There’s an article out today in the Atlantic by Ben Rhodes, the former National Security Advisor for President Barack Obama. He starts off by recalling the deal President Obama made with Iran to slow down their nuclear program.
He begins by saying, “On a November night in 2013, Barack Obama delivered a statement about an interim nuclear deal that had just been reached, freezing Iran’s program in place. When he was done, I walked with him back to the entrance of his residence, watched by the stoic portraits of former presidents. “Congratulations,” I said. “You just made sure that we won’t have a war with Iran during your presidency.”
Peace for our time. Rhodes said almost the exact same thing that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said after giving the Sudetenland to Hitler. Now, President Obama didn’t give up sovereign territory to the terrorist state in Iran. Instead, he let them have somewhere between $50 billion and $150 billion. We’re not exactly sure how much. That’s disturbing. What’s more disturbing is that around $1.8 billion in U.S. cash was flown by an American cargo plane to Iran. That cash was left on the tarmac and the plane simply flew away.
Just as a thought experiment. Was the Sudetenland worth more or less than $50 to $150 billion? It’s only 11,000 square miles. In the 1800s, the U.S. paid Russia $7.2 million dollars for Alaska. That’s around $113 million in today’s dollars. We spent 15 times that dollar amount just in the cash we left on the runway. Alaska is 663,300 square miles - 60 times bigger than the Sudetenland.
Look at the Louisiana Purchase. We bought 827,000 square miles from France for $15 million dollars. That’s worth roughly $309 million in today’s money. $50 billion, the low estimate for how much money Iran made in Obama’s nuclear deal, is 161 times bigger than the sum we paid for the Louisiana Purchase.
Just dollar for dollar, it looks like Obama gave away far more to gain peace for our time than Chamberlain ever did. But, I digress.
Has Iran been anything close to peaceful since President Obama gave them billions of dollars in cold, hard cash? Hardly. They’ve killed thousands of people in Syria. Some were ISIS fighters, but many were civilians. They’ve killed thousands of people in Yemen. They’ve killed thousands of their own citizens.
Peace for our time, indeed.
Rhodes is very upset that President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement President Obama signed. He says it’s leading to a more unstable Middle East.
“And over the past year alone, Iran or its proxies have shot down a U.S. drone, harassed and seized oil tankers, bombed Saudi oil infrastructure, killed unarmed protesters, and resumed rocket attacks against U.S. interests in Iraq. “
That’s the whole point! A nation that does those things when it doesn’t get its way wasn’t ever interested in peace to begin with, and there is no lasting peace with a nation that doesn’t want it, no matter how much money you pay them, no matter how much land you give away. Iran is not an honest broker. It’s a terrorist state, and the policy of the United States used to be you don’t negotiate with terrorists.
The problem with policy of appeasement, the giving away of things of value like land or money in exchange for temporary peace, is that it’s a policy based on fear. The path followed by both Neville Chamberlain and Barack Obama was predicated on the fear of what might happen. What would Hitler have done if we didn’t give him part of Czechoslovakia? What would Khamenei have done if we didn’t give him billions of dollars? But, when you operate in the fear of what bad things might happen, you lose the courage to stop the bad things that are actually happening right now.
President Obama was fully aware of all the bad things Iran was doing during his Presidency and before. Ben Rhodes actually admits that in his article. But, Obama’s fear of what Iran might do in the future forced him to turn a blind eye to the real time actions of the world’s largest exporter of terrorism. President Trump is not bound by that same fear, and so, he’s not making the same decisions that Obama made. He’s not going to make the same decisions that the Mullahs in Iran would like for him to make.
Rhodes says Trump is leading the U.S. into war with Iran. Here’s what Ben Rhodes fear of that war causes him to miss. If the U.S. goes to war with Iran, it won’t be because President Trump starts a war. It will be because Iran starts a war. And, if Iran does something to start a war, it won’t be because President Trump didn’t give them enough money. It will be because they either didn’t want peace in the first place, or they don’t understand the Trump Doctrine.
What’s the Trump Doctrine, you say? Here it is from his own mouth early on in his own Presidency.
“People that treat us well, we treat them well. People that treat us badly, we treat them much worse than they could ever imagine.”
That is such a simple idea. There’s no big policy vernacular to hide behind. The only three syllable word in the whole thing is “imagine.” But, it’s a powerful idea. Don’t let its simplicity fool you. This is grand strategy boiled down to its simplest roots.
Let’s talk about this in terms of game theory. Think tanks like game theory. It makes them sound learned. So, in game theory terms - this is Tit for Tat with Disproportionate Response.
Tit for Tat - if you treat us well, we’ll treat you well. That’s nice. Strategically, it gives other nations a reason to be nice to us. We’ll be nice back. But, it also prevents us from giving too much away. Notice he didn’t say people that treat us well, we’ll treat them better than they could ever imagine. That would give too much of our power and treasure away for too little in return. That’s what President Obama did. In his Iran deal, he gave them more money than they could imagine and all they had to do was promise not to make something in the next 10 to 15 years they didn’t yet know how to make. They were still allowed to make ballistic missiles, and to engage in terrorism from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.
Tit for Tat says, you don’t build nukes, we won’t point the nukes we already have at you. It doesn’t say, we’ll give you $1.8 billion in unmarked bills.
On the other side is disproportionate response. The reason this works is that it acts as a deterrent to bad behavior. If you do something bad to us, we’ll do something worse to you. Since we are the world’s biggest military and economic power, we have the capability to hurt you a lot more than you can hurt us. So, in the words of Eric Holder, “You don’t want to go there, Bub.”
The Obama administration didn’t believe in disproportionate response. To be fair, most U.S. presidents haven’t, Republican and Democrat. However, I believe Teddy Roosevelt did. He just put it another way. “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” Walk softly - that’s the Tit for Tat part. The Big Stick represents the disproportionate response. He didn’t want to use it, but it was there if needed.
Treat us nice, we’ll treat you nice. Treat us badly, we’ll treat you worse than you could ever imagine. This is how Trump operates in all things. He not only conducts foreign affairs this way, he conducted his real estate empire this way. It’s why he became successful, because everyone wanted to work with him, and no one wanted to screw him over. It wasn’t worth it. He also conducts domestic politics this way. Why didn’t he give the Democrats a heads up that he was about to kill Iran’s number one general? Because they consistently, and repeatedly treat him badly. Frankly, it’s never even occurred to any Democrat other than Joe Manchin not to treat the President extremely badly. How’s that working out for them?
Again, I digress.
If there’s a war between the U.S. and Iran, it won’t be because Donald Trump is erratic and unpredictable. It will be because Iran either decided it wanted a war, or because like the Democrats in the U.S., the leaders in Iran are willfully ignorant about the Trump Doctrine.
The Iranians signed the deal with Obama, got their money, and then spent that money on terror operations throughout the Middle East. They treated us badly. So, when Trump got into office, he pulled out of the agreement and reinstituted some sanctions. That was worse than the Mullahs had imagined.
So, Iran responded by attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. They then shot down a U.S. Drone. Later, they attacked a Saudi oil facility.
Trump responded by increasing sanctions. That was exactly what the Iranian regime did not need, since their economy was already in shambles. That lead to mass protests by Iranians in the streets of cities throughout the country.
So, Iran responded not just by killing thousands of those protestors, but by having General Soleimani help one of Iran’s militias in Iraq to launch rockets at a U.S. military outpost in Kurdish Iraq. That attack wounded four U.S. soldiers and killed an American contractor.
President Trump responded to the murder of an American Citizen by launching an air attack on command and control centers and ammunitions depots of that militia. In the process, we killed 25 fighters and wounded 50 more. Disproportionate response.
In retaliation for that, General Soleimani, then orchestrated a mass assault on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, burning the lobby and forcing U.S. diplomats to run for shelter.
President Trump viewed that action as treating us badly. So, he had Soleimani killed. The drone strike that took him out was worse than Soleimani could have ever imagined. The missile that struck his SUV was so powerful that the only way they were able to identify his remains was by a gaudy ruby ring that was still on a finger of Soleimani’s severed hand.
Iran has said they will retaliate and that they have a list of 35 U.S. targets in the Middle East. President Trump warned that the U.S. has 52 targets inside Iran ready to go. That’s one target for each of the 52 hostages that Iran held for 444 days back in 1979 and 1980.
Not only is President Trump’s threat bigger, but he’s linking it symbolically to the terrorist origins of the nation. Iran’s Mullah’s came to power in a popular uprising, in 1979, and the very first thing they did was to take U.S. diplomats hostage. The hostages were tortured for more than a year. President Trump is linking the theocracy’s actions today to their terrorists origins. That’s clearly worse than they could have imagined.
One of the strategic assists of the Trump Doctrine is that it always forces your opponent to move first - to show his hand. President Trump doesn’t react until you first act. By then, he knows exactly how to respond because you’ve either treated him nicely, or you haven’t. It simplifies the decision making process and lets him move decisively, and more rapidly than you may have thought he could.
It’s once again Iran’s move. They have the option to treat us nicely or not. But, by now, they should know that one of those options can lead to a better life for their citizens and a better chance for their ruling class to remain in power. The other option, the stupid option, leads to death and destruction, pain and suffering.
President Trump has set before Iran two choices. Life or death. It’s their choice. Up until now, every single time, they’ve chosen death. Until they decide to choose life, there is no chance of peace for our time, no matter much money we give them. Don’t believe me? OK. Why don’t you go ask Neville Chamberlain and see how long peace lasted in his time.