{"id":11848,"date":"2019-05-29T23:32:16","date_gmt":"2019-05-30T06:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11848"},"modified":"2019-05-29T23:32:23","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T06:32:23","slug":"trumps-high-wire-act-of-reestablishing-deterrence-without-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trumps-high-wire-act-of-reestablishing-deterrence-without-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s High-Wire Act of Reestablishing Deterrence without War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Donald Trump inherited a superficially stable world from Barack Obama that, in fact, was quite volatile. There had been no tense standoffs with North Korea, but also apparent intercontinental ballistic missiles with possible nuclear warheads now pointed at the United States. Obama more or less punted on North Korea, by declaring it a problem \u2014 and hoping that Pyongyang\u2019s missile and nuclear testing did not get too out of hand before 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then there was the \u201cIran deal.\u201d It was an appeasing agreement that almost surely guaranteed that Iran would soon have nuclear weapons, along with a revived economy liberated from sanctions and empowered with American cash. Iran\u2019s terrorist surrogates were the greatest beneficiaries of U.S. na\u00efvet\u00e9. At best, Obama assumed that when Iran went nuclear, it would be on someone else\u2019s presidential watch and therefore not his fault. At worst, Obama, in delusional fashion, believed that empowering Iran would balance Sunni states and bring justice to historically oppressed Shiite and Persian minorities who would take their rightful place in the Islamic world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everyone knew that China violated almost every aspect of world commerce. Everyone knew that China would never allow the U.S. to trade with China the same way that Beijing traded with America. Everyone knew that 1.3-billion-person China was a neo-imperialist Communist dictatorship that was headed on an announced trajectory of world hegemony. Obama in particular thought that stopping China\u2019s agenda would be medicine that was more painful than the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like the proverbial medieval mice who voted to warn of a marauding carnivorous house cat by putting a bell around his neck, the prognosis of Chinese mercantilism and aggression \u2014 and the need to confront Beijing \u2014 was right-on. But no one wished to do the messy, dangerous work of belling the Chinese cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2019\/05\/trump-foreign-policy-challenge-deterrence-without-war\/\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Donald Trump inherited a superficially stable world from Barack Obama that, in fact, was quite volatile. There had been no tense standoffs with North Korea, but also apparent intercontinental ballistic missiles with possible nuclear warheads now pointed at the United States. Obama more or less punted on North Korea, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1161,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-356","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10414,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-korean-games-of-thrones\/","url_meta":{"origin":11848,"position":0},"title":"The Korean Games of Thrones","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 The time for pious American lectures is over. \u00a0 North Korea North Korea seeks respect on the cheap \u2014 and attention and cash \u2014 that it cannot win the old-fashioned way by the long, hard work of achieving a dynamic economy or an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;South Korea&quot;","block_context":{"text":"South Korea","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/south-korea\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10151,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-12\/","url_meta":{"origin":11848,"position":1},"title":"Angry Reader","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: Mr. Hanson, I don\u2019t know anything about Stanley Baldwin, but I\u2019ll assume your description of him is accurate. In that case, you have to stretch quite a bit to make Obama into Baldwin. For instance: You call Baldwin a pacifist. Obama is decidedly not a pacifist.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Angry Reader&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11078,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-long-history-of-misjudging-north-korea\/","url_meta":{"origin":11848,"position":2},"title":"Our Long History of Misjudging North Korea","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review There\u2019s a lot to learn from seventy years of failure to stop the Kim regimes\u2019 aggression. North Korea has befuddled the United States and its Asian allies ever since North Korean leader Kim Il-sung launched the invasion of South Korea in June 1950. Prior\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;MacArthur&quot;","block_context":{"text":"MacArthur","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/macarthur\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10103,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/restoring-deterrence-one-bomb-at-a-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":11848,"position":3},"title":"Restoring Deterrence, One Bomb at a Time?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review The only thing more dangerous than losing deterrent power is trying to put it back together again. The Tomahawk volley attack, for all its ostentatious symbolism, served larger strategic purposes. It reminded a world without morality that there is still a shred of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;ISIS&quot;","block_context":{"text":"ISIS","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/isis\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9308,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-barack-obamas-foreign-policy-de-stabilized-the-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":11848,"position":4},"title":"How Barack Obama\u2019s Foreign Policy De-Stabilized the World","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online In 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister \u00c9douard Daladier warned Adolf Hitler that if the Third Reich invaded Poland, a European war would follow. Both leaders insisted that they meant it. But Hitler thought that after getting away\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The World&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9862,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-three-headed-hydra-of-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":11848,"position":5},"title":"The Three-Headed Hydra of the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Trump has inherited a matrix of problems that primarily stem from Iran, Russia, and ISIS. The abrupt Obama administration pre-election pullout from Iraq in 2011, along with the administration\u2019s failed reset with Russia and the Iran deal, created a three-headed hydra in the Middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;ISIS&quot;","block_context":{"text":"ISIS","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/isis\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11851,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11848\/revisions\/11851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}