Matching the instruments
Tom Nichols explains that having a highly competent military in the hands of a highly incompetent idiot is not a good thing.
Strategy is about matching the instruments of national power—and especially military force—to the goals of national policy. The president and his team, however, have not enunciated an overarching goal for this war—or, more accurately, they have presented multiple goals and chosen among them almost randomly, depending on the day or the hour. This means that highly effective military operations are taking place in a strategic vacuum.
Worse, Donald Trump is now pointing to these missions as if the excellence with which they have been conducted somehow constitutes a strategy in itself. He appears so enthralled by the execution of these missions that he has enlarged the goals of this war to include the complete destruction of the Iranian regime, after which he will “Make Iran Great Again.”
In other words he’s like a little kid playing with a fancy new toy bomber plane with real smoke and bangs.
This kind of thinking is an old problem, and it has a name: “victory disease,” meaning that victory in battle encourages leaders to seek out more battles, and then to believe that winning those battles means that they are winning the larger war or achieving some grand strategic aim—right up until the moment they realize that they have overreached and find themselves facing a military disaster or even total defeat.
And if there’s anyone on the planet likely to fall victim to victory disease it’s Donald Trump.
American military operations have for the most part been astonishingly well executed. Years of training, study, and planning, along with careful use of intelligence, have all contributed to the rapid elimination of much of Iran’s capacity to project power, and almost all of its ability to resist allied attacks.
Operational competence, however, cannot answer the question of national purpose. What is the war about, and when will America know it’s done? Trump, when pressed, dodges the issue of war aims by pointing to the excellence of the military. “I hope you are impressed,” Trump said on Thursday to ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela is obvious. This might be even better.” Trump then repeated, “How do you like the performance?” Karl noted that no one is questioning the success of military operations, and he asked the president what happens next. “Forget about ‘next,’” Trump answered. “They are decimated for a 10-year period before they could build it back.”
Yuh huh. That’s our boy. “Fagett about next. Just admire the bangs.”
Meanwhile, despite the successes of the military overseas, Trump now admits that a regime that was supposed to be eliminated quickly could reach the United States with terrorist attacks. He told Time this week that “we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
Yes but we didn’t go to war, you did.
“ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?” – Maximus Decimus Meridius.
Greatness is something that only Trump can bestow, like a gift to peasants too stupid to do things for themselves. With His Royal Touch (and the dropping of a few tons of high explosives), all will be made Good and Right, and the Iranian people will thank him and demand that he be given the Nobel Peace Prize once he finishes bombing them into gratitude.
Except in Trump’s view, no other country can be (or is ever allowed to be) as “Great” as the United States. This is the whole point behind his attempts at zero-sum trade deals; the United States (read Trump) has to win. A deal in which both sides come out ahead means that America (Trump) has “lost”, that something was left on the table, or given away to the other guy, and that America was somehow “ripped off” and “taken advantage of.” Nobody else is allowed to get ahead, or break even. Mutual advantage precludes American (Trump’s) domination and superiority over everyone else. All other nations are supposed to bow down and worship America (Trump), and give the US (Trump) what it (he) wants. If they won’t do it willingly, he will make them.
He’s made it personal, too. Everything is actually about him. What’s good for Trump is good for America, and good for the whole fucking world. The brilliance of his own
achievementsself-enrichment and grandiousity is somehow supposed to uplift and awe his own grateful, compliant, peasantry, like a video image of the dim, comfortless glow of a cheap, fake fireplace, viewed through a cracked, dirty window. Always The Most, The Best, Like Nobody Has Ever Seen before, and something only he could ever have done. It’s all part of the Trump Brand. If he could, he’d name the whole goddamn country after himself, and cover the whole thing in trashy gold gewgaws.