Why force-based intimidation is unlikely to help Trump
US Vice President J.D. Vance recently tried to cast President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure as a wildly successful example of the "Trump Doctrine."
According to Vance, the doctrine is simple: you identify a problem that threatens US interests, which "you try to aggressively diplomatically solve." If diplomacy fails, "you use overwhelming military power to solve it and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict."
Read more about why such an approach is unlikely to succeed in the article by Melanie Sisson, Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution: Trump’s war plan: will the "Iran scenario" become the new US strategy?
The author acknowledges that there is no question that the US strike severely damaged the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities.
"But it is far from clear," Sisson adds, "that the bombing of these sites, coupled with Israel’s assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientists, has set Iran back to zero."
In her view, the program "has only been delayed, though estimates of the setback vary from months to years."
"The Trump administration is not the first to be tempted by the idea that short, sharp displays of military strength can convince other countries to capitulate to US demands. Since achieving its unquestioned military primacy in 1990, the United States has compiled a long record of such attempts, many of which failed," Sisson writes.
According to her, other targets have played possum when faced with US military threats, seeming to concede in the moment before resuming their unwanted behaviors weeks, months, or even years later.
Sisson notes that North Korea has long taken this approach. Despite repeated reminders of the US military’s overwhelming strength, the country eventually resorts to its old ways, issuing nuclear threats, conducting missile tests, launching satellites, and engaging in other provocations.
"China’s behavior follows a similar pattern. In 2016, America successfully used an ostentatious joint military exercise to deter Chinese island building and claims around the Philippines. But just a few months ago, the Chinese Coast Guard landed on an island that the Philippines claims as its own," she writes.
She argues that Iran seems willing to do all three.
According to Sisson, the Islamic Republic has displayed an ability to absorb both economic and military blows. Its military provocations and nuclear activities have ebbed and flowed, sometimes in sync with – and other times irrespective of – the intensity of US responses.
And as Iran expert Vali Nasr recently recounted, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei apparently shares Aidid’s assessment, having told his advisers:
"America is like a dog. If you back off, it will lunge at you, but if you lunge at it, it will recoil and back off."
As Sisson notes, Vance wants to believe – and wants Trump’s anti-interventionist constituency to believe – that impressive demonstrations of the US military’s reach and power are uniquely persuasive.
"But if short-of-war displays of military power were sufficient to achieve US political objectives – especially ones as difficult to achieve as convincing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions – then they would be a pillar of every president’s doctrine," she concludes.
This article originally appeared on Project Syndicate and is republished with permission from the copyright holder.
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19 of July 2025
