A Warrior’s View of Why War Fails: A Conversation With William McRaven

William McRaven spent four decades in the U.S. military as a Navy SEAL, a four-star admiral, and head of U.S. Special Operations Command. He led the 2003 operation that captured Saddam Hussein and oversaw the 2011 operation that killed Osama bin Laden. But in a new essay in Foreign Affairs, McRaven focuses not on the potential of military force but on its limits—limits that American policymakers frequently disregard, at immense cost. He warns of a persistent “American delusion—our excessive faith in the capacity of military power to achieve victory and thereby fundamentally political ends.” And while the Trump administration’s war in Iran may offer a particularly stark example of this delusion, McRaven worries that the problem will get worse rather than better in the future.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with McRaven on October 26 about the war in Iran and Ukraine; about the damage to civil-military relations and military culture under President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; about how technology is, and is not, transforming the battlefield; and about the risks of a strictly transactional foreign policy for the durability of American power.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-in….