In Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and North Korea, a fool’s conceit defeated us

In a sense, it’s too soon to reflect on the disaster in Iran. After all, Trump’s cease-fires have a half-life of a week. There is every reason to think that this one will also fall apart soon enough–in Lebanon, over an attack in the Strait, or because of an escalating public argument over what was even agreed. In another sense, it’s not too soon to reflect on Trump’s well-established record on the global stage with a short history of his “great” deals:

• Iran got $25 billion in sanctions relief and a sanctions pause. We got no denuclearization, no end to support for terrorism, nothing on human rights, no clear assurances about Iran charging tolls or closing the strait again, and no real security guarantees for US allies. We paid for a status quo ante that we’ll never really get. And when people point these things about and call Trump a loser, his incentives to reinterpret the terms will only increase.
• In Alaska in 2025, Putin got a photo op with a POTUS on US soil, avoided more sanctions, got tacit US recognition of its unfinishable conquest of Donbass and Crimea (including Ukraine’s best lines of defense against further invasions). More importantly, he successfully divided Trump from NATO, as if Trump’s Greenland blunder hadn’t already done so. Trump may have agreed to limits on Ukraine’s army and NATO accession. Trump got no peace and no cease-fire.
• In Singapore in 2018, North Korea got a sanctions pause and a direct meet with POTUS. We got no denuclearization; no end to missile, chem, or biowar programs; nothing on human rights or the security of South Korea or Japan; and the beginning of the breakdown of UN & US sanctions regimes (for which Biden shares responsibility).
• Lest we forget, it was Trump who signed the deal with the Taliban that freed ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Taliban terrorists. We got out. The Taliban got us out, and a few months later, it got the entire country. I need not restate Biden’s share of the blame, which is obvious.
• We have yet to learn what Trump gave Xi Jinping on Taiwan or North Korea. I’m too afraid to ask.

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Trump bears personal responsibility for the defeat in Iran on several levels. He started by assembling a cabinet of idiots (Gabbard, Hegseth) and yes-men (Rubio, Vance) who couldn’t or wouldn’t question, test, debate, refine, or coalesce around a plausible plan to win. Israel and the Gulf states bought him, filled the intellectual void in Trump’s cabinet, and shaped the war plan to suit their own interests. Then Trump’s cabinet broke apart. Gabbard resigned, and Vance and Rubio are fighting a covert war of leaks.

Trump could not win this war without regime change, as he acknowledged through his initial words and actions like decapitation strikes. There was never a way we would denuke Iran and end its support for terrorism if the regime survived. Even Trump knew that diplomacy with the regime would hit a wall of stalling, lying, and cheating. But because he (probably wisely) ruled out “boots on the ground,” there was only one path to regime change, but no plan to achieve it.

Trump’s war plan just assumed Iranians would magically overthrow the regime. It’s obvious he never gave an instant’s thought to making that happen, because making it happen would require (1) competent intelligence operations, (2) inter-factional diplomacy, (3) an understanding of Iran’s cultures, and (4) something Trump has never had: patience. So he attacked without an alliance with a political coalition inside Iran, without any plan to supply, arm, or protect Iranians, without a plan to help Iranians communicate and coordinate, and without a plan to restore stability–all things that take time, and which Gabbard lacked either the will or the competence to execute.

Most importantly, Trump’s own words deprived Iranians of a reason to risk their lives for a hopeful future. Once he threatened to destroy their ancient civilization and mused about installing the moronic and universally loathed Ahmedinejad as his “Delcy,” he personally ensured that we would fail. I hope Iranians will be free one day, but they weren’t about to die for his Delcy.

Meanwhile, the world will be paying for this dumb war in higher fuel costs for years. That will mean foreign partners have less income to buy American goods, except for oil, of course. Allies in Europe and Asia are already rushing to build their own defense industries instead of relying on American imports. Allies are also localizing or friend-shoring supply chains to escape the risk of tariff tantrums. The world’s most capable people are losing interest in visiting us, immigrating, or sending their kids to American colleges. Governments, business, and banks that bet on our long-term steadiness and stability are taking a fresh look at Europe and China. Each passing month is leaving us more isolated, less respected, less secure, and much, much dumber. We are winning a national Darwin Award like no nation since Rome.

And we are winning that award and losing our wars because of two conceits. The first of these is a fool’s conceit that he alone can find simple solutions to complex problems that smarter people have been trying to solve for decades. The second conceit is the American conceit–the conceit of power. It holds that any of these problems–Iran, Ukraine, North Korea, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Gaza, or any other–have deployable solutions. It holds no place for the sandals of the people on the ground, fighting for a government under which they choose to live, that they elect with their own blood, and that they reelect with their own ballots. All of these places have different geographies, different regimes, different cultures, and different social fissures. That means each requires a different strategy, all of which will be lost on the conceited, the foolish, and the culturally incompetent.

This conceit competes with one that was dominant in Europe until recently, when Putin and Trump shattered it with their respective conceits for force–the conceit that if one’s diplomacy is sufficiently nuanced and sophisticated, a peaceful and prosperous state can accommodate itself with a predatory one by offering just the right cocktail of blandishments, economic entanglements, and non-binding resolutions. This, too, is a conceit that Donald Trump is quick to adopt as soon as his conceit of power fails him. But predatory nations, by their nature, do not coexist. They merely wait for better opportunities. The only durable solution to their provocations is a war of liberation that can only be won by those to be liberated.