2

Key Term: Gunboat Diplomacy
Context: Tehran On Notice

The Iranian opposition — which has staged mass demonstrations across the country over the previous week — was quick to take note of Trump’s stunning move, says Beni Sabti, an Iran expert at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies.

“Although it’s unlikely, many people there dream of the Americans doing the same for Khamenei. That’s one of a few reasons why these protests feel different. Another is the fact that security forces haven’t really cracked down despite the demonstrators’ violence. And a third is that these demonstrators started with the “bazaaris” — the merchant class who have previously stayed faithful to the regime. The business community, which recently lost access to cheap foreign currency, feels betrayed by the regime and for the first time has turned on the government.”

The very fact that Ayatollah Khamenei can’t sleep easily at night is a marker of how rattled are the people in Trump’s crosshairs by his turn to gunboat diplomacy. The style of imperial foreign policy last practiced by European powers in the 19th century has shocked Western allies who see an untrammeled America riding roughshod over friend and foe alike.

But Western leaders who bleat about international law fail to understand the signal salient fact about the new world: The liberal world order is a boat that sailed so long ago that it’s now a naval museum in dry dock.

And the very people protesting about liberal norms did the most to send that system to a watery grave.

3

Key Term: Revanchism
Context: Challenge to the West

To understand what lies at the heart of Trump II, think back three decades to the rise of the anti-American axis that Donald Trump is challenging.

Revisionism, or “revanchism” — from the French for revenge — is a dynamic playing out in foreign policy as adversaries seek to topple the American-led world order.

Revenge and retribution are powerful forces in world affairs. French bitterness at losing the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany bled into World War I, and German resentment over the Treaty of Versailles led to World War II. Argentinian bitterness at losing an island to Britain led to the 1982 Falklands War. China’s “Century of Humiliation” as it was preyed on by foreign powers has led to the bitterness of its campaign to reassert itself.

Anti-American bitterness came to a head after the 1991 Gulf War, when the United States, acting as Global Sheriff, marshalled a coalition of countries to invade Saddam’s Iraq for disturbing world peace by gobbling up Kuwait.

Disturbed by the contemptuous ease with which America had steamrolled the powerful Iraqi army, America’s foes vowed to humble Uncle Sam by investing in their military capabilities and working together.

China in particular, was spurred into action by a further humiliation in 1996, when Bill Clinton ordered the US Navy to sail through the Straits of Taiwan to stop Communist saber-rattling against Taipei. The sense of impotence against American naval power within sight of China’s coastline acted as a spur for a massive rearmament drive. Today, the US Navy fears a clash with its Chinese counterpart, as China heads a revanchist bloc which challenges US dominance.

4

Key Term: Return of Geopolitics
Context: American Weakness

2014, wrote American strategist Walter Russell Mead, was the year in which old-fashioned power politics returned with a vengeance. It was Russia that first tested the waters and showed the revisionists who had never accepted the post-Cold War settlement that the American giant was stumbling.

Putin started with rhetoric, telling the 2007 Munich Security Conference that American hegemony was illegitimate. “I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world,” he said. “The United States has overstepped its national borders in every way.”

Putin followed up in 2008 by invading Georgia. The only response was a mild rebuke from George W. Bush, a man too thoroughly scalded by his wars in the Middle East to act against Russian aggression in the heart of Europe.

Taking note of American hesitancy, China quietly started to build up its presence in its own backyard by constructing artificial islands to project power through international waters.

5

Key Term: Iran-Russia Axis
Context: Syrian Civil War

The revolt against Bashar Al-Assad that began in 2011 provided the impetus for the anti-American axis to start acting in concert.

Iran began sending troops to Syria in 2012 to prop up its dictator. Emboldened by the lack of response by the Obama administration which was in the market for a nuclear deal, the Iranians ramped up the operation. That led to a full-fledged Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut corridor which allowed Iran to project power all the way to the Mediterranean. That, in turn, posed a mortal threat to Israel, as seen on October 7.

Russia was drawn in to the project when Obama blinked. Having drawn an explicit red line in 2012 over the use of poison gas by Assad, the American president failed to enforce it when the Syrian dictator used it in 2013.

That had two direct consequences, according to many analysts: Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and entered the Syrian civil war in 2015.

With America’s foes acting with impunity, the post-Cold War settlement was dead.

6

Key Term: Brain-Dead NATO
Context: Trump’s Rise

For advocates of the old system, the rise of Donald Trump — the first US president to question the value of NATO — was a shock. Trump made it clear that if Western allies didn’t step up with massive checks in defense spending, they were on their own.

The undermining of the old order that the revisionist powers had set afoot was completed by the new “America First” doctrine.

Saying the quiet part out loud, in 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “we are experiencing the brain death of NATO.”

Trump’s first term clarified brutally for many allies how different things were. Europeans were shocked by Trump’s warm words for Vladimir Putin and cold shoulder to their own leaders.

In 2019, Saudi Arabia was shocked when the US failed to respond to a major Iranian attack that knocked much of Saudi oil production off line. The Saudis reacted by turning towards China.

Erdogan’s Turkey continued its long drift from the West by purchasing Russian air defense systems — a breach of its NATO obligations.

In reality, America First wasn’t a complete abandonment of its allies — it was a reordering of priorities. Under Trump, America would help those who helped themselves. It would abandon any romantic visions of liberal internationalism in favor of a hardheaded look at what benefited America.

It would also do the unthinkable, such as the 2018 Jerusalem embassy move or the 2020 killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards boss Qasem Soleimani, if they provided deterrence at low cost.

7

Key Term: “America Is Back”
Context: Ukraine War

Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was an all-out assault on the last vestiges of the liberal world order. The inauguration of Joe Biden — in many ways an extension of Obama’s tenure — was meant to usher in a return to a traditional American foreign policy.

“America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy,” Biden said in 2021. “The adults are back,” was another version popular among Obama alums.

But then the adults lost Afghanistan in a fiasco of a withdrawal that humiliated America.

The result wasn’t long in coming. By the end of 2021, Biden was reduced to commentating on Vladimir Putin’s impending assault on Ukraine.

Both American and European foreign policy establishments embraced the Ukrainian cause, arming Zelenskyy’s plucky army. But Biden blinked. Deterred by Putin’s nuclear threats, he slow-walked the deployment of game-changing armaments and Ukraine lost the strategic window to knock Russia out of the war while it was weak. Having failed to go for the jugular, Biden’s foreign policy was toast.

Meanwhile, the revisionist axis fought back. North Korea sent shells and manpower to Russia; Iran supplied the game-changing weapon of drones; and China traded with sanctions-hit Russia and provided intelligence. Russia now holds the cards, and the last hurrah of the old order has faded to a whimper.

8

Key Terms: America First
Context: Trump’s Return

Donald Trump’s base may care more about the price of gas than the fate of foreign countries, but their leader doesn’t see things that way. Comeback Trump is intent on fleshing out the details of America First as a wider strategy.

Much as neo-isolationists like Steve Bannon detest it, Trump’s instincts are to actively engage with the world on America’s terms to shape it.

Hence the talk of seizing Greenland — Danish territory — because it is in the crosshairs of Russia and China who want to access minerals and threaten the US.

Trump’s dramatic bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities last July fits that wider strategy. A shocking escalation, it was designed to force expansionist Iran back into its box, provide leverage for regional peace, and signal global US resolve — all for the cost of a daring mission.

Trump 2.0 is about a model of American leadership that costs the taxpayer far less.

9

Key Term: Mowing Grass
Context: Eyes on Iran

As Trump dominates the global agenda once again, all eyes are on both Latin America and Iran simultaneously.

For Israel, the stakes are higher than most. Reports of the Ayatollah preparing an option to flee to Moscow can’t be discounted, but the pressure on Iranian leaders may lead to an attack on Israel as regime hardliners seek to shore up support by initiating a war.

Regardless, regime change in Iran is now a top Israeli priority. Even without nukes, Khamenei’s ballistic missile program is little short of existential for Israel. If the regime survives, it will reduce Israel to regular “grass mowing” conflicts with Iran, of a type that it practiced for years against Hamas.

So, after so many false alarms, how likely is the regime to fall?

The INSS’s Beni Sabti sees new factors at play that are a reminder of the last successful Iranian revolution. “The violence of the demonstrators is a reminder of 1979 when the anti-Shah protesters became very bold,” he says. “Also in 2009, protesters wanted to work within and reform the Islamic Republic system — now they are calling for the Shah’s son to return.”

One failing of the current movement is that unlike 1979’s Khamenist insurgents, today’s protesters are leaderless. But even that, says Sabti, could be overcome with outside encouragement. “Perhaps a leader will rise from within the protesters’ ranks — and they are very heartened by Trump’s support, which reverses Jimmy Carter’s backing of Khamenei, which the opposition see as responsible for the Shah’s fall.”

10

Key Term: Off-ramp
Context: China Threat

Long a master of opaque diplomatic communiqués, China’s unusually sharp reaction to events far away from its shores are a mark of how shocked it is by the ouster of Maduro.

“China is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the US’s blatant use of force,” said the country’s ministry of foreign affairs.

For years deeply enmeshed in the Maduro regime to which it lent about $100 billion in exchange for oil, China correctly reads the coup as a strong move against its global power projection.

Insofar as China is deterred, so good. But what happens if it legitimizes a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, as many Trump detractors say?

The claim betrays the utter myopia of those still clinging to notions of international law in the age of revisionist powers. Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China need no precedent, because they fear no disgrace in a world in which a weakened West no longer rules the roost.

In our world, Trumpian bellicosity is an asset to the West, as the unfree world is reduced to reacting to surprise moves in a dangerous game of global chess.

The downside to Trump’s Caracas move? The danger that he lacks an off-ramp as American resources are sucked into South America at the expense of countering China and Russia.

But in the long view of the last three decades, America and the free world can breathe easier. Trump’s eye-catching escalations may be provocative, but he’s a leader who isn’t afraid to match the insurgent powers move for move.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1094)