President Trump seems to think that “Success in the Middle East will help in our negotiation in attaining an end …Continue reading →
President Trump seems to think that “Success in the Middle East will help in our negotiation in attaining an end to the War with Russia/Ukraine.” So do globalists who like him. And globalists who despise him. Too bad they’re all wrong.
Ironically, that’s precisely because of what those and other globalists, anyway, have rightly identified as the key to the Gaza deal – the paramount role that hard power played in achieving the ceasefire and hostage release, and indeed the paramount role that it’s always played in international politics and always will (at least until we’ve created a Star Trek-like United Earth).
The analyses referenced above (by pundits Marc A. Thiessen and George F. Will) argue correctly that Mr. Trump has prevailed so far in the Middle East because he appreciated the decisiveness of armed might. Specifically, he fully endorsed Israel’s military- and intelligence-led defeat of Hamas in Gaza and fellow terrorists Hezbollah in Lebanon.
And don’t forget the president’s decision to bomb their main sponsor Iran in June surely helped, too. First, it made sure that the terrorists’ main sponsor couldn’t for the foreseeable future use the possession of nuclear weapons to deter major military actions against Hamas or Hezbollah.
Second, since Shi’ite Iran has long been a mortal threat to Sunni Muslim countries (despite recent attempts at detente), the Trump attacks no doubt helped him convince them to intensify diplomatic and – more important – economic pressure on Hamas in particular.
So logically, since using military power helped in the Middle East, it can help end the Ukraine war – in particular, by giving Kyiv the weapons it needs to take the war deep inside Russian territory (like the long-range missiles Mr. Trump is still considering sending), decisively raise the price Moscow is paying to prosecute the conflict, and persuade it to accept a compromise peace deal.
It certainly does sound logical. Kind of like “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” Except what’s logical isn’t always what’s so, and logic can be especially misleading in international affairs because the balances of power and – crucially – the related balances of interests can be so dramatically different from region to region. And those disparities are – ironically – what these supposedly hard-nosed hawks overlook.
To start with, Iran and the terrorist groups it sponsored were deadly foes not only of Israel, but of the United States. As I pointed out in a previous post, “Iran and its proxies had been attacking U.S. forces in the [Middle East] before Hamas’ October 7, 2023 assault on the Jewish state (though they’d spiked since)” and that “Iranian agents were charged by the Biden Justice Department with plotting to assassinate Mr. Trump himself before his reelection.”
Moreover, Israel (even without active American operational support) has long been the military superpower in the Middle East. And without the kinds of nuclear weapons that Iran was seeking, no Middle Eastern country can seriously threaten any core American interests.
By contrast, as I’ve also explained many times (e.g. here), Ukraine’s independence has never been considered a U.S. vital interest or even close by presidents of either major political party. There are no fewer than three main and closely intertwined reasons:
>because Ukraine’s location right next door to Russia makes it vastly easier for Moscow than for the faraway United States to deploy major conventional military forces to the area (the balance of power);
>because geography has also led Russia to believe (justly or unjustly) that controlling Ukraine in one way or another is in its own vital interest; and
>because Russia, as a nuclear superpower that prizes Ukraine much more than the United States ever will or needs to, is amply capable of deterring any significant American military involvement in the conflict (the balance of interests).
Therefore, any American moves that can enable Ukraine to escalate its conflict with Russia could
>supercharge the odds that a greatly intensified war will either spur Russia to respond with nuclear weapons and/or practically guarantee that the conflict will spill over into neighboring regions (including treaty allies that the United States has declared as vital interests, and has consequently legally obliged itself to defend);
>as a result, increase the possibility that the United States will be dragged into a conflict against a nuclear-armed adversary; and
>create this danger (including to the U.S. homeland) for a country whose fate is clearly much more important to Russia than to itself.
Sure, maybe this risk can be run successfully, and Moscow will blink. But when we’re talking nuclear war, why roll these dice at all for a cause that has little and even no bearing on America’s own security, independence, or prosperity?
But none of this is to say that prospects of U.S. success can or should always drive America’s definition of a vital interest, and that’s why defending Taiwan looms as far and away both the most critical and difficult national security challenge faced by the nation.
On the one hand, Taiwan’s status as the world’s dominant manufacturer of the most advanced semiconductors available (including chips for artificial intelligence systems) unquestionably puts it into the vital interest category.
On the other hand, it’s located just off the mainland of China, another nuclear superpower, and one that (at least politically) values exerting control just as much as Russia prioritizes mastery over Ukraine. So the United States has no choice but to use all the hard power at its disposal to make sure Beijing doesn’t take over.
Learning the wrong lessons of the past has produced some of the biggest disasters in U.S. foreign policy history – especially the Vietnam War, which stemmed largely from the notion that the record of the 1930s (“the lesson of Munich”) taught that America must (in the words of John F. Kennedy) “pay any price, bear any burden” to fight aggression everywhere around the world. It’s just as important for the nation that its leaders not learn the wrong lessons of the present.
