Trump battles with Maga to sell his Iran war - The Times

At least since Athens lost the Peloponnesian War to Sparta, political and military analysts have debated whether democracies are at a fundamental disadvantage when fighting wars against tyrannical regimes. Thucydides thought so. In his history of the war, he argued that democratic Athens lost because its leaders needed to be constantly responsive to fickle public sentiment and lacked the consistency of purpose needed to win a lengthy military campaign.

Historians since have differed. The mutual slaughter of European democracies in the First World War and the victory of the (mostly) democratic allies over the German and Japanese tyrannies in the Second suggested governments accountable to their people could prove remarkably resilient in the prosecution of an existential struggle.

But more recent history adds some grist to the argument that democratic governments are ill-equipped to bear the sacrifices of waging war to a successful conclusion, as impatient electorates weary quickly of the human losses.

In the three major wars America has fought in the past 60 years, in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, rising domestic dissatisfaction played a significant part in ultimately failed engagements. The public’s tolerance of losses appears to be rapidly declining, inhibiting the country’s ability to wage even relatively small conflicts. It took 58,000 American service deaths in Vietnam by 1974 before the public finally drew a line, 4,500 in Iraq by 2011 and 2,500 in Afghanistan by 2021.

Conversely, Russia’s “forever war” in Ukraine offers further support for autocracies over democracies as enduring war machines: estimates vary but Vladimir Putin may have lost more than a million troops, more than twice the total American casualties in all the conflicts the US has fought in 80 years. Yet after four grinding years of little progress, with no outlet for domestic political discontent, Putin faces no domestic pressure to stop.

Whatever his limitations as a global strategist, Donald Trump understands the political constraints America places on its military adventurism. He won the presidency in part on a promise to keep the country out of “dumb wars”. He knows his war on Iran, fought jointly with Israel, strains against that pledge. Contrary to the avalanche of criticism at home and abroad, and mindful of the impatience of his own voters, Trump and his team believe war-weary Americans will endorse a military campaign built around three central principles. It must be a necessary response to a genuine threat to US interests; it must have clear, achievable objectives; and there must be an identifiable endpoint and exit strategy. After some initial, typically Trumpian confusion and misdirection, Operation Epic Fury is now built to meet those principles.

Unlike recent wars, which only steadily became unpopular, Americans seem unenthusiastic about this one from the start. The nation typically rallies around the flag at the outset of a conflict. Not this time. Democratic politicians argue the mission lacks legitimacy, presents unnecessary risks and is fraught with conflicting objectives.

A large share of the public seem to agree. A Reuters Ipsos poll conducted in the first few days of the operation found only 27 per cent supported the campaign and 43 per cent were disapproving.

The most important political constraint, though, is within Trump’s own party. While polls show overwhelming support among Republican voters — about 80 per cent according to a Fox News poll — influential voices within the party have been hostile. These critics go beyond the predictable opposition to any US international engagement of Tucker Carlson, the former Fox commentator who remains an influential voice in Maga world. They include a host of formerly fiercely loyal right-wing populist voices such as Megyn Kelly, another broadcaster turned podcaster; Sean Davis, editor of the Federalist, a leading online conservative publication; and Steve Bannon, the president’s former adviser.

The most important war sceptic is JD Vance. When he endorsed Trump in 2023 he did it with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars”. For the first 48 hours of this conflict the silence from the normally voluble vice-president was deafening. He finally broke it with a supportive interview on Fox on Monday. But he was careful to spell out the limited nature of this engagement and contrast it with the unpopular and failed wars of the recent past. “There is just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective,” he said.

The Trump team argue this war meets the key principles voters demand. First, the fight meets a clear threat. Iran has been at war with the US for 47 years but it is a war that has for the most part been one way. The proxies it arms have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq and across the Middle East. Should it develop a nuclear capacity, the threat would become existential. But even short of that, its ballistic and other missile capabilities are a menace to US interests in the region.

Second, the objective is clear and achievable: the destruction of as much of Iran’s military wherewithal as possible and the removal of its leadership — with a warning to others that is the fate that awaits them. And this, of course, fits the third principle: by setting a subjectively quantifiable target of military damage as its objective, the US gets to decide when to call a halt.

It’s possible, of course, that the US gets dragged into another quagmire. But Trump’s way of war might yet prove Thucydides wrong.