Trump's Way of War

Victor Davis Hanson  

"But Trump, with help from Israel, finally revealed the theocracy to be a Keystone Kop kleptocracy. The mullahs screamed "Death to America!" but it was Trump's America that finally brought death to them."

"War is the use of arms to settle differences – tribal, political, religious, cultural, and material – between organized groups. It is unchanging. The general laws of armed conflict stays immutable, given the constancy of human nature.

"However, the manner in which war is conducted remains fluid. New weapons, tactics, and strategies elicit counterresponses in an endless cycle of tensions between defensive and offensive superiority.

"That said, has President Donald Trump introduced a novel way of waging Western war against America's foreign enemies?

"We saw glimpses of it during his first term, when he eliminated Iranian general and terrorist kingpin Qassem Soleimani and ISIS terrorist grandee Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In the former case, he preferred hitting the cause rather than the effects of Iranian terrorism in Syria and Iraq, while making it clear that he had no intention of striking the Iranian mainland and entering into a tit-for-tat "forever war."

"In large part, he was successful. Iran never quite replaced the venomous Soleimani. And despite tired threats, its performative art responses did not kill any Americans, and they were seen by Trump as venting and not worth a counterresponse.

"In the case of the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump likewise went after the catalyst of ISIS terrorism. But he also bombed ISIS into near nonexistence in Iraq, since, unlike Iran, it lacked the financial and material resources of a state sponsor of terror, and it had no independent ability to make weapons or finance its terrorism.

"In 2018, Trump probably killed more Russian ground troops (more than 200?) than America had during the entire Cold War, with his furious response to the Wagner Group assault on a U.S. Special Operations base near Khasham, Syria. Yet the defeat of Russian mercenaries also led to no wider conflict.

"In these three cases, Trump successfully portrayed his antagonists as the unprovoked aggressors, employed overwhelming force to eliminate them, and declared them one-off occurrences with no need to punish the ultimate source or sponsor of the aggression with further force, and he was largely successful in limiting subsequent attacks on American installations." . . .  More...

. . . "What, then, are Trump's new ways of conducting war?"

1. Geostrategy

2. Wars of reckoning

3. War among negotiations

4. The culpable apparat

5. No to nation-building; I repeat: "No to nation-building"

6. No boots on the ground

7. Exit strategy?

8. No to internationalism

9. Deterrent displays

10. American self-interest"

What Iranian Negotiators Told Witkoff   "The Witkoff interview eliminates any credible argument that a diplomatic solution was ever on the table. Three rounds of good-faith negotiations produced nothing but boasts about military capabilities, broken promises, and confirmed lies from a regime that openly described its uranium as a “trophy.” When the President’s own envoy — a career dealmaker — reports that the other side is lying and preparing to attack, the decision to act is not a policy preference. It is survival."  . . .   

Iran's Top 20 Attacks On The West   "Since the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 — when Democrat President Jimmy Carter capitulated to terrorism — no one has possessed the cojones to challenge Iran’s Islamic Death Cultists. Until now."