Donald Trump, Interventionist
There is no real principle behind the president’s foreign policy. The war against Iran proves it.
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My break from the right had many causes, but it began over the Iraq War of 2003. I have never wavered in thinking the decision to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein was a terrible mistake—basically, the geopolitical equivalent of committing negligent homicide in an act of drunk driving. I came to that view very early, before the war had begun, at a time when I assumed Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. I thought he could be deterred—and doubted the post-invasion attempt to foster a stable democracy would be successful. My views obviously didn’t soften or reverse once we discovered there were no hidden stockpiles of weapons. Hussein had been bluffing—to deter Iran and other regional powers—and the bluff turned out to be far too convincing for the dictator’s own good.
Over the remainder of the Bush administration and then the entirety of the Obama administration, I listened to leading members of the Republican Party and its media cheerleaders stake out a position on foreign policy that was a grotesque caricature of Ronald Reagan’s stance toward the Soviet Union during the 1980s. Rather than blending principled strength with hard-nosed pragmatism, as Reagan did, we got poses of swaggering toughness, Manichean moralism, and the know-nothing presumption that anyone anywhere living under a tyrannical government was a little Thomas Jefferson in waiting, eager and able to found a stable democratic government and liberal society the moment the American cavalry rode to the rescue. It was childish and reckless—deployed more for domestic political consumption than emerging from an informed and thoughtful geopolitical strategy.
This is why, though never tempted to vote for Donald Trump, I nonetheless appreciated his willingness in 2016 to say that the Iraq War had been an unmitigated disaster. At the time, it felt like a dam breaking, and I cheered it on from the sidelines.
In retrospect, though, it’s kind of incredible that so many people thought that Trump was some kind of “isolationist.” What they failed to notice was the precise character of Trump’s criticism of Bush and the Iraq War. He never said we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq or toppled its government. He said, rather, that the war (by which he meant the years-long occupation, effort at nation- and democracy-building, and participation in the country’s bloody insurgency and civil war) had been a disaster, and that we had failed to “take the oil.”
Meaning: We should have withdrawn quickly and made a deal to pocket a pile of oil revenue as a fee for having rid Iraq of its Hussein problem.
Trump didn’t care if the country became a basket case. The fact that it did become one from roughly 2004 to 2009 only mattered because our troops were there. In place of Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule—“If you break it, you own it”—Trump would substitute an altogether different approach to the world: “If you break it, who gives a shit?”
What this war with Iran has revealed, in addition to confirming once again that the intelligence and military capabilities of the United States and Israel are quite impressive, is that a lot of right-leaning writers, analysts, and former public officials have learned exactly nothing over the past 23 years. Mike Pence, Jeb Bush, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, John Bolton—all of them, and many more, have despised the Iranian government for the past 47 years, and are now celebrating the president’s decapitation strike against the regime.
What should have been the chastening experience of Iraq doesn’t matter. What should have been the chastening experience of Afghanistan doesn’t matter. What should have been the chastening experience of Libya doesn’t matter. Every act of regime change is like the very first time, with the world created anew, from scratch, presenting a blank canvas on which American military power can and should paint a miracle. There is evil in the world, and it is America’s role to strike it down with righteous wrath. Even if Trump could not possibly care less what ultimately happens to the 93 million people who live in Iran. Even if he doesn’t so much as attempt to make the case for war to the American people. Even if he ignores Congress entirely. Even if he doesn’t pay the slightest lip service to the United Nations or international law. Even if he has no plans whatsoever for what should follow the American-led revolution.
Iran’s theocratic tyranny is bad. Therefore, overthrowing it is good. Full stop.
That really is the level of thinking we’re dealing with here. These people are prepared to defend any force willing to wipe it out—even if it’s the second Trump administration.
Intellectuals are people of ideas and reasoning. Their instinct is to tidy up an irritatingly messy world. But Trump’s actions cannot be coherently ordered and contained. When he humiliates Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, it looks like a victory for Vice President JD Vance’s preferred isolationism. When he captures Nicolás Maduro, it looks like a triumph for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s efforts to settle unfinished business from the aftermath of the Cold War. When he works with Israel to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it looks like the Bush-era neoconservatives are back, baby.
But none of that is true—or no more than momentarily so. What Trump wants above all is freedom of movement, the absence of constraints. He can be convinced to do almost anything, so long as it can be accomplished quickly and without him getting ensnared in a political trap. It’s not that Trump used to be an isolationist and now he’s been revealed to be a neocon. He’s just some guy doing stuff, making it up as he goes along.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after the commencement of the attack on Iran finds just 27 percent support for it. And that was before the deaths of four American soldiers were announced. No one should be surprised. Since 2008, with the partial exception of 2020, American voters have consistently favored presidential candidates who sold themselves as less inclined to opt for the use of military force than their opponents. And each time, the person who won the White House went on to govern in a more hawkish way than their campaigns suggested.
No wonder the electorate is in such an enduringly surly mood.
Trump 2.0 has been appalling on nearly every front. The attack on Iran isn’t an exception to the unfolding disaster. It’s just its latest chapter.
Damon Linker writes the Substack newsletter “Notes from the Middleground.” He is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.
A version of this article was originally published at Notes from the Middleground.
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This is braindead. There is nothing but principle behind Trumps foreign policy. The move to take out the Iran theocratic regime that has terrorized the free world for 47 years is nothing but based on principles.
This Substack is becoming just standard leftist propaganda lacking any attempt at infusing logos into the mix. It is just attracting the hysterical, hyperbolic consumer of emotional sensationalism to back their Orange Man Bad syndrome sickness.
Americans are rightly averse to foreign interventions having learned from the past. But to never pursue goals abroad under any circumstances, even when the costs are minimal, is not a principal but weakness.
Iraq wasn't bad because interventions are always bad, but because that one cost us a lot and achieved very little. Conversely, taking out Maduro, Iran's nuclear facility, and supreme leader all in a few hours each with minimal casualties is something else entirely.
Still plenty of time for all of these to go south, but for right now it seems like his principal might be a basic cost benefit analysis.