractions.
Two and a Half Wars
In the 1960s, the United States aimed to field enough force to fight:
A massive conventional war in Europe against the Soviet Union
A major war in Asia (China or North Korea)
A “half-war” - a smaller regional contingency elsewhere
It was ambitious. It was expensive. It was Cold War arithmetic.
One and a Half Wars
By 1969, under President Nixon, reality intruded. The strategy shifted to one major war (Europe) plus one smaller contingency. The acknowledgment was implicit: the United States could not sustain two simultaneous superpower conflicts without extraordinary strain.
Two “Half Wars”
After the Soviet Union collapsed, the Pentagon adopted the “Major Regional Contingency” model. The idea was to defeat two rogue states - usually envisioned as Iraq and North Korea - in near simultaneity.
The theory: prevent opportunistic aggression while we were busy elsewhere.
The 1-4-2-1 Formula
After 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - who would later cite “unknown unknowns” as Iraq unraveled - attempted to replace the blunt “two-war” metric with the more abstract 1-4-2-1 construct:
1: Defend the homeland
4: Deter aggression in four key regions
2: Swiftly defeat adversaries in two overlapping campaigns
1: Win one decisively
Iraq and Afghanistan soon forced us to live the two-war reality anyway - readiness metrics be damned.
One War Plus Deterrence
As of early 2026, strategy has narrowed again.
The “two-war” standard has largely been replaced by what defense planners describe as One War Plus Deterrence.
Homeland First: A sharpened focus on North American defense, including the proposed “Golden Dome” missile shield.
The Pacing War: Size the force to defeat one peer adversary - China - in the Indo-Pacific.
The Hold Pattern: In Europe and the Middle East, provide limited support while allies shoulder primary combat roles.
Burden Sharing: Press allies toward 5% of GDP in defense spending - effectively outsourcing second-war capacity.
This is the strategic math.
Now look at the board
Two carriers - USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) - are positioned near Iran.
One - USS George Washington (CVN-73) - is forward-deployed in Yokosuka, Japan.
Two more - USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) in Norfolk and USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) in San Diego - are available but not forward.
Four others are in maintenance or overhaul.
Carriers are finite. Munitions are finite. Attention is finite.
Those of us who served are asking practical questions:
What is the drawdown rate on precision-guided munitions?
What is the replenishment timeline?
What happens to Indo-Pacific readiness if the Middle East consumes operational bandwidth?
What signal does this send regarding Taiwan - where roughly 95% of Nvidia’s most advanced AI GPUs are manufactured?
Nvidia, as a reminder, designs chips. It does not manufacture them. The fabrication happens largely in Taiwan.
Now return to the opening question
How many Middle East wars have unfolded according to plan? Iraq… Afghanistan… Libya… Syria… However one categorizes them, how many regime-change efforts produced the stable outcomes advertised at launch?
Those of us who were junior officers and enlisted personnel in an earlier misguided war learned something enduring: strategic overconfidence in Washington has a habit of colliding with tactical reality overseas.
The Quisling in this Post
We have written before about Secretary of Defense Hegseth and what we called his “performative masculinity.” He is a veteran, but a former television personality with limited command or administrative experience, in this job because he was a Trump propagandist on Fox. And while now running the largest employer in America with a $1T budget, he seems obsessed with renaming departments (“War” is so much more masculine than “Defense”), sidelining experienced officers, and injecting overt religious rhetoric into the department apparently to energize a political base.
But uncertainty does not respond to symbolism
We once heard about “unknown unknowns” - the risks planners cannot foresee. The phrase became a punchline. It shouldn’t have. The existence of unknown unknowns is precisely why serious military forces build redundancy, stockpiles, alliances, and industrial depth.
Uncertainty is not an excuse for failure. It is a reason for humility.
The “unknown unknown” in 2026 is not whether conflict is possible. It is whether we are quietly consuming the margin that deterrence requires - drawing down munitions, stretching carrier cycles, and narrowing the industrial cushion that underwrites the “one-war” promise.
Preparedness assumes surprise. Performance assumes applause.
One of those builds capacity for a war you hope never comes.
The other plays well - right up until it doesn’t.
Great information. Thank you.