Trump’s Head-on-a-Pike Foreign Policy
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Bye. Over the weekend, the United States and Israel launched a massive military assault on Iran. Within hours, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead, along with much of his senior command. As I record this on Monday, March 2nd, the Iranian Red Crescent says over 550 people have been killed in the bombings. We know of at least six American service members who have been killed. There will likely be more as the war rages on. There appears to have been a girls' school that was bombed. The picture is from that. The grief of the parents is, it's almost unbearable to look at. I just think it's so important to say it's not all geopolitics. These are people, civilians, their lives, their homes, their children. The attack on Iran came less than two months after the United States military captured Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, in an overnight raid on his compound in Caracas.
America has deposed two sitting heads of state eight weeks apart. I have seen a lot of commentary accusing Donald Trump of hypocrisy. After all, he ran against wars of regime change, and now he's changing regimes left and right. We believe that the job of the United States military is not to wage endless regime change, wars around the globe, senseless wars. The job of the United States military is to defend America from attack and invasion here at home. But I think this is not quite a policy of regime change. There's not America invading Iraq or Afghanistan and restructuring the government ourselves. Maduro's regime was left intact, aside from him. In an interview with The Times, Trump said that, quote, "...what we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario."
He said, "...everybody's kept their job except for two people." ... ... ... ... ... I don't think what we're seeing here is a policy regime change. I would call this head on a pike foreign policy. America is proving that we can easily reach into weaker countries and kill or capture their heads of state. We will not be dissuaded from doing that by international law or fear of unforeseen consequences or the difficulty of persuading the American people or the United States Congress of the need for war. On that, we won't even try. We don't particularly care who replaces the people we killed. We will not insist that they come from outside the regime, nor that they are elected democratically. We care merely that whoever comes next fears us enough to be compliant when we make a demand, that they know that they might be the next head on a pike.
Trump's belief appears to be that he can decapitate these regimes and control their successors and do so without events spinning out of his control. He appears to believe that it was idiocy or cowardice or a morally respect for international rules that prevented his predecessors from replacing foreign leaders they loathed with more pliable subordinates. Trump is a man who has not read much history, but who certainly intends to make it. But what if Iran is not Venezuela? What if the Iranian people rise up as Trump has asked them to do and are slaughtered by the Iranian military? What if it descends into civil war as happened in Iraq, where America had troops on the ground and yet hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed?
What if it goes the way of Libya or Yemen or Syria? Who will pay the cost if he's wrong? Ben Rhodes is a political analyst, a New York Times opinion contributing writer, and the co-host of the podcast Pod Save the World. He served as a senior advisor to President Barack Obama. He joins me now. As always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:23
2
What military actions did the U.S. and Israel take against Iran?
5:23–8:21
3
How does the Iranian conflict compare to the situation in Venezuela?
8:21–15:56
4
What is Trump's 'head on a pike' foreign policy?
15:56–20:38
5
What are the potential consequences of Trump's military strategy?
20:38–25:29
6
How did the Obama administration approach Iran and military action?
25:29–37:24
7
What are the risks of a civil conflict in Iran?
37:24–1:12:20