Strength works. It’s a foreign policy lesson that sounds too simple to be true and too unequivocal to be wise, and yet there is much truth and a good deal of wisdom in it. Strength does not mean wanton thuggery or hubristic swagger, it must be considered, well-regulated and guided by reflection and sober analysis. But when it is properly deployed to clear and realistic ends, strength can achieve results that negotiation, compromise and avoidance cannot. Strength, when put in service of just goals, can sometimes be the preferable moral option, checking threats, risks and baneful intentions.
At some point, US and European foreign policy elites are going to have to reckon with the fact that Trump keeps succeeding where they have repeatedly failed
Donald Trump’s decision overnight to bomb Iran’s nuclear weapons programme is an almost textbook case in the effectiveness and virtue of strength. While we wait to learn just how much damage has been done to the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment facility in Fordow, its sister plant in Natanz, and the nuclear technology and uranium storage site in Isfahan, it seems likely that, at a minimum, Tehran’s plot to get its hands on nuclear weapons has been severely disrupted. The prospect of a nuclear-armed fundamentalist Shia state that proclaims ‘Death to America’, bankrolls terrorism against the West, and has designs to dominate the Middle East was a scenario too grave for any further delay. Trump has done what his predecessors ought to have done but for various reasons, not all of them excusable, did not.
At some point, US and European foreign policy elites are going to have to reckon with the fact that Trump keeps succeeding where they have repeatedly failed, and does so by disregarding the assertions they state with unshakeable certainty. It was Trump who recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while brokering normalisation agreements between Israel and Arab states, a remarkable feat of balance and balls. It was Trump who tore up Barack Obama’s naive and dangerous Iran deal and took out terror chief Qasem Soleimani. It was Trump who declared Communist China’s systematic destruction of the Uyghurs a genocide and who convinced India and Pakistan to back down from their recent stand-off. Now it appears to be Trump who has prevented the rise of a nuclear Iran.
You can decry his hostility towards Ukraine and its struggle to restore national sovereignty and expel foreign invaders. You can deride absurdities like his proposal to annex Canada or his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico. The man is a pinless grenade tossed into one global crisis after another. It’s impossible to know when he’ll detonate and what the fallout will be. But sometimes he explodes in a way that hits the right target, takes out a threat that would yield to nothing else, and in doing so makes the world a safer place. This is one of those times.
There will be blowback — there always is — and this could involve attacks by Iran or its proxies on US military bases, armed forces personnel or political leaders, but that is no reason not to have acted. A regime that kills and kidnaps Americans and funds front groups that do the same must be confronted. Trump’s strikes might have wounded the tyrants in Tehran but they and their rule will have to be ended to remove the threat to the United States. Iran’s preferred system of government is Iran’s business, but that government cannot promote, fund or conduct terrorism against the United States, its allies or its strategic or commercial interests. ‘Death to America’ must be met with ‘Death to the Ayatollah’. The strikes will suffice for now. They have not destroyed the regime but they have done the next-best thing: humiliated it.
Strength works. It works even if the United Nations condemns it, the European Union wrings its hands, and the British foreign office pleads for restraint. It works despite what the academics say, what the NGOs demand, and what the journalists pronounce. It works whether the anti-American left howls, the isolationist right seethes, or Tucker Carlson cackles at the very thought. Strength works and, for some reason, leaders and policymakers have decided to allow Donald Trump to be the man who teaches the world that lesson once more.
Comments