The Costs of a Political Science-Free Foreign Policy
What the Trump administration's confusion over "regime change" means.
As Gulf War Three continues apace, it is hard to see where and how how the United States is winning. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Alexander Ward and Meredith McGraw, president Trump has decided that he can end the hostilities even if the Strait of Hormuz doesn’t re-open: “President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.”
Trying to end a war with a situation that is strategically worse than when it started sounds… not great, but Politico’s reporting sounds even worse:
White House senior staff and administration officials are discussing the possibility that oil prices climb to a record $150 or more per barrel as the Iran war drags into its second month, according to a person familiar with the conversations and two people close to the White House….
President Donald Trump has also heard from Treasury officials about the near-term outlook for energy prices, which the department now sees as likely to remain above $100 per barrel for some time. According to the person familiar with internal discussions, the administration sees that number as “a baseline” and isn’t ruling out the possibility of prices rising as high as $200 per barrel.
If you really want to get depressed, then go read Paul Krugman’s post suggesting a baseline outcome of $150 a barrel for oil.
Trump, meanwhile, has suggested that allied countries just go and clean up his mess to get their own oil. But this isn’t the own that Trump thinks it is — among other things, I bet way more countries would choose to pay Iran’s toll over taking military action — which enriches Iran and weakens U.S. allies. Again, not a great strategic move!
So that all seems bad — in fact, it looks like an outcome that is far worse than where things stood at the end of February. Surely the U.S. has accomplished something for all of this short-term pain, right?
It’s honestly unclear. The WSJ story describes Trump’s objectives as “hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks.” National security adviser Marco Rubio has stated four goals: “1. The destruction of Iran’s air force; 2. The destruction of their navy; 3. The severe diminishing of their missile launching capability; 4. The destruction of their factories.” That is somewhat more ambitious than what Trump said but is decidedly less ambitious than what the White House articulated just a month ago at the start of the war — including no mention of ending Iran’s nuclear program. I don’t doubt that Iran’s military has taken its lumps, but there’s not a lot more than that in evidence.
The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World would like to serve up a hypothesis: part of the reason the Trump administration seems ill-equipped to prosecute this war is because no one in the upper levels of the administration has taken a political science course. And because they don’t understand the basics, they sure as hell do not understand enough to extricate themselves from their current policy predicaments.
