Trump doctrine stirs echoes of Iraq War

Mike Pompeo, the CIA director, whom Trump has nominated to be secretary of state, is very smart — and very hawkish on Iran. Moreover, Trump is replacing his national security adviser, H.R. Mcmaster, with John Bolton, who is not a mere hawk so much as a pterosaur.

The final risk, of course, is a war with North Korea. We may have a reprieve for a couple of months if Trump’s face-to-face with Kim Jong Un goes ahead, but I think Americans are too reassured by the prospect of a summit meeting.

The basic problem: There’s almost no chance that North Korea will agree to the kind of verifiable denuclearization that Trump talks about. Then the danger is that if a summit collapses, there’s no room to restart the process with lower-level diplomats. At that point, the risk of military conflict soars because all alternatives seem exhausted.

Moreover, Trump’s snap decision to accept Kim’s invitation to meet underscores the risk of a mercurial president leaping into actions — which is one of the reasons we got into the mess in Iraq. The temptation to fire missiles at North Korea or Iran may also be particularly great for a president seeking to distract from a Russia investigation or an outspoken porn actress.

These fears of conflict aren’t found just among Democrats but are broadly shared by many foreign policy analysts across the spectrum. Kori Schake, who worked in the Bush White House during the Iraq War, notes that Trump sometimes has spoken about North Korea the way Bush administration officials did about Iraq, and she adds: “I worry that President Trump could lead to war on the Korean Peninsula or against Iran, or by miscalculation in a number of other places where adversaries misread his intent. The president considers his unpredictability advantageous, when it is more likely to have explosive consequences.”

Looking back, the biggest problem 15 years ago was that the administration was stuck in an echo chamber and far too optimistic, and Democrats and the news media alike mostly rolled over. Journalists too often acted as lap dogs, not watchdogs — and today I fear that we may be so busy chasing the latest shiny object that we miss an abyss ahead.

I also frankly doubt that we as a nation have learned the lesson from Iraq. A recent Pew survey found that 43 percent of Americans still believe that invading Iraq was the correct decision.

Hello?