Trump’s approach still has time to blunder us into war
President Trump’s incoherent recklessness is not the only problem for American foreign policy dramatized last week. Also troubling is the eagerness of Republicans to fall in behind whatever he does and turn to demagoguery to paint his political opponents as traitors.
The surprise winner of the prize for the most mendacious and shameful partisan attack is former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley for her statement on the Democratic response to the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Many Republicans — and some outside the party’s ranks — once praised her for a certain measured independence and civility.
Not this time. “The only ones that are mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership and our Democrat presidential candidates,” Haley told Fox News. “No one else in the world.”
Wow. Clearly this is a politician who has decided there is no future in GOP politics for anyone but a Trumpian distorter of reality and divider of the American people, even at a moment of crisis.
Former Vice President Joe Biden explicitly said, “No American will mourn Qassem Soleimani’s passing.” He added that the Iranian had “supported terror and sowed chaos.”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren called Soleimani “a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans.” Warren and Biden reflected the tenor of comments from across their party.
At the heart of the Democrats’ criticisms is a proper warning against Trump’s preference for bombast and dramatic actions over sustainable foreign policy strategies. In conflating this with support for an enemy, Haley was engaging in a particularly egregious version of behavior that has become routine in her party.
Republicans keep trying to pretend they believe what Trump does is normal, and anyone who says otherwise is out of line.
Both the Iranian and Ukrainian affairs reveal who Trump is and how he behaves. What’s dangerous is not that he’s a hawk — or a dove. He’s not a foreign policy realist or a principled non-interventionist. He has absolutely no sense of what he is trying to do in the world. He’s just a jumble of bad and selfish instincts.
He acts less as a president than as a gamer. He loves to push buttons to do amazing things with our military prowess and then move on to something else. He also decides that certain people (usually dictators) are his friends and that these personal feelings take precedence over long established alliances with countries that share our values.
This incoherence may have one advantage for the rest of us: He seems to prefer the satisfactions of moving a joystick to the burdens of full-scale war. He wants to show his political base he’s a tough guy and an opponent of war at the same time. So, having taken out Soleimani, he used the opening that Iran’s limited retaliation offered to back off, at least for now.
His comments Wednesday were classic Trump: A lot of tough-sounding words, self-congratulation over Soleimani’s death and condemnations of earlier administrations for not doing what he did.
What he did not do was immediately threaten new military action. At least some around him seem to understand just how dangerous a situation Trump created.
His decision not to escalate is good news, but it’s far from the end of the story. Our enemies have a serious, long-term strategy. Trump doesn’t. And the president’s erratic approach could yet blunder our country into war.