David E. Sanger

There's also cyber risk out here.

They're quite skilled cyber actors.

They're not up at Chinese levels or necessarily the Russians, but they're in the next rank.

And if you don't have missiles that can reach the United States, you certainly do have electrons that can.

And they've proven in the past that they know how to use them.

Remember, the British would not let the U.S.

use the bomber base that the United States frequently makes use of in Great Britain to run this attack directly because they fundamentally didn't believe the United States had just cause to do the attack, didn't want to be part of it.

And I think one of the big concerns coming out of this is, does he emerge from the Venezuela and Iran experiences emboldened to use the American military as his number one tool of coercion?

And if so, how does that change the way the world views the United States and the way other leaders may copy what the president views as his own expansive power?

Well, certainly at the Munich Security Conference two weeks ago, you heard a lot of skepticism about the military buildup from European officials who thought it was just an extension of the kind of threats they had seen around Venezuela and even the president's vaguer threats about taking Greenland.

And I think one of the big concerns coming out of this is, does he emerge from the Venezuela and Iran experiences emboldened to use the American military as his number one tool of coercion?

And if so, how does that change the way the world views the United States and the way other leaders may copy

What the president views is his own expansive power.

And, you know, for everybody who wonders if we're seeing the collapse of the post-World War II order, this is going to be another piece of the evidence.

Because usually we have thought about Middle East peace by constant negotiations, locking all of the neighbors in.

into agreements that would ultimately result in the Arabs recognizing Israel, in Israel coming up with a two-state solution, and so forth.

President Trump has tried a very different experiment.

It's one in which he shows that by the use of American force and Israeli force, he can shape the future of other nations.

And the question right now is,

Is he shaping their future, or is he opening them up to more chaos?