WORLD ROUNDUPWashington Walks the Path to Defeat in Iran | If It Starts, a Nuclear Arms Race Will Be Unstoppable | I Went to China to See Its Progress on A.I. We Can’t Beat It., and more

Tactical Success, Strategic Failure? Washington Walks the Path to Defeat in Iran  (Ryan Evans, War on the Rocks)
Six weeks after the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran, what was the political object? Not the military means and objectives — those are the hammer, not the nail. The nail is: What condition in the world, what durable change in Iran’s relationship to the United States and its neighbors, were these strikes meant to produce? That question was never answered, because it was never seriously asked. The Trump administration confused the instrument for the purpose and then changed the purpose whenever the instrument produced inconvenient results.
As our country’s most senior uniformed military leader, standing beside our secretary of defense, rattled off the numbers and percentages of Iranian air defense systems, ballistic missile storage facilities, drone storage facilities, ships small and large, naval mines, defense production facilities, and more destroyed by the formidable American and Israeli militaries, one might be forgiven for concluding that America’s war against Iran has gone pretty well. That would be a mistake. And it is a mistake with a time-honored but deleterious tradition: that of mistaking tactical success for victory and of operational excellence for a strategy.
War has a way of exposing the limits of anything short of victory. And while the war isn’t over (and may still last for weeks or even years), things are looking bad after great expenditures of American munitions and readiness: One of the world’s most important maritime trade routes is closed (a contingency the White House did not seriously anticipate), energy markets are in turmoil, the Iranian regime remains firmly in charge, and its stockpile of uranium remains in its possession (even if it is buried under debris and soil). Clearly, Iranian forces remain capable of waging warfare. And the Trump administration’s negotiators left Islamabad without a deal. Unless victory is defined merely as the degradation of Iranian military capabilities, no honest observer can say America is victorious in this war. And it is difficult to see how the path ahead gets much better for Washington.

The United States has not been able to realize discernible political goals in its war against Iran. It is worth digging into what that means, starting with the word “political,” which is the hinge of it all, and assessing what Washington has actually achieved against the yardstick of its ever-shifting declared aims.

Trump Always Skips the Hard Part  (Suzanne Nossel, Foreign Policy)
The U.S. president’s half-baked approach to dealmaking may be a recipe for more war.

The Man Who Defeated Viktor Orban  (Andrew Higgins and Lili Rutai, New York Times)
For years, Peter Magyar was a loyal ally of Viktor Orban, the far-right Hungarian leader. Then he changed sides — and defeated his former boss in a landslide victory on Sunday. Does he represent real change?

I Went to China to See Its Progress on A.I. We Can’t Beat It.  (Sebastian Mallaby, New York Times)
For now, China’s instinct to race for powerful A.I. overwhelms any caution. This is a rational response to a U.S. administration that is equally determined to put speed ahead of safety. But if a U.S. leader went to China and offered to scrap chip controls in exchange for collaboration on A.I. nonproliferation, there would be at least some chance of the proposal succeeding.
This presumes that U.S.-Chinese dialogue is even possible. But the West should not succumb to self-fulfilling fatalism. At times during the Cold War, the United States pursued its interests by switching from confrontation to détente: the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty came just six years after the Cuban missile crisis. Now is a good time to recall that history.

If It Starts, a Nuclear Arms Race Will Be Unstoppable  (Economist)
A sobering interview with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Many Countries Eliminated Measles. Why Is It Coming Back in the U.S. and Globally?  (Surina Venkat, CFR)
Declines in vaccination rates and funding cuts have fueled measles outbreaks worldwide.