America’s military power is consistently regarded as the strongest on the planet. Considered together with its leading allies, the American alliance system includes five of the world’s top ten militaries, plus eight more from among the top thirty. In stark contrast, the opposing alliance system led by Russia and China includes only those two from among the top ten, plus just one more – Iran – from among the top thirty.
On paper, this tally suggests an enormously lopsided military predominance by the Western alliance system. Yet it does not feel that way to many Western observers. Why?
Part of the answer may involve the two great geopolitical challenges that have emerged since 2001, which disrupted the prior decade’s “Unipolar moment” of American global hegemony. That Unipolar moment lasted twelve years, from the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 to the mass terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The two great challenges responsible for that disruption include a dramatic expansion in the reach of global terrorism, as exemplified by the 9/11 attacks; and the ascent of China to the role of economic and military superpower.
But as the above-cited statistics on military power make clear, those two challenges still fall far short of displacing the dominant, American-led Western alliance. What makes this alliance appear more vulnerable than it actually is has more to do with the West’s, and particularly America’s, misuse of its geopolitical power. In sum, America has squandered a substantial portion of its deterrent capacity by a series of unforced errors over the past half century. Most if not all of those errors fall into two categories: winning major wars then surrendering the peace; and efforts to appease global rivals that have encouraged more aggression by those adversaries.
The remainder of this essay documents and analyzes those errors in four parts, which respectively address: (1) America’s surrender of hard-won victories in three of its recent major wars; (2) America’s efforts to appease violent and expansionist rivals, which have only emboldened them; (3) America’s current effort to impose both of those strategic errors onto Israel amid the latter’s multifront war for survival; and (4) pertinent lessons drawn from this history of errors.
Winning Wars Then Surrendering the Peace
America has fought four major overseas wars since 1960. In three – Vietnam, Iraq II, and Afghanistan – America and its local ally established clear military predominance. But in all three conflicts, America squandered its victories as a result of civilian leaders’ decisions to “cut-and-run.” Conventional wisdom among many foreign policy scholars portrays those interventions as doomed to failure from the start. But upon closer examination, the reality in each case is far more nuanced.
In Vietnam, America sought to defend the South against a communist takeover from the North, paralleling its prior successful defense of South Korea. A detailed study of the war by military historian Lewis Sorley demonstrates that by late 1970 “the war was won. . . . By then the South Vietnamese countryside had been widely pacified,” largely owing to South Vietnam’s armed forces. South Vietnam now had the capacity, “without help from U.S. ground forces . . . of resisting aggression [from the North], so long as America continued to provide logistical and financial support” along with supplemental air power. Polling data also showed that an “overwhelming majority of South Vietnam’s population – somewhere around 95 percent” – preferred their current government to the North’s Communist alternative.
This arrangement proved its effectiveness in 1972, when North Vietnam launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam. With South Vietnam’s army in the lead, backed by American supplies and air power, the North’s invasion was decisively defeated. At the end of the year the South was secure, the war was effectively over, and “American forces were nearly all gone . . . .” By January 1973 the North had signed a peace agreement and America’s last ground troops were home.
But within just two months, North Vietnam brazenly broke the peace, commencing a mass invasion “pouring into South Vietnam.” And instead of America’s supporting the South to counter this blatant treaty abrogation, Congress as of August 1973 cut off all funding for U.S. military assistance. It took two more years of ruthless fighting by the well-supplied North Vietnamese, but by 1975 the supply-starved South fell to the Communist North. The catastrophic aftermath of that fall includes hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese tortured in “reeducation camps,” and upwards of three million Southeast Asian refugees over the next two decades.
A similar pattern of victory-and-abandonment characterized America’s second Iraq War, which commenced in 2003. To be clear, the initial defeat of Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship was promptly followed by a flawed occupation. The most consequential blunder was the decision to disband the entire Iraqi army, “which provided a steady stream of armed young men for an insurgency led by the remnants of the Baath Party and al-Qaeda.” But following a two-year troop surge and strategy shift starting in 2007, “by January 2009, [monthly] casualties declined from 2,693 to 372 civilians and from 101 to 14 US troops; violent incidents declined from 908 to 195.”
This defeat of the al Qaeda insurgents was robust: “by the end of 2011, trend lines indicated efforts to stabilize Iraq were on target . . . .” U.S. commanders estimated that 20,000 U.S. troops were needed to hold the peace – notably fewer than the number of U.S. troops still serving in each of Germany (approx. 34,000), Japan (approx. 38,000), and South Korea (approx. 24,000), decades after the respective ends of the wars that first brought them there, namely, World War II and the Korean War.
But in 2010, America made a fateful decision that predictably sabotaged the enormously costly progress of the prior seven years. The decision involved Iraq’s 2010 national election, in which a multi-ethnic party, “Iraqiya,” led by a secular Shiite candidate, squared off against a sectarian Shia party, “State of Law,” led by the incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki was backed by the extremist Iranian government. Iraqiya won a two-seat parliamentary margin – a major victory for pluralism in Iraq’s fledgling democracy – but Maliki refused to step down.
Both U.S. military leaders and civilian advisors on the ground warned the Obama administration that Maliki, as a sectarian ally of Iran, was planning to turn against Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds (and America) and trigger a new civil war. Hence, they urged the administration to support Iraqiya’s victory and stop Iran’s election theft. But two months after the vote, America’s Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, told U.S. force commanders “that Iraq is not ready for democracy, that Iraq needs a Shia strongman. And Maliki is our man.” Hence America let Maliki, and Iran, steal the election.
Whether President Obama’s ongoing efforts to develop an entente with Iran influenced that catastrophic choice remains to be determined. But in any event, as predicted, Maliki shredded the constitution and commenced a crackdown on Iraq’s Sunni population, jailing thousands without trial and shutting them out of governance. Maliki’s brutal crackdown re-ignited the sectarian hatreds that America and its allies had worked so hard to defuse by 2010. The predicted outbreak of violent Sunni opposition to the Iraqi government soon emerged in the worst form imaginable, namely, the mass-murdering and mass-torturing Sunni ISIS caliphate.
Maliki, as an Iranian proxy, also demanded a complete withdrawal of American troops just when they were most needed to counter his incitement of a new civil war. The Obama administration appeared to favor this outcome, having rejected the military’s assessment that 20,000 troops were needed to keep the peace, and having already cut the troop numbers down to 5,000.
Hence in Iraq as in Vietnam, America set in motion a chain of events that forced another “cut and run” scenario, in which excruciatingly hard-fought military gains were squandered on the eve of victory, leaving a legacy of renewed mass slaughter and misery in its wake.
America’s war in Afghanistan again replicated this victory-and-abandonment pattern. Just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, a U.S.-led international force invaded Afghanistan to eliminate both its jihadist government, the Taliban, and the al Qaeda terrorist organization hosted and based there, which had perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and several other bombings around the world. The Taliban leadership was soon deposed, but it regrouped over the border in Pakistan and waged an insurgency for several years.
The U.S.-led international force peaked at 130,000 troops in 2010-2011 and was gradually drawn down thereafter. In February 2020, with troop levels between 12,000 and 13,000, the United States and the Taliban bilaterally negotiated the terms of a further American troop drawdown. The agreement required the United States to withdraw all troops by April 2021, and required the Taliban to “prevent any groups, including Al Qaeda, from threatening the United States or its allies by not allowing those groups to reside, train, or fundraise in Afghanistan.”
U.S. officials reported throughout 2020 that the Taliban “were not in full compliance with the agreement” but the troop drawdown nonetheless continued, reaching just 2,500 by January 2021. In April President Biden ordered the removal of all remaining troops by September 11, 2021. The final withdrawal ended in chaos and surrender. Between August 6 and August 15, the Taliban captured nearly every regional capital, and on August 15 they captured the national capital, Kabul, completing their takeover of the country.
Much as in Iraq, the President had been repeatedly warned of the dangers of a total troop withdrawal. In late 2020 a Congressionally-appointed panel known as the Afghanistan Study Group publicly opposed pulling out the last 2,500 American troops, in order to prevent the country’s resurgence as “a safe haven for terrorists . . . .” The month after the Taliban takeover, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and Central Command Chief Gen. Frank McKenzie both testified that they had advised keeping “several thousand troops” in Afghanistan to prevent such an outcome.
Within a year, all the dire warnings about a Taliban takeover had materialized. As summarized by the International Center for Counter-Terrorism:
The Taliban are brutally repressing the Afghan population, are running the economy into the ground, and are destabilizing the region through their involvement in (or acquiescence towards) drugs and arms trafficking. In addition, they have turned Afghanistan into a safe haven for all kinds of jihadist groups.
Appeasing Adversaries and Hence Inviting Aggression
The Afghanistan surrender is the most egregious of several recent foreign policy errors that have eroded America’s deterrent posture. This is especially significant amid what many regard as a new global Cold War, in which America and its democratic allies confront an axis of expansionist autocracies led by China, Russia, and Iran. This erosion of deterrence correlates with the subsequent outbreak of proxy wars between those two alliances, both in Ukraine (2022) and Gaza/Israel (2023), and further risks a third such war across the straits of Taiwan.
This discussion examines three catastrophic consequences occasioned by America’s diminished deterrence, all of which were preceded by gestures of appeasement: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; Iran’s bid for hegemony in the Middle East; and the web of Palestinian terror groups threatening and attacking Israel.
Firstly, as regards Russia/Ukraine, the erosion of Western deterrence was set in motion back in 1994, after the Soviet Union’s breakup left an independent Ukraine holding 1,900 nuclear weapons. Under intense pressure from the United States, Ukraine agreed that year to enter into the “Budapest Memorandum,” by which it surrendered those weapons back to Russia in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and Britain.
Twenty years later, America publicly displayed the worthlessness of those security guarantees. In February 2014, Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded and seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, with its strategically important Sevastopol Navy base. As the late Charles Krauthammer put it, the Obama administration issued a “pathetic response,” refusing Ukraine’s request for military assistance and offering instead only “military ration kits.” Russia promptly annexed Crimea.
Seven years later the Biden administration took three actions that again telegraphed American weakness vis-à-vis Russia. First, in May 2021, President Biden unilaterally lifted American sanctions against Russia’s effort to complete its Nordstream II natural gas pipeline, which pipeline would increase Europe’s dependence on Russian energy supplies. Then in August 2021 came President Biden’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, surrendering the country to the Taliban. Finally in January 2022, as Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s border, President Biden publicly declared that NATO might not respond to a “minor incursion” by Russia. The next month, Russia launched its war to expand its Ukrainian land seizures.
Secondly, as regards Iran, the reality is that America – specifically, the Obama and Biden administrations – has manifested an even more blatant pattern of appeasement, despite Iran’s long record of aggression against the West and its allies. As the United States Institute of Peace explains, “Iran has engaged in a shadow war with both the United States and Israel in the Middle East dating back to the early 1980s.” Although called a “shadow war,” its lethality is real: Iran financed and orchestrated the 1983 murder of 258 U.S. marines and diplomats in Beirut, and the Pentagon estimates that Iranian proxies were responsible for one of every six American fatalities in the second Iraq War.
Iran-backed proxies now control Syria (the Assad regime), Lebanon (Hezbollah), parts of Iraq (the Badr militia), and are battling for control of Yemen (the Houthis) and the Palestinian territories (Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad). Hence it should be no surprise that for years, Iran has topped America’s annual list of state terrorism sponsors. Worse, Iran has long sought to develop nuclear weapons, and now is close to deploying them.
Against this background, the Obama administration and Iran entered into the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA) in 2015, allegedly stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for America’s ending sanctions, which gave Iran access to over $50 billion in previously frozen assets. But in fact the JCPOA did not stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program; it merely imposed a temporary delay, and then only if Iran actually complied with the deal. It almost certainly did not, as the JCPOA lacked a viable enforcement mechanism: the agreement barred “no notice” inspections, which left Iran free to conceal its continued development of nuclear weapons. Moreover, intelligence later obtained by Israel confirmed that Iran had extensively lied throughout the JCPOA negotiations.
Based on such concerns, the Trump administration in 2018 withdrew from the JCPOA and imposed a comprehensive array of sanctions. Iran’s oil sales plummeted, and its foreign exchange reserves were virtually exhausted by the end of Trump’s Presidency.
But the subsequent Biden administration, in a futile effort to resurrect the flawed JCPOA, unilaterally stopped enforcing sanctions against Iran’s oil sales. Since then Iran’s oil exports have massively increased, yielding Iran an estimated $100 billion in revenues it otherwise would not have obtained. Consequently, as former State Department official Brian Hook reports:
[Iran’s] [o]il proceeds finance militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen. They target and kill American citizens. In January [2024], Iranian proxies killed three American soldiers stationed in Jordan. Hezbollah receives $700 million a year from Tehran. Iran’s oil supported the Hamas death squads that carried out the Oct. 7 [2023] massacre[s] [in southern Israel].
In sum, as Iran expert Jason Brodsky concludes, “U.S. deterrence against Iran has been dangerously eroded.” The Biden administration’s dismantling of Iran sanctions has helped finance Iran’s violent bid for regional hegemony across the Middle East. This creates existential risks for America’s two key Middle East allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. It cannot help but make several more allies question the reliability of partnering with America.
Thirdly, as regards the Palestinian territories, American aid to both the Palestinian Authority and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has helped finance a long-running wave of terror by Palestinian entities targeting Israel. Remarkably, aid to the Palestinian Authority has continued even after the October 7 Hamas massacres, despite clear public evidence of its role in both promoting terror and rewarding the October 7 terrorists.
To be clear, the Palestinian leadership has been offered an actual sovereign state six times over the past 85 years. Israel has endorsed every such offer; the Palestinian leaders have rejected each of them. Those rejections are no coincidence: Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas seek not two states but rather the eradication of Israel by a Palestinian terror-state. This is robustly evidenced by both groups’ relentless indoctrination of their populations in Jew-hatred and terror-worship. Their schools, media, mosques, and civic ceremonies are thoroughly inundated with such incitement.
In fact, the Palestinian Authority has for years awarded life pensions to terrorists for successfully murdering Israelis, with the pension amount increased for each additional kill. The P.A.’s total annual expenditure on those “pay-for-slay” pensions regularly exceeds $300 million. That total now includes a further 3,550 Hamas terrorist pensioners, recently added to the rolls as a reward for their participation in the October 7, 2023, mass slaughters and rapes of innocent Israelis.
American foreign aid has greatly contributed to this industry of terror. Just between 2012 and 2019, U.S. aid to the P.A. averaged between $250 and $500 million annually, for an eight-year total of over $2.5 billion. Between 1990 and 2017, America also gave a total of over $4.7 billion to the Palestinian welfare agency known as UNRWA, to support its schools and refugee camps across the West Bank and Gaza. All of the latter institutions similarly indoctrinate their beneficiaries in Jew-hate and terror-worship.
For those reasons, in 2018 Congress passed and the Trump administration enforced the “Taylor Force Act,” codified in the U.S. Code at Title 22, section 2378c–1. This law conditions aid to the P.A. and P.L.O. on those organizations (a) ending all reward payments for acts of terror, (b) publicly condemning (instead of celebrating) such acts, and (c) taking credible steps to end such terror attacks. To that end, the Trump administration in 2018 cut off all American aid to both the P.A. and UNRWA.
But soon after taking office in 2021, the Biden administration reversed those decisions and restored aid to the P.A. in direct violation of the Taylor Force Act. As one journalist put it, “[w]eeks later, rockets were again landing on Israelis and the region was at war.” The Biden administration also restored funding to UNRWA, which beyond educating Palestinian children in Jew-hate and terror-worship, has now been documented as extensively assisting Hamas’s stockpiling and concealing weapons for its ongoing terror-war against Israel.
In sum, despite America’s oft-proclaimed commitment to countering global terrorism, its policies of appeasement vis-à-vis both Iran and the Palestinian leaders have incentivized and helped fund those regimes’ extensive waves of terror. This also has enabled Iran’s violent bid for regional hegemony across the Middle East.
Taken together, America’s surrender of its victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with its gestures of appeasement vis-à-vis both Russia and the Islamist axis of terror, have collectively undermined the West’s deterrent posture toward geopolitical adversaries. This is why, despite the clear military superiority of the American-led alliance structure, many observers perceive this alliance as increasingly vulnerable, and the world as increasingly dangerous. Faced with expansionist aggression from Russia, Iran, and China, America has conveyed a message of weakness, dangerously heightening the prospects of great power warfare.
Efforts to Impose this Failure Pattern Upon Israel
Despite abundant evidence of the above-described policies’ failures, America’s governing class not only continues to embrace such policies, but also seeks to impose them upon our most embattled ally, Israel.
Unlike America, Israel is encircled by ring of genocidal adversaries, which includes: Hezbollah to the north; both the Syrian regime and its several Iran-backed terror militias to the northeast; the West Bank’s P.L.O./Fatah terror gangs to the immediate east; Iran and its Iraq-based terror militias to the farther east (across the buffer of Jordan); the Houthi terror-regime to the far southeast; and the remnants of Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad in Gaza to the southwest. Since October 2023, Israel has had to fight a multifront war waged by all those adversaries simultaneously.
Every one of those antagonists has made abundantly clear in its public declarations that there is no room for compromise with Israel, nothing to be gained by negotiation, and no genuine peace or security from their occasional “cease fire” offers. They are all committed to the annihilation of Israel, and their actions demonstrate the seriousness of this commitment. Every past battle-pause, ceasefire, and peace offer has been followed by renewed threats and aggression. Accordingly, and much like the threats posed to the free world by Germany and Japan in World War II, Israel’s long-term survival depends upon the total defeat of those annihilationist adversaries.
This reality was made undeniably clear from October 7, 2023, when Hamas, which is Iran’s proxy in Gaza, stormed Israel’s southwest border, brutally slaughtering over 1,200 innocents and dragging 251 hostages into Gaza’s underground dungeons. It was made even more obvious the next day, October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanon proxy, launched its near-constant barrage of missile and drone attacks across northern Israel, totaling more than 10,000 strikes over the past year.
But somehow those obvious lessons were lost on the Biden administration’s national security team. Despite maintaining Israel’s weapons supply (albeit with some highly public supply “pauses”), team Biden has repeatedly and publicly pressured Israel not to win the war launched by Hamas, not to win the war launched by Hezbollah, and not to win the broader war coordinated and financed by Iran. Historian Niall Ferguson cogently sums up the Biden administration’s constant outflow of misguided military advice to Israel:
The White House said don’t go into Gaza. Israel did, and in a sustained campaign killed a high proportion of Hamas fighters. Team Biden-Harris said don’t go into Rafah. Israel ignored those warnings, too, and in February liberated two hostages there. Ten days ago, a routine Israeli patrol in Rafah spotted the mastermind of the massacre, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed soon after. Washington said don’t send troops into Lebanon. Israel sent them anyway and in a matter of weeks has inflicted severe damage on Hezbollah’s positions there.
Biden and Harris said “Ceasefire now!” but Israel had no interest in a ceasefire that gave Hamas breathing space to regroup. Finally, the U.S. warned against Israel directly attacking Iran. An as yet unidentified U.S. government official even appears to have leaked Israel’s plans to Tehran – a scandal that ought to be front-page news. You know what happened next.
Commentator Douglas Murray captures both the folly and the danger of America’s effort to impose this pattern of military failure upon Israel: “Israel seems to be the only country in the world never allowed to win a conflict. It is allowed to fight a conflict to a draw, but rarely to a win. Which is one reason why the wars keep occurring.” In sum, the Biden national security team, having done so much to erode America’s own deterrent posture, now pressures Israel to adopt a similar pattern of surrendering military victories, which would likewise erode its critically important deterrent posture.
Behind this ill-advised pressure on Israel is a dangerously flawed strategic vision of Middle East policy, one embraced by both the Obama and Biden administrations. Michael Doran, a former Mideast Policy director at the National Security Council, has compellingly explained this vision. Its core premise is a misguided belief in the possibility of entering an American-Iran entente, followed by an American drawdown of Middle East deployments and commitments. Doran points out that the price of achieving this entente is exceedingly high, yet is consistently reflected in both the Obama and Biden administrations’ efforts to appease Iran, namely: (1) abandoning the effort to push back and contain Iranian influence across the region; (2) allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons (provided Iran crosses that threshold only after their Presidential terms have ended); and hence (3) effectively granting Iran principal hegemony over the Middle East.
Pertinent Lessons
One could write an entire book about how America’s foreign policy establishment came to embrace the dangerous and self-defeating policies catalogued here, and what lessons should be derived from this history of cumulative error. Several if not all of those lessons would draw upon the following two sets of core principles.
First, America’s foreign policy establishment needs to recover an understanding of the primary importance of, and the constant need to maintain, deterrence vis-à-vis global adversaries; and it must consistently shape the nation’s foreign engagements in accordance with this understanding.
Central to that principle is the reality that compromise and even appeasement do periodically have a role to play in foreign policy, but that those tactics can be successfully deployed only in dealings among countries that mutually operate within a culture of fair play, reciprocity, and respect for a rules-based international order. Most of America’s adversaries and even some of its supposed allies operate outside that culture. As to such entities, appeasement serves only to embolden them, which thus incentivizes their tendencies toward hostile aggression. A sustainable peace with such antagonists demands robust and constant deterrence. This can be achieved only by an unwavering maintenance of superior military, economic, and diplomatic power, and by a publicly demonstrated readiness to deploy it against all hostile actors. In other words, the ancient Roman maxim still holds true: “Si vis pacem, para bellum,” that is, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” More succinctly, “Peace through strength.”
Second, America’s foreign policy establishment needs to recover an understanding of how a sustainable peace is fashioned from the aftermath of war; and it must orient both its own warfighting strategy and its support for allies’ warfighting efforts in ways that are consistent with that understanding.
Central to that principle are two core insights drawn from the study of warfare. The first was derived by military historian Geoffrey Blainey, based on his comprehensive study of every international war since 1700. Among Blainey’s key findings was this: the more decisive the wartime victory, the more robust was the subsequent peace; and the less decisive the victory, the more precarious was the postwar peace. In Blainey’s own words: “the weight of evidence suggests that . . . a decisive victory tends to promote a more enduring peace.” Moreover, as the peace that followed World War II manifestly demonstrates, the decisiveness of the victory cannot be limited to the military battle space. To be sustainable, the victory must include the ideological battle space. In postwar Germany, this meant expunging supremacist Nazi ideology from the schools and media, as was done by the allied occupation forces. This lesson is especially salient vis-à-vis today’s Middle East.
The second core insight draws from America’s own experience in foreign wars over recent decades. It becomes apparent when one compares the outcomes of, on the one hand, Germany, Japan, and South Korea after their respective mid-twentieth century wars, and on the other hand, the aftermaths of America’s more recent wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. As noted earlier in this essay, after each of the first listed set of wars, America maintained a robust troop presence in each of those countries for over six decades, continuing right up to the present. This includes approximately 34,000 troops in Germany, 38,000 in Japan, and 24,000 in South Korea. With a strong American presence helping to maintain the peace, each of those countries not only flourished in the aftermath of war, but also became strong, loyal, and democratic allies within the larger Western democratic order.
In stark contrast, as also noted above, America prematurely withdrew all its troops from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan on the cusp of victory, even while the defeated enemy remained active and spoiling for a rematch. Bereft of American support, all three countries promptly relapsed into violence, and all eventually landed far outside the Western democratic alliance system.
The lesson from those historical realities is now especially relevant to the outcome of Israel’s current wars in Gaza and south Lebanon. Regrettably, the Biden administration has continued to manifest its strategic ignorance in warning Israel against an interim occupation of postwar Gaza. Were Israel to succumb to that pressure, Gaza would likely soon revert to its prewar status as a breeding ground of genocidal terrorism.
The Biden administration’s dangerously misguided pressure on Israel amid its multifront war for survival is just the most recent example of America’s long neglect of the above-summarized principles of deterrence and warfighting. Over the past half century, this neglect has come at great cost to both America and its putative wartime allies. Bringing America’s military and diplomatic practices back into alignment with those principles would do much to enhance the defense of freedom and the pursuit of peace. America and its allies undoubtedly have the resources to do this. What has been all too often lacking is a proper strategic orientation and the will to carry it out.
Fortunately, America’s November election appears to have endorsed both the needed strategy and the national will to deploy it. President-elect Trump’s decisive victory bears the hallmarks of a clear mandate for change, including putting back peace-through-strength as our core foreign policy orientation. Both Trump and his prospective national security team – including such nominees as Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and John Ratcliffe – are all strong advocates of robust deterrence policy. Trump’s advisors already have signaled that he will be reinstating a “maximum pressure” campaign against the Iranian regime, and Trump himself has voiced support for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons development sites.
In sum, America now stands on the threshold of a rare opportunity to reorient its geopolitical strategy in exactly the direction needed to ensure the security and flourishing of the free world. The incoming Trump administration appears ready to seize that opportunity. Let us hope that they do.
Henry Kopel is a former U.S. federal prosecutor and the author of the book War on Hate: How to Stop Genocide, Fight Terrorism, and Defend Freedom. Kopel is an honors graduate of Brandeis University, Oxford University, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and is an annual guest lecturer on prosecuting hate crimes at the University of Connecticut Law School. He serves on the global advisory board for the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.