The IRGC, Warren Zevon and Deterrence
August 23rd, 2026
Why don’t they give up?!
Behind all the pontification on either side of the argument, there remains that one question, a question which has been asked for thousands of years by the folks with the larger army or larger navy: Why don’t they give up?
One of the best examples is, of course, Hannibal’s invasion of the Italian peninsula in the 2nd Punic war (218 - 201 BC). Hannibal smashed Roman armies left and right - some of the battles were such lopsided victories that they are still studied so that tacticians can understand certain maneuvers - because Hannibal executed them perfectly. For almost 17 years the Romans and their allies weren’t able to match Hannibal and his army in the field. Yet, the Italian city states would not leave the alliance with Rome.
There are several reasons for that, but in simple terms, the city-states learned one incredibly valuable lesson: it didn’t hurt that much to get beaten. There are other ways to put it, but at its root, they knew that he - Hannibal - would defeat their armies, but as he had no siege engines, he could not defeat the cities themselves. Sure, there was a little bit of a latent fear of what the Romans would do to any city that deserted the alliance, if the Carthaginians eventually won the war. But really, what they learned was that they were able to “take a punch” and survive.
Warren Zevon’s song “Boom Boom Mancini” sums it up perfectly: “If you can’t take the punches it don't mean a thing.” Boom Boom Mancini could, and therein lies an important element of his success (he was a great boxer). If you can take the other guy’s punches and close with him and hit him back, well, suddenly it’s a real fight. And the Italian city states realized they could “take a punch.”
Or, as a great American, RADM Ed Winters, put it: 'once you know you can take a punch, things change.’ In effect, the fear goes away.
This is a large part of the reality behind the inability of a bombing campaign forcing people to surrender: they learn to take a punch. We’ve seen this in a number of places recently: Ukraine, Russia, Iran.
There are several lessons to this:
First, if your goal is to get people to back down, gradual escalation will probably work against you, because it’ll let them learn how to take a punch. This is true with regard to both bombing (that is, combat operations) and economic sanctions: if you give someone time to adapt, he will. If you want him to yield, you need to hit as hard as you can, as fast as you can, and not let up until he is begging for relief. Failure to do that will mean he’ll learn to take a punch (physically or economically). The corollary is that if you aren’t willing to beat someone very badly, you should probably avoid the fight.
There are exceptions - they are called limited wars. And no one really likes them and they are hard to fight.
Iran started out as limited war - and we got it right: we pushed their nuclear weapons program back years and years. That was a good idea and well executed. As for the rest, I think it’s fair to say the jury is still very much out.
Second, there’s the issue of deterrence. No one wants to take a beating. But, if they think the beating you are giving them is something they can endure then, well, arguably, your deterrence has failed. So, when you find yourself needing to give someone a beating, you’d better make sure not only that the other guys takes such a beating that he cries “uncle,” but you need to make sure that the rest of the world walks away with the right message, which is “I don’t want to get what those guys just got.”
While the assault into Iraq in 2003 led to the collapse of the Iraqi government in less than 3 months, it didn’t lead to the clear, crisp rapid victory hinted at in the lead-up to the war; “Shock and Awe” (a concept first described by that name in 1996) was never applied with the sort of savagery necessary to make it work. Arguably, the boundaries set by Western concepts of the laws of armed conflict prevent just the sort of beating that is necessary to force a rapid, and sincere, surrender.
In fact, the remarkable precision of US and Western weaponry, coupled with our fairly well known Rules of Engagement, have removed much of the concept of fear from many would-be enemies.
One of those remarkable scenes from OIF that sticks in my brain was a video clip showing bombs striking a government complex at the end of a street in Baghdad. Standing perhaps 10 feet in front of the camera, and less than a half mile from the Iraqi government complex where bombs are falling, three men watch and calmly smoke cigarettes. They were clearly quite confident in the US ability to keep rounds on target. They were not at risk. As far as they were concerned, Iraq could take the punches.
While the current campaign in Iran is directly targeting IRGC leadership, it would seem that both a high percentage of the IRGC remain alive despite our targeting them, and, many are quite willing to die for their country and religion. They, too have learned to take the punches.
What does that means for the concept of deterrence in the future?
When Eisenhower spoke of conventional forces being unable to deter a great power, he was concerned with the USSR and China. But it would now appear that the title great power not only applies to countries with nuclear forces, but to any large or even medium sized country that simply cannot be readily invaded, such as Iran.
Which leads back to a question asked several weeks ago: How do we now deter war?
