School of War Reader: Trump’s Political Calculus on Iran
Trump’s Political Calculus on Iran
Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal
Recent guest Walter Mead details how Trump’s Iran strikes reflect his coalition’s foreign policy preferences:
Because the MAGA movement represents such a break with the dominant trends in American politics before 2016, its internal factional disputes can confuse outsiders. On many issues the Trump base is united. It is skeptical of international institutions like the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. It rejects the idea that the U.S. should serve as a global social worker or the world’s policeman. But there are deep differences below this superficial agreement, and Israel policy brings them to the fore. The hard-core restrainers, rooted in the Jeffersonian tradition of principled isolationism, see the U.S.-Israel relationship as toxic, drawing America into an endless series of Middle East conflicts. The larger Jacksonian wing of the coalition sees Israel as an ideal ally and wants the U.S. to support it. The military strikes against Iran played to the Jacksonian wing of the GOP. Mr. Trump’s Middle East policy will likely reflect his sense of the political balance inside his coalition. If that balance changes, American policy will shift, perhaps suddenly, but otherwise the pro-Israel tilt to Mr. Trump’s Middle East policy is likely to remain.
How the U.S. Attack on Iran Hurts Russia and China
Zineb Riboua, Mosaic
A weakened Iran has strategic consequences for Moscow and Beijing in the Middle East:
Israel’s successes, followed by America’s brief but effective bombing raid, has shattered the anti-American coalition of Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing. Iran faces a devastating collapse: its defenses pierced, its leadership eliminated, and its regional influence so weakened that its proxy, Hizballah, cannot muster the strength to confront Israel. For Moscow, this is a severe blow to acritical battlefield ally that supplied drones, technical expertise, and ideological unity. For Beijing, it upends the core of its Middle East strategy, which relies on affordable Iranian oil, access to Gulf trade routes, and a steadfast partner entirely outside the U.S. alliance system. By striking Iran’s vital nuclear facilities, President Trump has seized this critical moment not only to support Israel but also to reverse a decade of decline that began under the Obama administration. That period allowed Russia, Iran, and China to expand their influence across the Middle East, capitalizing on perceptions of American withdrawal. For years, these adversaries exploited Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen as bases to project power, undermine U.S. interests, and weaken regional allies. Last weekend’s decisive strikes halt this trend, restoring American preeminence.
One Day of War
Harold Lee Wise, U.S. Naval Institute
In a piece from 2013, Wise chronicles the U.S. Navy’s 1988 Operation Praying Mantis against Iran:
For the United States, Operation Praying Mantis was a success on multiple levels. Operationally, it was the largest engagement of any kind for the U.S. military since the Vietnam War and the largest sea-air battle since World War II. It was the first live-fire test for a new generation of high-technology weapons, which worked nearly flawlessly. There were no embarrassing equipment failures or costly lapses in judgment. The missile exchange between the Joshan and the Wainwright was the first such engagement for a U.S. Navy warship. The operation was the first test of a satellite-communications network that allowed leaders in Washington to personally direct combat operations halfway around the world. U.S. intelligence, using both human and technological assets, was one step ahead of Iran all day. In many ways, the operation validated the training, hardware, and doctrine of the modern U.S. armed forces.
Theodore Roosevelt’s lessons in global power
Charlie Laderman, Engelsberg Ideas
Guest Charlie Laderman assesses Teddy Roosevelt’s international vision for America:
During Roosevelt’s presidency, the US took significant steps to ensure its military power, particularly at sea, was commensurate with its wealth. It also emerged as a critical arbitrator in great power politics outside the Western Hemisphere for the first time. Yet Roosevelt remained acutely conscious throughout his presidency that the overwhelming majority of Americans, and their representatives in Congress, did not believe that the US had a vital stake in international affairs. Nor did they share his commitment to developing and maintaining the instruments of power that were necessary to safeguard not only America’s immediate prosperity and security, but also to help uphold the broader international order on which both rested. Crucial to Roosevelt’s attempt to bridge the gap between his vision of assertive American global leadership and the reluctance of Congress to assume that role was his command of the ‘bully pulpit’, a term that he originally conceived and which captured his conviction that the presidency provided a national platform from which to exert political and moral leadership. He would deploy his innovative style of presidential rhetoric to explain to the public what he believed its global role should be and to pressure Congress into passing legislation that would develop the material resources that were necessary to carry it out.
China’s Continental Conundrum: Nuclear Geopolitics and American Strategy in the Western Pacific
Kyle Balzer and Dan Blumenthal, AEI
Guests Dan Blumenthal and Kyle Balzer describe how the US should view China’s nuclear ambitions:
Washington should treat China’s nuclear breakout as a tool that can help the CCP shed its continental isolation. To reorder the international system, China must first dissolve the US alliance system on its seaward periphery without provoking a disastrous great-power war. Only then can Beijing secure maritime access to generational investments across Eurasia and erode America’s global preeminence at an acceptable cost. For now, then, the CCP has opted for a short-of-war coercion campaign to undermine America’s credibility as a security guarantor in the western Pacific.14 China’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal will bolster this gray-zone strategy, equipping Beijing with more coercive options to drive a wedge between Washington and its Asia-Pacific allies. Washington should recognize this more subtle threat posed by China’s darkening nuclear shadow and act to shore up its alliances in the western Pacific. Given that Beijing’s unrelenting campaign of coercion threatens its allies daily, Washington must implement a countervailing strategy that arrays its enduring competitive advantages against the CCP’s distinctive vulnerabilities. Exploiting America’s formidable political, economic, and military advantages will blunt China’s current momentum and allow Washington, in partnership with its free-world allies, to seize the initiative in the ongoing peacetime competition. Such a countervailing strategy will ultimately strengthen the US alliance system by intensifying China’s greatest vulnerability: its continental conundrum.
The Republican foreign policy debate, President Trump, and the transatlantic alliance
Peter Rough, Brookings
How Trump can bolster global security while navigating the GOP’s foreign policy schism:
To date, Trump has had notable successes where it matters most: defense spending. He has exposed America’s friends and allies in Europe to just enough hostile power to engender increased burden-sharing without going so far as to risk a security crisis on the continent. Now is the time to convert that anxiety into concrete wins. One European ally in particular can help him do just that: the Federal Republic of Germany. Trump’s second term and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition government will overlap almost exactly over the next four years. Both men are at the helm of new governments that are a whir of activity. Merz paid a big political price for exempting defense from the German constitutional debt brake, with up to 1 trillion euros in new infrastructure and defense spending under consideration in Berlin. By offering consistent leadership, the Trump administration can ensure that the early momentum in defense spending, including in Germany, leads to European burden-sharing within NATO, rather than hedging behavior away from the United States.