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Many are now demanding that Trump act abroad in the way they think he had promised and campaigned–which can be mostly defined as how closely he should parallel their own version of MAGA.
But Trump’s past shows that he never claimed that he was either an ideological isolationist or an interventionist.
He was and is clearly a populist-nationalist: i.e., what in a cost-to-benefit analysis is in the best interests of the U.S. at home and its own particular agendas abroad?
Trump did not like neo-conservatism because he never felt it was in our interests to spend blood and treasure on those who either did not deserve such largess, or who would never evolve in ways we thought they should, or whose fates were not central to our national interests.
So-called, optional, bad-deal, and forever wars in the Middle East and their multitrillion-dollar costs would come ultimately at the expense of shorting Middle America back home.
However, Trump’s first-term bombing of ISIS, standing down “little rocket man”, warning Putin not to invade Ukraine between 2017-21, and killing off Qasem Soleimani, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and many of the attacking Russian Wagner Group in Syria were certainly not Charles Lindberg isolationism but a sort of Jacksonian—something summed up perhaps as the Gadsen “Don’t tread on me”/ or Lucius Sulla’s “No better friend, no worse enemy” .
Trump’s much critiqued references to Putin—most recently during the G7, and his negotiations with him over Ukraine—were never, as alleged, appeasement (he was harder in his first term on Putin than was either Obama or Biden), but art-of-the-deal/transactional (e.g., you don’t gratuitously insult or ostracize your formidable rival in possible deal-making, but seek simultaneously to praise—and beat—him.)
Similarly, Churchill initially saw the mass-murdering, treacherous Stalin in the way Trump perhaps sees Putin, someone dangerous and evil, but who if handled carefully, occasionally granted his due, and approached with eyes wide open, could be useful in advancing a country’s realist interests—which for Britain in 1941 was for Russia to kill three-quarters of Nazi Germany’s soldiers, and, mutatis mutandis, for the U.S. in 2025 to cease the mass killing near Europe, save most of an autonomous Ukraine, keep Russia back eastward as far as feasible, and in Kissingerian-style derail the developing Chinese and Russian anti-American axis.
Trump was never anti-Ukraine, but rather against a seemingly endless Verdun-like war in which after three years neither side had found a pathway to strategic resolution—a war from the distance fought between two like peoples, one with nuclear weapons, and on the doorstep of Europe.
Usually, Trump prefaced the war as a nonsensical wastage of life, at staggering human cost that his supposedly more humane and sophisticated critics never mentioned all that much.
At best, one could say Trump really did lament the horrific loss of life, and at the least, as a builder and deal-maker, wars for him rarely made any practical business sense, i.e., it seems wiser to build things and mutually profit than to blow them up and impoverish all involved.
Add it all up, and what Trump is doing vis-à-vis Iran seems in line with what he has said and done about “America First”.
He sees Israel’s interests in neutering the nuclear agendas of the thuggish and dangerous Iran as strategically similar to those of our own and our allies—but not necessarily tactically in every instance identically so.
Thus, Trump wants the Iranian nuclear threat taken out by Israel—if feasible. And he will help facilitate that aim logistically and diplomatically.
If it is not possible for Israel to finish the task, in a cost-to-benefit analysis he will take it out—but, again, only after he is convinced that the end of Iran’s nukes and our intervention far outweigh the dangers of a superpower intervention, attacks on U.S. installations in the region, a wider, ongoing American commitment, spiraling oil prices, or distractions or even injury to his ambitious domestic agenda.
Trump is willing to talk to the Iranians, rarely insults their thuggish leaders, and wants to show that he always preferred exhausting negotiations to preemptive war.
That patience allows him to say legitimately that force was his last choice—as he sees all the alternatives waning.
Thus, Iran’s fate was in its own hands, either to be a non-nuclear rich state analogous to the Gulf States but no longer a half-century rogue terrorist regime seeking to overturn and then appropriate the Middle East order and to threaten the West with nukes.
Tactically, Trump thinks out loud. He offers numerous possible solutions, issues threats, and deadlines (some rhetorical or negotiable, others literal and ironclad). He alternates between sounding like a UN diplomat and a Cold War hawk, and sometime pivots and reverses himself as situations change.
All this can confuse his allies, but perhaps confounds more his enemies.
In sum, he believes as far as enemies go, public predictability is dangerous—unpredictability even volatility being the safer course.
Add it all up, and there is a reason why Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump’s first term; why for the first time in nearly 50 years the Middle East has some chance at normality with the demise of the Iran’s Shia crescent of terror; and why Europe and our Asian allies may be more irritated by Trump than by Obama and Biden, but also probably feel that he is more likely to defend their shared Western interests in extremis, and will lead a far stronger and more deterrent West than his predecessors, one that will prevent war by assuring others that it is suicidal to attack the U.S.
Excellent analysis of Trump using his “Art of the Deal” tactics trying to bring an end to international wars. However, attempting to get the aggressor to the table by flattery, ignoring his amorality has limitations.
For example, deploring loss of life on both Russia’s and Ukraine’s side ignores that the aggressor’s losses are all military who have no business crossing borders and who have targeted civilians in hospitals, schools and residential areas. It’s soldiers murdering civilians and older and older Ukrainian men conscripted to defend women and children. Putin is a war criminal by any definition, one could even argue genocidist as the removal of Ukrainian children to Russia to be raised Russian is another indicator.
Perhaps leading worldwide shaming and shunning would be more in order than blandishments or at least cool disapproval? Trump has not wasted any flattery on Hamas or Iran’s mullahs but labeled their actions and aspirations “unacceptable”. It’s a Small Nuclear World and let’s not forget that Putin among his other sins has sold Iran’s theocrats Russian materiel and knowhow to advance their development of nukes. He was rewarded with G8 membership once before and invaded Crimea as his thanks.
I would note however, that from Trump’s perspective as described in this article, those arguments don’t fall into his view of the world. He is especially not interested in being the world policeman. Now that Russia has gotten bogged down in Ukraine, and their status as a first world military power is diminished, what is his advantage in trying to roll Russia back out of the areas it already has taken. He isn’t going to put boots on the ground or men in the sky. The behavior of how Russia has carried out the war doesn’t rise to the point of a direct response.
The last stage of Sailing the troubled Seas of Oil & Gas necessitates a Helmsman for a Parting of the Seas to carve out a straight, or Path to Glory: sublating the US Working class peoples’Two-Line-Struggle over a not too Long march into the Golden Age:
This Two lines beeing: The bling of Total victory, vs. the Stable genius of No more war.
As the bling-thing would bring in some Schlep of brass and blob: the totally peacefull option appears to be populistically preferable. But we’ll see; friends and enemies have a say abt to where the wind blows the fog.
Didactic credits go to: Mao, Moses, Stanley Kubrick, Steve Bannon, Sarah Silverman, Hegel for sublation and Carl von Clausewitz for the general fog. Of “Trownness” maybe between war and peace.
Also readable as an IRL epic performance of Homer’s Scylla and Charybdis-challenge for Odysseus.
So now that Trump is back in the Oval Office Putin should withdraw from the Ukraine
I think that Zelensky should meet Putin in Geneva, re-draw the national borders of Ukraine with the Donbas–those four 90% “ethnic Russian” and Russian-speaking eastern provinces–on the Russian side, and tell Putin, “They’ve been a burr under our saddle for a long time; now they’ll be your problem!
“And oh, BTW, Vladimir, we’re going to build a Wall–just like your Wall between East and West Berlin–two meters on our side of the new border between Ukraine and Russia, with guard towers, machine guns, and everything else to protect us. PLUS a mile-deep minefield along our side of the entire new Border. So anyone trying to cross into Ukraine will either be shot dead, or blown to pieces trying to cross the minefield. And any Soviet–excuse me, RUSSIAN–aircraft, or drones, crossing into Ukrainian air space will be immediately shot down.
“And, Vladimir, relax: We’re not going to join NATO, and if NATO invites us to, I’ll refuse.
“Any objections to this very reasonable, and understandable, Solution, Chairman Putin?”
“…..a wider, ongoing American commitment,….”
What, pushing buttons to kill the mullah monkeys and their thugs would be a “commitment?” It could be done by some punk kid sitting in his Underoos eating Frosted Flakes.
Iran is not a threat at all and was only allowed to be in the past by weak American regimes which let that backwater commit terrorism. Come try to blow my apartment up and see what happens. I’ll shoot you dead and my girlfriends will kick your dead faces.
Just go Alexander on their little tiny asses. Iran is NOTHING.
Trump is a poker player by temperament and nature. From the beginning, he’s never shown his actual cards until the last bet has been made.
Hanson has a superb grasp of how Trump operates and does it better than his predecessors since WWII.
Best to stop second guessing him and support him.
I fully understand the mullahs in Iran. They want to kill everyone who doesn’t agree with their seventh century theology. They are insane, and they should be take out, ASAP.