War Shopping

Donald Trump has started shopping for a war. Two weeks ago, his approval ratings were almost impossibly low. This is very important to him. In fact, his personal popularity may be the thing that motivates Trump before anything else. He knows that becoming a wartime president is the quickest way to become more popular. If he had any doubts on this point, he saw it work powerfully for George W Bush. Ultimately, Trump knows that he needs a war that is long enough to establish him as a wartime president. But he also knows that the right war is important. He is old enough to remember how the Vietnam War made Lyndon Johnson hugely unpopular. So Trump has been trying different wars out, to see how they play.

First, there was the missile attack against Syria. This one made Trump a hero, in that he was acting nobly, in response to Assad’s gas attack on his own people. It played well, giving Trump’s approval ratings a nice bounce. But it was a theater piece. Trump had to get permission from Vladimir Putin to launch the strike, which meant Assad knew in advance of the attack. So there was no lasting damage, but Putin played his part publicly, making it look like the attack “proved” that Trump was willing to stand up to Russia. The attack served its immediate purpose, which was to deflect attention from the probe into Russia’s meddling in our election with the Trump campaigns possible cooperation. But Trump clearly owes Putin a debt of gratitude, so a sustained campaign against Assad is not an option.

Next, Trump tried a provocation against North Korea. That nation’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, is a good choice for an enemy, a man who is almost as unpopular among Americans as Trump himself at his low point. But there are two wild cards here that make a shooting war too frightening to pursue, at least for now. Kim Jong-un is perceived as being crazy enough to actually use nukes, and even the generals around Trump do not want to go there. Even more frightening is the possibility that China could become involved. China would be a potent enemy on the battlefield, and there would be great damage to our economy as well. China is a major provider of cheap labor and goods for us, and is also a major buyer of our goods. Trump may not be capable of seeing that far ahead, but surely someone in his circle has pointed it out. This one, however, is still simmering, and there is the horrifying possibility of having a battle of bluster lead us to a place where Trump feels he must start a shooting war.

And then there was the bombing of the cave complex in Afghanistan, with ISIS as the target. In this one, we dropped the “Mother Of All Bombs”, a gigantic bomb as devastating as possible without going nuclear. For Trump’s shopping, the problem here is there is no possible follow up. A weapon that powerful is supposed to be a closer. We were already fighting against terrorists in Afghanistan, so this attack should have finished the job. There is also the absurd claim that every precaution was taken to avoid civilian casualties. You simply do not use a weapon like this if you are trying to spare civilians.

So none of these situations give Trump the war he wants. For that he needs an enemy foolish enough to attack out shores, or a terrorist attack similar in scale to 9/11. He needs a situation that makes it clear that he is standing up for all of us, responding to a new enemy or threat. He needs, in short, a justification for a sustained campaign against a nation we can all agree is dangerous enough to us to justify the sacrifice of American blood. Anything else will only be good enough for a short term popularity boost, doomed to fade in the absence of any peaceful domestic successes.

All of this is disturbing enough, but we also need to be concerned about Trump’s choice of weapons. Barack Obama seemed almost embarrassed by the need to wage war. He favored weapons which were subtle and precise. These are not very splashy, but they actually do limit civilian casualties as much as possible. Trump, on the other hand, likes big explosions. Even though the Syrian airfield was somehow usable the next day, 59 Tomahawk missiles made quite a show. Like a drug addict needing a bigger fix, Trump topped that by using the “Mother Of All Bombs” in Afghanistan. It’s not even clear why this weapon exists. It is hard to drop, and there are very few situations, if any, where its deployment makes any strategic sense. The man who designed it must have been a bit unbalanced. Now it seems that Trump must find a new weapon to top this for next time, and that scares the hell out of me. I hope he understands that any place we nuke will not be a suitable place to build a Trump-branded property during the rest of Trump’s lifetime, because that may be all that saves us.

I would very have preferred that tonight’s song had become obsolete, but it may be even more relevant now than when Tom Lehrer wrote it: