THUS WE BOMB Iran.
The administration does not give consistent reasons for the attack on Iran: some say we war to change the behavior of the Iranian regime; others say the aim of the war is to end that regime outright. Many officials, including the president himself, endorse both aims.
How to make sense of this?
OVER THE LAST WEEK Christian Whitonâs essay âHow Taiwan Lost Trumpâ has ricocheted its way through the Taiwanese media. Ever sensitive to foreign perceptions of Taiwan, the Taiwanese chattering classes have been especially sensitive in the fallout of two news items: Taiwanâs failure to reach a trade deal with the United States and the Trump administrationâs cancellation of a planned New York stopover by Taiwanese President William Lai. Most Taiwanese observers have linked these events together. In Taiwan they have been depicted as a terrible portent of future American policy. The general mood is a fatalistic ânow we see what Trump truly thinks of us!â
Whitonâs essay succeeds because it confirms this narrative (âYou are right: Trumpworld does think the worst of you!â) while also offering an explanation for how this doleful circumstance came about. To the outrage of its allies and the glee of its enemies, Whiton lays all blame squarely at the feet of the powers that be in the DPP.
Hence the essayâs viral run. What of its accuracy? To those familiar with this administration, its personnel, and the broader intellectual environment that it feeds on, does his argument ring true?
Partially. The essay is directionally correct, but glaringly wrong in many specifics.
LAST OCTOBER I published a short breakdown of four geopolitical âschoolsâ that might shape China strategy under Trump. That piece was a pre-election preview of a much larger report I was writing for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. I published the preview as security: Trump might not win. If so I had better publish something before election day while interest in Trumpworld was guaranteed.
Trump won. Interest in GOP debates did not abate. I continued to work on the report. As of this week the full thing is out. You can read it, in all its twenty-page glory, over at the FPRI website. What follows are some of its key points:
THERE ARE DECADES WHEN possibility is constrained in a narrow frame. The terrain has been surveyed, boundaries have been laid, and rules have been established. In such an age there is still room for high drama: The decisive round of a boxing match draws the eye despite the factâor perhaps becauseâthe boxers play an antique game. In such times and climes, victory means mastery of existing modes, not the invention of new ones.
But nothing human is everlasting. Always there comes a day when spectators search for better games and settlers seek out fresher pastures. That day of change arrives with much confusion and fanfare. Sons dishonor their fathers. Daughters rise against their mothers. Ancestral ideals are cast aside, and possibility staggers forth from its long captivity, ready to wreak vengeance on mankind.
MANY HAVE TRIED to pin Trump to Heritageâs âProject 2025.â The Trump campaign has not only refused to endorse Project 2025âthey have refused to endorse any detailed policy plan whatsoever. Trump prefers to keep his options open.
One unanticipated benefit of this approach is that Republicans have spent much of the last year engaged in intensive but open debates over policy. Â Ambitious politicians, congressional offices, and think tanks have laid out their preferred plans on almost every issue of importance. These plans often differ from each other in striking ways. Absent endorsement from Trump or his campaign, no one quite knows which of these policy packages will eventually be adopted as the Republican standard. The Republicans involved have thus been free to debate the merits and costs of each.
Take China policy.
Japan’s 2022 National Security Strategy concludes with a dramatic pronouncement:
At this time of an inflection point in history, Japan is finding itself in the midst of the most severe and complex security environment since the end of WWII. In no way can we be optimistic about what the future of the international community will hold
I find myself strangely affected by this document.
Over at Foreign Affairs, Ryan Haas and Jude Blanchette have published an interesting argument. Hass and Blanchette are worried that the United States and China are needlessly inching towards armed conflict over Taiwan because of the two powersâ shared belief that âthe hard questions at the root of the confrontationâ can only be solved by a military settlement. In contrast, Hass and Blanchette argue that âsometimes the best policy is to avoid bringing intractable challenges to a head and kick the can down the road instead.â Implicit in Hass and Blanchetteâs framing is the belief the United States controls the pace of the can-kicking. Decision makers in Washington, not Beijing or Taipei, will determine the character of their triangular tango. The reasons for this conclusion are laid out plainly: the United States has the power to constrain Taiwanese behavior, while the Chinese, who understand that the costs of a conflict will prove ruinous even in victory, will stage no campaign unless backed into a corner. It is America that will choose whether the can is kicked into that corner or whether it is kicked further down the road.
Haas and Blanchetteâs case is cogent and clearly argued. Some of its particularsâsuch as their warning to avoid symbolics âthat would aggravate Beijing without improving security in the Taiwan Straitâ (e.g. Pelosiâs recent stunt)âare especially persuasive. But Haas and Blanchetteâs larger argument only is compelling if we think crisis can be kicked down the roadâand kicked down it ad infinitum. It is not clear to me that this is possible.
In all of my reading on Afghanistan, two books stand out. Both were highlighted in my list of the best 10 books I read in 2021: Carter Malkasianâs The American War in Afghanistan: A History and David Edwardsâ Caravan of Martyrs: Sacrifice and Suicide Bombing in Afghanistan. Both authors are fluent in Pashto. Both draw plentifully from Taliban primary sources. Both have had hundreds of conversations with Afghans of all classes. Together they provide a powerful picture of the way the war has changed Afghanâespecially Pashtunâsociety. The war in Afghanistan was first and foremost a war within that society. America chose to back one side of this civil war. These books lay out exactly what each side of this war was fighting for.
Or so I write in an essay published this weekend in Palladium. To understand the Talibanâs victory, I argue, you must understand what made the Taliban different from the wider Pashtun society from which they sprang.
I have an op-ed out in the New York Times today arguing that we must intentionally ground our response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in careful, cost-benefit calculation instead of emotional reaction or moral fervor. The piece is given the unfortunate title “Ukraine’s Cause is Righteous. That Shouldn’t Shape Policy.” My argument is not that the rightness of the Ukrainian cause does not matter, but that in moments of crisis it is easy to do things that feel right even if they do not help us achieve the right outcomes. The righteous demand to do the right thingânow!âunnaturally speeds the tempo of decision making and warps the policy review process. The end result are statesmen rushing into policies whose consequences they have not fully gamed out.
Several days ago the U.S.-China Perception Monitor published an essay in both English and Chinese by Hu Wei, a prominent think tanker in Shanghai. It argues that the war in Ukraine is bound to go poorly for Russia and thus China must moderate its support for Putinâs failing regime lest the post-Putin world turn against the PRC.
