In the Venezuelan crisis, said President Donald Trump in
Florida, “All options are on the table.” And if Venezuela’s generals persist in
their refusal to break with Nicolas Maduro, they could “lose everything.”
Another
example of Yankee bluster and bluff?
Or
is Trump prepared to use military force to bring down Maduro and install Juan
Guaido, the president of the national assembly who has declared himself
president of Venezuela?
We
will get an indication this weekend, as a convoy of food and humanitarian aid
tries to force its way into Venezuela from Colombia.
Yet,
even given the brutality of the regime and the suffering of the people — 1 in
10 have fled — it is hard to see Trump sending the Marines to fight the
Venezuelan army in Venezuela.
Where would Trump get the authority for
such a war?
Still,
the lead role that Trump has assumed in the crisis raises a question. Does the
reflexive interventionism — America is “the indispensable nation!” — that
propelled us into the forever war of the Middle East, retain its hold on the
American mind?
Next
week, Trump meets in Hanoi with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
While
Kim has not tested his missiles or nuclear warheads in a year, few believe he
will ever surrender the weapons that secure his survival and brought the U.S.
superpower to the negotiating table.
Is
Trump prepared to accept a deal that leaves a nuclear North but brings about a
peace treaty, diplomatic relations and a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the
Korean Peninsula? Or are American forces to be in Korea indefinitely?
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Nancy
Pelosi’s House just voted to cut off U.S. support for the Saudi war against the
Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Senate may follow.
Yet
Trump is prepared to use his first veto to kill that War Powers Resolution and
retain the right to help the Saudi war effort.
What
is our vital interest in Yemen’s civil war? Why would Trump not wish to
extricate us from that moral and humanitarian disaster?
Answer:
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his regime would sustain a strategic
defeat should the Houthis, supported by Iran, prevail.
Before
the Warsaw conference called by the U.S. to discuss the Middle East, Bibi
Netanyahu’s office tweeted: “This is an open meeting with representatives of
leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to
advance the common interest of war with Iran.”
The
“war-with-Iran” tweet was swiftly deleted, replaced with a new tweet that spoke
of “the common interest of combating Iran.”
Like many Americans with whom he is close,
Bibi has never hidden his belief as to what we Americans must do to Iran.
Early
this week came leaks that Trump officials have discovered that Shiite Iran has
been secretly collaborating with the Sunni terrorists of al-Qaida. This could,
headlined The Washington Times, provide “the legal rationale for U.S. military
strikes” on Iran.
At
the Munich Security Conference, however, NATO allies Britain, France and
Germany recommitted to the Iran nuclear treaty from which Trump withdrew, and
to improved economic relations with Tehran.
Trump pledged months ago to bring home
the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria and half of the 14,000 in Afghanistan. But he is
meeting resistance in his own party in Congress and even in his own
administration.
Reasons:
A U.S. pullout from Syria would abandon our Kurdish allies to the Turks, who
see them as terrorists, and would force the Kurds to cut a deal with Syria’s
Bashar Assad and Russia for their security and survival.
This
week, Britain and France informed us that if we leave Syria, then they leave,
too.
As
for pulling out of Afghanistan, the probable result would be the fall of the
Kabul government and return of the Taliban, who hold more territory now than
they have since being overthrown 18 years ago. For Afghans who cast their lot
with the Americans, it would not go well.
U.S.
relations with Russia, which Trump promised to improve, have chilled to Cold
War status. The U.S. is pulling out of Ronald Reagan’s INF treaty, which bans
land-based nuclear missiles of 300 to 3,000 mile range.
Putin has said that any reintroduction of
land-based U.S. missiles to Europe would mean a new class of Russian missiles
targeted on Europe — and on the United States.
Today, the U.S. maintains a policy of
containment of Russia and China, which are more united than they have been
since the first days of the Cold War. We are responsible for defending 28 NATO
nations in Europe, twice as many as during the Cold War, plus Japan, South
Korea, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.
We have troops in Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan, and appear on the cusp of collisions with Venezuela and Iran. Yet
we field armed forces a fraction of the size they were in the 1950s and 1960s
and the Reagan era.
And the U.S. national debt is now
larger than the U.S. economy.
This is imperial overstretch. It is
unsustainable.
