No more Obama-Biden timidity, it is time for America to assert itself again

It’s commonly said that generals always fight the last war.  More often, it’s the politicians whose approach to military engagements is most heavily conditioned – for good and ill –  by recent experience.

A concise summary of US armed interventions overseas since the Second World War would go something like this:  A recurring cycle that begins with a period of aggressive engagement, backed by popular support, the success of which feeds an overconfidence among the next generation of leaders who then blunder somewhere into a strategic overcommitment and failure.  The political implications of that failure in turn engender a new caution among the next generation of leaders, a reluctance to get into any entanglements, which also leads to different sorts of failure, and then a new leadership emerges, more willing to take the nation to war again – and the cycle begins anew.

Donald Trump’s bold gamble to strike Iran will either continue or break this cycle.  The shadow of conflicts past – and whether it can be escaped – more than any intramural debates within the Republican party between so-called neoconservatives and MAGA America Firsters – is  the driving force behind US foreign policy.  Trump and his loyal supporters believe a victory in Iran is an essential prerequisite to restoring America’s pre-eminence in the world that will enable it to break free from the oppressive shadow of the recent past.  A largely quiet minority within his party worry that his riskiest move yet will only darken that shadow and leave the nation weakened at a perilous moment.

A slightly longer version of the history of the last eighty years underscores the cyclical nature of US foreign policy.

Even though the Korean War ended in stalemate in 1953, the success of the US and its allies in repelling  China and the Soviet Union from annexing the whole Korean peninsula, coming so soon after victory in the Second World War, fed a belief in America’s foreign policy establishment that direct US military intervention could, in the right circumstances, help the West prevail in the Cold War.  That confidence brought the steadily escalating commitment to Vietnam a decade later.  But ultimate failure there by 1974, the blow to US prestige and the traumatising effect it had on domestic politics, created a  public mood – and a political class – deeply wary of further  military interventions.

Even Ronald Reagan, elected after the paralysis of the Jimmy Carter years on a platform of the vigorous pursuit of US interests around the world, was constrained by “Vietnam Syndrome”.  After the limited deployment of US forces to Lebanon ended in the catastrophe of the Marine Corps Barracks bombing in Beirut in 1982, Reagan was meticulously cautious about the deployment of US forces.  Over the next eight years he won the Cold War, but put US forces in harm’s way only twice – against tiny Grenada in 1983 and in the skies over Libya in 1986..

But victory in the Cold War, and the passage of almost two decades since Vietnam,  produced a new willingness to risk the use of force and George H W Bush’s stunning  triumph over Saddam Hussein in Kuwait in 1991 began a new cycle of rising confidence in the efficacy of American arms.

Bill Clinton did not launch any invasions, but the success of even his limited intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s further fuelled confidence among the public – and politicians –  in the use of US force. This confidence reached its zenith with George W Bush’s quick initial victory in toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

And so , inevitably, came the hubris, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  When that, and Afghanistan turned into “forever wars”, of futile heartbreak for Americans, the cycle turned again.  Iraq Syndrome replaced Vietnam Syndrome and now a surfeit of caution led to new foreign policy disasters: Barack Obama’s timorous “leading from behind” failure in Libya and his disaster of drawing a red line in Syria that he allowed the country’s leader to cross.

By now, aversion to US engagement overseas was so wide and deep that it was most enthusiastically embraced by the Republican party.  No more “dumb wars” declared Donald Trump, denouncing years of GOP orthodoxy and suggesting America First would mean a continued avoidance of all conflict .

And now, here we are: Trump himself  leading the nation and a loyal, if slightly puzzled Republican party into a new war.

But Trump’s war on Iran is not in fact, some radical break with his own stated positions on US foreign policy.  It is not only largely consistent with his faith in the assertion of American power.  It should be seen in the wider historical context of US strategy since the Second World War.  It is based on a sense that the cycle has turned full circle, and that after years of timidity that have produced their own failures – most notably Joe Biden’s  disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, it is time for America to assert itself again.

It’s important to understand how Trump sees the history of recent American failure.  As we are learning every day with this most unpredictable president, it was never quite the case that Trump thought the US should abjure the use of force completely.  Even in his first term he was content to launch military campaigns in the right circumstances. Trump, in fact, always believed that the US could and should use force in the right way.

That self-belief was captured by Vice President JD Vance, himself among the most war-cautious of Republicans. After the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, Vance told NBC News that Trump’s approach would not get the US into a long, futile conflict.

“The difference is, back then, we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives”.

You don’t have to believe that Trump is inherently smarter than his predecessors  to understand the changed approach his war with Iran represents.  Where Bush blundered into Iraq, Trump is pursuing a more calibrated military campaign around narrower objectives.   Where Obama and Biden timidly declined to challenge Iran’s rising hegemony, Trump is seeking to destroy it – head on.

Of course it is too early to know whether Trump’s strategy will turn out to be any less dumb than that of his predecessors.  So far, despite a chorus of derision from the usual media sources and almost the entire European establishment, the US and Israel seem to have made significant strides in defanging the threat Iran has long represented.

But the outcome is crucial, not just  to achieve its immediate aim of eliminating the threat from one of the world’s most menacing regimes. It will determine whether Trump succeeds in achieving another turn in the long cycle of US national security policy – a military success at a crucial moment that results in the confident reassertion of American power on the world stage.   Or whether Iran will be merely another bleak moment of overreach that will leave the country less safe, less confident and more divided than ever.

Gerard Baker is Editor at Large of The Wall Street Journal