Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
On January 3, 2020, the Trump administration conducted a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, killing Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani.
Soleimani had a long record of waging surrogate wars against Americans, especially during the Iraq conflict and its aftermath.
After the Trump cancellation of the Iran Deal, followed by U.S. sanctions, Soleimani reportedly stepped up violence against regional American bases—most of which Trump himself ironically wished to remove.
A few days later, Iran staged a performance-art retaliatory strike against Americans in Iraq and Syria, assuming Trump had no desire for a wider Middle East war.
So, Iran launched 12 missiles that hit two U.S. airbases in Iraq. Supposedly, Tehran had warned the Trump administration of the impending attacks that killed no Americans. Later reports, however, suggested that some Americans suffered concussions, while more damage was done to the bases than was initially disclosed.
Nonetheless, this Iranian interlude seemed to reflect Trump’s agenda of avoiding “endless wars” in the Middle East while restoring deterrence that prevented, not prompted, full-scale conflicts.
Yet in a second Trump administration, rethreading the deterrence needle without getting into major wars may become far more challenging. The world of today is far more dangerous than when Trump left in 2021.
An inept Biden administration has utterly destroyed U.S. deterrence abroad through both actual and symbolic disasters: the Chinese dressing down of U.S. diplomats in Anchorage; the humiliating skedaddle from Afghanistan; the brazen flight of a Chinese spy balloon across the U.S.; the invasion of Ukraine by Russia; the October 7, 2023 massacre of 1200 Israelis; the serial Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea; the visible restraint of Israeli from fully replying to Iranian missile attacks on its homeland; and renewed bellicosity on the part of both North Korea and China toward American allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Of course, a second-term Trump must radically reform the Pentagon and beef up the military while warning enemies of the consequences to follow from any unwise aggression.
But if opponents believe such admonitions remain only vocal threats, then empty verbiage surely will erode deterrence further—such as Joe Biden’s serial and empty braggadocio, “Don’t!”
Biden’s past theatrical finger-shaking translated into aggressors like Putin going into Ukraine, Iran sending missiles into Israel, and the Houthis serially hitting shipping in the Red Sea.
Given the past messes of the Iraqi, Libyan, and Syrian interventions, and the catastrophic Biden humiliation in Afghanistan, Trump in 2024 is much more emphatic about the need to avoid such overseas dead-end entanglements or even the gratuitous use of force that historically can sometimes lead to tit-for-tat entanglements.
Still, Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as vice president, along with Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Jr., and Tucker Carlson as close advisors, coupled with the announcements that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and prior UN Ambassador Nikki Haley will not be in the administration, may be misinterpreted by scheming foreign adversaries as proof of Trump neo-isolationism.
Moreover, the U.S. is battered by an unsustainable $37 trillion national debt and a nonexistent southern border that saw 12 million illegal aliens enter with impunity.
So, the use of force abroad is now often seen in a zero-sum fashion as coming at the expense of unaddressed American needs at home.
Moreover, a woke, manpower-short military has not achieved strategic advantages from wars abroad, while disparaging and alienating the very working-class recruits who disproportionately fight and die in them.
Recently, even as President-elect Trump’s inner circle emphasized an end to endless conflicts, Trump warned Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin not to escalate his attacks against Ukraine. Yet that advice was followed by a Russian massive drone onslaught against civilian Ukrainian targets.
Putin no doubt wishes to encourage American enemies to test Trump’s deterrent rhetoric against his campaign’s domestic promises to mind America’s own business at home.
Is there a way to square the deterrence circle?
Trump will have to speak clearly and softly while carrying a club. And for the first few months of his administration, he will be tested as never before to make it clear to Iran and its terrorist surrogates, China, North Korea, and Russia that aggression against US interests will be swiftly and quietly met with disproportionate and overwhelming repercussions.
Yet Trump will likely have to rely on drones, missiles, and air strikes and not on major engagements, to deter enemies from aggression—and his domestic critics from claiming he turned into a globalist interventionist.
He is not.
Trump remains a Jacksonian. But such deterrence entails warning from time to time the reckless and adventurous abroad that our allies have no better friend than America and our adversaries no worse enemy.
In other words, Trump must remind Americans only by periodically deterring enemies can he prevent endless wars.
Excellent summation, Victor. My main concerns now are:
1) it feels like a LONG TIME until Noon 1/20/2025. Currently, we are extremely vulnerable with a cluster of ineptitude at the White House.
2) the ever-present threat of an assassination to throw us into more turmoil
3) the sense that our enemies see an absolute deadline of 1/20/25 to take advantage of the situation
Question: Now that Trump is the President-elect, does he get the daily morning briefings? I would hope so.
he US is a cess pool, California being the worst, and our armed forces are assassins; why would youe possibly wish to pass that on to the rest of the world. The best part of the Rand report is that our armed forces are as incapable as our government is corrupt. The US is the antithesis of a stabilizing. We are disruptive, morally bankrupt and the agents of bankers, MIC, and the anglo-zionist cabal. You speak out against war but blame Russia, Iran, China when we are the instigators and mass murderers of non-combatants in places such as Afghanistan, Syria, Somolia, Jugoslavia, Libya, Iraq and countless more through our proxies. We would be betters off without the NS organizations that work more to destroy than protect.;
You call your site American Greatness; their is NOTHING Great about about America at this time.
The challenges will indeed be greater, but at least Trump’s building a talented, like-minded (deterrence through strength/leverage) team.
I think we will see great numbers of military recruits in 2025 now that we have “boots on the ground” leadership and the end of wokeness.
Trump is about to ‘run the gauntlet’. After leaving tens of billions of dollars in military equipment behind in Afghanistan and sending a lot of military hardware and artillery shells to Ukraine in a piecemeal manner, our conventional firepower has been substantially reduced. And our bloated semi-Woke military leadership who cannot attract new recruits scares nobody but us Americans. The USA and most NATO countries are now in economic disarray. However, China, Russia and North Korea are also hurting economically. Once Trump is inaugurated, Iran will pull in it horns. Actually, they have started doing so once Trump won the recent election (Houthis and Hamas have said they are standing down). The last time we saw this was when Reagan was elected president and Iran released the embassy hostages. The first test of Trump will be how he handles the Russia-Ukraine war. Significant concessions will have to be made to Russia to stop that war, starting with making Ukraine’s admittance to NATO a no-go for the foreseeable future.
Wish all the bad guys would just build solid societies and try to just get along! What is their missions! Why do they have to rule everything! Was great to live some 50 or more years without having to be truly threatened by overseers! Always favored the Big Stick approach that deters them! Sad to see countries think they have to rule the world and it’s people!