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 U.S. interests will be swiftly and quietly met with disproportionate and overwhelming repercussions.
. . ."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 Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Israelis; the serial Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea; the visible restraint of Israel 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 President Joe Biden’s serial and empty braggadocio, “Don’t!”
"Biden’s past theatrical finger-shaking translated into aggressors like Russian President Vladimir 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." . . .
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