(Post on June 19, 2025, before US air and naval cruise missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities)
Donald Trump has the ball on the 10-yard line, just 10 yards away from the winning touchdown. However, the braggart quarterback, the Deshaun Watson of political football, is mistake prone. Will he fumble the ball, be befuddled by the cacophony of bad advice in the huddle, or throw an interception? The allegory describes the situation facing Trump in the broader Ukraine-Iran-Taiwan conflict. At stake is success in the looming face-off with the dangerous ChiComs.
Will he blow it? Probably, if he listens to Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, VP Vance, and the rest of the MAGA-adjacent crowd who are paralyzed in fear by their version of the old Vietnam Syndrome, the Iraq Syndrome. Every conflict is imagined to be Iraq all over again. Trump is already preternaturally inclined to a kind of right-wing pacificism due to his loud commitment to no more “forever wars”.
But not all wars are “forever wars”. Many are one-and-done, quick strikes, no boots on the ground, what one 19th-century British wag referred to, in their Frontier Wars, as “butcher-and-bolt” affairs. And that leaves aside the mangling of the history of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, which is necessary to make the story fit the debilitating prescription of conflict avoidance at all costs.
Right now, Trump has the golden opportunity to clear the field for a genuine pivot to Asia. Putin is bogged down in Ukraine. The mullahs are on the cusp of collapse. They could go with their nuclear program. All that is needed is cementing a broad coalition to feed more aid to Ukraine, drop a few GBU-57 MOPs on Fordow, and construct a parameter of allies around China. America doesn’t have to do it all. It can be done on the cheap if Trump doesn’t blow it in pacifism and trade wars.
Today, there appears to be sweaty palms and hand-wringing in the administration over airstrikes to finish off the ayatollahs’ nuclear ambitions. Whether the regime survives or not is beside the point. So, this won’t be “regime change”, which by the way would be a pleasant thought, nonetheless. Pleasant but not necessary. Leave it to the millions of the disaffected in the country to deal with. Chaos or no, gone will be a nuclear-armed “Death to America”.
Elbridge Colby, the number two at Defense, is known for his insistence on a pivot to Asia. Well, stop the tariff campaign against friends, the threats to allies like Denmark over Greenland, the sideshow of militarily menacing Panama, and the belittling of allies that you’ll need to corral China like Australia and the rest of the AUKUS coalition. And stop the Putin pandering (It’s absolutely shameful.) and funnel more coalition support to Ukraine. Clear the decks to be better able to confront Communist China and leave no brush fires burning behind the lines. Burdens are shared giving us time and resources to build up.
Trump, drop the MOPs and get out. Is that so difficult?
RogerG