Scoring own goals: “seizing” lands … in words only
Making a territorial claim and failing to act to enforce it means: scoring an own goal. Our president dreams out loud about taking the territory; but his verbal threats only mobilize our enemies to secure the territory against us.
President Trump claimed full sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz early in this war – and left it at talk. Iran responded by claiming sovereignty over Hormuz too – and proceeded to take military steps to enforce its claim on the ground. Iran is now acting to set up its institutionalized controls in the Strait and to extend its territorial claim still further afield.
It has been a devastating own goal for the USA.
There has been a spate of these own goals. Canada. Panama. Greenland. And now the Gulf.
Trump spoke repeatedly about annexing Canada. His threats to do this revived Canada’s historic anti-American nationalism and brought on the sudden collapse of the pro-Trump opposition candidate in the election there.
Trump talked loudly about annexing Greenland. It caused his friends to lose in the pending election in Denmark. And caused our main allies in Europe to unite to protect Greenland from us.
America cannot afford more “own goals” like these. Presidents must learn to hold their tongues – unless they are ready to act on what they say.
Is Trump imitating Biden’s worst mistakes?
Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
President Biden was an almost uniquely bad case of speaking loudly without carrying a stick. He repeatedly attacked Putin personally, loudly, insultingly, provocatively; and at the same time repeatedly ruled out acting to defend Ukraine militarily, also loudly, as if to assure Putin that it was OK to invade. Putin suspected out loud that Biden was actually trying to draw him into a trap of invading Ukraine with this. But Putin finally figured that Biden was simply being stupid, and proceeded to invade.
Next Biden encouraged Zelensky to flee. It took Boris Johnson’s powerful voice, alongside Zelensky’s, to shame Biden into very belatedly doing a bit to help Ukraine fight back. Trump has also imitated Biden in his too little too late policy on helping Ukraine.
Trump seems to be imitating Biden and his worst precursors, Obama and Carter. It is becoming a bipartisan pattern: threaten and insult loudly, but act feebly, and mainly just provoke the enemy to act against us.
It is important for our presidents to learn once again to do the opposite. When there’s a serious objective in mind, like taking over territory, keep your mouth shut – until you’re ready to act on it and enforce it. And use your talk to affect the adversary’s behavior, not to congratulate yourself in advance on territorial gains you haven’t made, nor to pander to domestic factions that are against involvement.
Luck saves Trump and America in Greenland and Panama, but not Canada
While Trump has too often broken these simple rules, fortunately he has often also held his tongue and exercised surprise in his military attacks. In this, he has done better than Biden.
In the case of Greenland the damage was limited – thanks to the efforts of NATO’s valiant Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, to salvage the situation. He understood that Trump had a serious security point about upgrading the American role in Greenland and give it a greater sense of ownership; he did not join in the snotty rhetoric against Trump coming from all sides – Macron, Merz, mainstream media… Thanks to him, we still have a chance of getting a deal on Greenland that would upgrade American security, although not as good as the deal we could have gotten without the territorial threatening in advance.
In Panama we may also get a deal; again, not as good as we could have gotten without the advance rhetoric.
In Canada, it is too late. We have alienated it too badly and too repeatedly in the last year.
Our fading final chance to save ourselves from disaster in Iran
In Iran and the Persian Gulf? The pundits are gloating on the prospect that Trump will make a deal, which means mostly yielding to Iran. In that case, the entire war will be a defeat for America of disastrous proportions.
The American people will see the disaster clearly. Trump may deny it, but no one will believe him any more than they believed Biden’s denials about his disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan. Trump will be cooked politically – to the great satisfaction of the pundits.
However, Trump may still fool the pundits. He may still seize the Gulf and its coastline. And if he wants to consolidate it as permanent victory for America, he may finally make a real regime change in Tehran and arm the people to hold power.
It will be more costly to do this than if he had done it at the start, before talking about it. But it will be far less costly than another bad deal that has to be corrected by another bitter war. And it will yield far greater positive fruits, economic and strategic, for America.