U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Trump administration’s foreign policy is based on restraint and realism. But U.S. foreign policy actions across the world suggest a lack of understanding for what the concept means in practice. Restraint values diplomatic engagement over military coercion and domination. so don’t be fooled by Pompeo’s hollow language. The latest video from the Quincy Institute explains:
If accounts of President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities this past month are to be believed, the president’s initial impulse to stay out of the Israel-Iran conflict failed to survive the prodding of hawkish advisers, chiefly U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Michael Kurilla.
With Kurilla, an Iran hawk and staunch ally of both the Israeli government and erstwhile national security adviser Mike Waltz, set to leave office this summer, advocates of a more restrained foreign policy may understandably feel like they are out of the woods.
They would be sorely mistaken.
CENTCOM’s incoming commander, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, is Kurilla’s deputy, and he would become just the second Navy officer ever to command CENTCOM. Unanimously confirmed by voice vote in the Senate and championed by both Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his immediate predecessor, Cooper’s Senate confirmation testimony indicates more continuity than change.
For an administration that once talked a big game about realigning U.S. foreign policy in a more restrained direction, this selection implies the opposite: an indefinite commitment to U.S. primacy in the region in the name of counterterrorism and great power competition.
In his responses to written questions for his confirmation, Cooper argued that the United States should retain military forces in Iraq and Syria to “maintain the defeat of ISIS.” The primary reason for this, he argues, is that the U.S. presence denies the terrorist group safe haven from which to attack the U.S. homeland.
Yet, as the Trump administration itself acknowledged by reducing U.S. troop levels in Syria earlier this year, ISIS lacks the capacity to pose a serious threat to the U.S. homeland and other regional actors have an interest in suppressing ISIS. As Rose Kelanic at Defense Priorities writes, “While ISIS has morphed into an international ‘brand’ adopted by affiliates in far-off locales, notably ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), a group based in Afghanistan and Iraq that was responsible for attacks in Russia and Iran earlier in 2024, whatever original ISIS elements still exist in Syria appear incapable of conducting sophisticated, international terrorist attacks.”
Furthermore, the “safe haven” concept has serious flaws — namely, that it is incredibly difficult to mount sophisticated military operations across the globe in a dysfunctional environment, especially given sophisticated U.S. over-the-horizon intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities and the interest regional partners have in suppressing terrorism. This is precisely why Afghanistan did not become a safe haven for terrorism after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal.
Finally, the vulnerabilities of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria exceed the purported benefits. U.S. military infrastructure in Iraq and Syria sits in proximity to Iranian forces and extremist groups while lacking sophisticated air defense systems. It is little wonder that these forces have faced more than 400 attacks since the October 2023 breakout of the Gaza war, according to CENTCOM and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. While there have thankfully been few casualties, withdrawing U.S. troops entirely removes that risk.
Another assumption underlying Cooper’s testimony is that America needs to reform its arms sales process to ensure its continued influence with regional partners at the expense of Russia and China. He expresses support for the administration’s industry-friendly Foreign Military Sales (FMS) reforms, which eschew important congressional oversight and human rights conditions.
There are two problems with this approach:
First, if arms bought influence, America is getting a raw deal. As long as arms keep flowing, reckless regional partners engage in behaviors that threaten to entangle the United States in conflict or violate human rights. Israel, for example, launched air strikes against Iran in defiance of the stated U.S. preference of a negotiated agreement to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. Additionally, during its conflict with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Saudi Arabia received American military assistance in creating what the United Nations called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Finally, these sales give “reverse leverage” to U.S. partners, whose threats to diversify their arms imports induce concessions that are not in the U.S. interest.
Secondly, as Jon Hoffman argues, China (the more capable of the two aforementioned powers) lacks the will and ability to project power in the Middle East, is more focused on political developments in its own region, and shares an interest with the United States in regional stability to protect its economic and energy interests. There is accordingly little to gain and everything to lose from a war with China over the Middle East.
Troublingly, Cooper asserted that a nuclear Iran would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Middle East, enabling Iran to “become a global hegemon and maintain regional dominance for many years.”
This is simply not plausible.
First, one should challenge the assumption that Iran currently has regional dominance. While militarily formidable and populous, Iran has no serious claim to even regional hegemony. In the past 21 months, Iran’s Axis of Resistance has been degraded by Israel, and the collective military power of the Gulf states, buttressed by oil revenues (which, unlike Iran’s, are not under sanctions), poses a significant challenge. The U.S. and Israeli strikes in June, while likely strengthening Iranian long-term resolve to pursue nuclear weapons, also may have degraded Iran further, by diminishing Iran’s air defenses and assassinating Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists.
Another impediment is Israel, a nuclear-armed quasi-ally of the United States that has spent those 21 months projecting power across the region in the midst of a crushing war that has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in Gaza. Given the degradation of the Axis and that Tehran’s land forces are structured for defense in depth and lack long-range maneuver capability, Iran faces serious headwinds.
If Iran is incapable of regional hegemony, global hegemony is but a pipe dream.
Even a nuclear deterrent would not make Iran a global hegemon. With a GDP akin to Romania’s and a military whose power projection capabilities are dwarfed by those of true great powers, Iran is no hegemon-to-be. If nuclear weapons and a highly militarized society were sufficient to ensure global dominance, then North Korea would be a great power. This is serial threat inflation of the highest order.
This was all predictable. Ever since the combatant command system originated in 1986, the commands have, in the words of The Washington Post 25 years ago, “evolved into the modern-day equivalent of the Roman Empire’s proconsuls — well-funded, semi-autonomous, unconventional centers of U.S. foreign policy.”
These mini-Pentagons act as less accountable versions of embassies and sources of threat inflation, all while siphoning resources away from diplomacy. By creating vested peacetime interests in U.S. intervention that compete for resources, CO-COM commanders are incentivized to treat regional problems as threats to U.S. security to garner funding and forces. At a time when some in the Administration are rightfully urging deprioritization of the Middle East theater, CENTCOM’s rhetoric threatens to keep the United States locked in the region for the long haul.
The confirmation of another fervent Iran hawk as CENTCOM commander ought to serve as a wake-up call to those who want to prevent further U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. These restrainers must not only resist the urge to take a victory lap, but also reexamine whether the present combatant command structure is still fit for purpose.
In the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his love for three things: deals, tariffs, and ultimatums.
He got to combine these passions during his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Only moments after the two leaders announced a new plan to get military aid to Ukraine, Trump issued an ominous 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “We're going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don't have a deal within 50 days,” Trump told the assembled reporters.
The threat is unlikely to change Putin’s calculus, however, or bring the conflict to a near-term conclusion. Instead, Trump’s deadline is likely to make his own life more difficult, limiting his future flexibility, putting the settlement he craves farther out of reach, and forcing him to take steps that harm rather than advance U.S. interests.
Trump’s intention to impose “secondary tariffs” on Russia if Putin does not meet his deadline was not well-explained in his press conference with Rutte. Nor was it immediately clear if the planned punishment for Putin’s continued intransigence would include tariffs on Russian trade with the United States or “secondary sanctions” on Russia’s trading partners — or some combination of the two.
Whatever the details, however, looming economic consequences are unlikely to intimidate Putin or convince him to accept an early ceasefire. For starters, if Trump is indeed talking about tariffs on Russian trade with the United States, then his threat is an empty one. The United States imported only about $3 billion in goods from Russia in 2024, meaning that U.S. tariffs will impose little, if any, new costs on Moscow.
If Trump was instead warning that he would impose secondary sanctions or economic penalties on countries like China, the European Union, and India which purchase Russian oil and other goods, then the potential consequences for Russia are higher — if Trump follows through. A U.S. decision to impose economic penalties on Russia’s trading partners would place at risk the income Moscow relies on to finance its war machine, but it would also create political and economic complications for Washington that undermine the credibility of Trump’s threat and its effectiveness as a tool of coercion.
Not only would such a policy disrupt and set back ongoing U.S. negotiations with important U.S. trade partners and put pressure on the U.S. economy, but in the case of India and Europe, it would force Trump to impose painful economic punishments on crucial security partners. Because of these concerns, the United States has historically enforced secondary sanctions only sporadically and selectively, often targeting adversaries but not allies. The same would likely be true in this case.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that even secondary sanctions would cut off Russian revenues, as Moscow has become skilled as using black market transfers and its “shadow fleet” to circumvent U.S. and European economic pressure.
Most importantly, Putin and the Russian economy have shown tremendous resilience to the economic weapons that the United States and its allies have unleashed so far, and there is no reason to expect this time to be different. In fact, the Russian stock market rose almost three percent after Trump’s announcement, suggesting Russian investors share this assessment. As a result, Putin is unlikely to be fearful of Trump’s economic intimidation or sensitive to even the moderate costs additional U.S. economic warfare might impose.
If Trump’s ability to force Putin to the table using economic sticks is limited, then his military leverage is even smaller. Putin has a clear advantage on the battlefield, and the new aid arrangement in which Europe will buy U.S. weapons to send to Ukraine is unlikely to change this.
What weapons Europe can send quickly — purchased from the United States or taken from their own stocks — will be small in number and limited in type. After over three years of war, neither the United States nor Europe have deep reserves of munitions or other kinds of weapons to provide. More weapons can be purchased off production lines, but they won’t arrive for some time and so won’t do anything to help Ukraine’s soldiers in the near-term.
Moreover, defensive weapons like Patriot systems and interceptors — the focus of much fanfare during today’s big announcement — will help protect Ukrainian civilians but do little to reinforce Ukraine’s already strained front lines.
Putin’s continued strikes on Ukrainian cities and decision to press forward with a summer offensive are evidence of his confidence in Russia’s ability to persist militarily for the foreseeable future. It is unlikely the meager military aid package announced on Monday will change his mind on this score.
Ultimately, Trump’s newest deadline, like those that he has issued before, is unlikely to factor into Putin’s decision-making or to change the trajectory of the war. Putin has staked far too much on the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine to stop fighting before achieving his basic objectives or to settle for an unsatisfactory deal in response to an artificial and U.S.-imposed deadline while he still has the military advantage.
In this way, Russia is like any other wartime combatant, unwilling to sue for peace until it is clear that there are no more benefits to be gained from continued fighting.
Rather than bringing peace closer by forcing Putin the negotiating table, Trump’s threats may make near-term resolution less likely, both by hardening Putin’s resolve and by placing at risk newly opened channels of communication between the United States and Russia. The ultimatum also compromises Trump’s effectiveness as a mediator and constrains the flexibility he will need to successfully broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine.
When 50 days is up and Putin has not agreed to a ceasefire Trump will have an unenviable choice to make: demonstrate fecklessness by backing down or take economic actions that will inflict harm on the United States, alienate close partners, and almost certainly push a near-term end to the war beyond his grasp.
There is one glimmer of hope that Trump and others hoping for peace can hang on to, however. Fifty days is a long time, and will arrive in the early fall, as Russia’s summer offensive winds down and the winter approaches. There could be an appetite for another round of negotiations at this point, especially if Putin feels he has achieved enough militarily and prefers a deal that meets most of his war aims to continued fighting.
This shift would be unrelated to Trump’s new deadline, but U.S. national security officials should be preparing the ground to take advantage of the opportunity all the same. This includes pushing hard for bilateral meetings between the United States and Russia at least at the working level and encouraging more direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Reaching an end to the war in Ukraine will be a lot harder than issuing ultimatums, but openings for peace could still emerge organically soon. Washington should be ready when they do.
President Trump finds himself in a rerun of his first term on Ukraine policy. Declawed by lawmakers in D.C. and forced to push policies that worsen the U.S. relationship with Russia.
He is expected today to announce that the U.S. will be sending more advanced patriot missile batteries to Ukraine — via NATO member countries, which will be paying for it.
It’s not clear whether this is the “big announcement” he told reporters he’d be making on Ukraine on Monday or whether that could include tough new sanctions on Russia. The sanctions, which would impose enormous tariffs of 500% on countries that buy Russian energy, are being pushed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in a Senate bill that now has some 85 co-sponsors.
Trump has not endorsed it yet but has made suggestions he would support it.
Pumping more weapons into the war won’t help Ukraine win; backing secondary sanctions will kill prospects for peace. He should press for compromise from all sides in the conflict.
There is a depressing sense of Groundhog Day to the situation President Trump finds himself in again today. Having said that “sanctions cost us a lot of money” at the recent G7 Summit in Canada, signing this latest act into law will simply confirm that he is no longer in control of U.S. policy towards Russia, as he wasn’t during his first term.
Indeed, the proposed legislation would have a much worse effect on U.S.-Russia relations than the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017, which was also pushed by Senator Graham.
When President Trump signed CAATSA into law, he included a statement expressing displeasure at its flawed nature and how it would limit his executive authority in foreign affairs.
CAATSA has been used for example to sanction Turkey in December 2020 over the purchase of Russian S-400 air defence and in March 2021 for the poisoning and imprisonment of the late political dissident, Aleksey Navalny. The difference with this latest sanctions bill is that, in addition to killing prospects of peace in Ukraine, it will cause self-harm to the U.S. economy — the tariffs would affect trade with a number of major U.S. partners including the EU, Taiwan, and China — and to America’s increasingly tarnished world standing.
Attempting to undermine Russia by pushing vast tariffs against its main trading partners simply will not work. Anyone who believes that China will suddenly stop importing Russian oil against the threat of U.S. sanctions is a fool or deliberately disingenuous.As it did earlier this year, China will simply respond with tit for tat tariffs against Washington.
While a much feared spike in inflation has not materialized yet, many American economists predict prices to rise over the summer. The rate of U.S. growth appears set to slow, according to the OECD. And that is on the basis of tariffs that President Trump threatened to impose. From ramping up China tariffs to 145% the average U.S. tariff on China is now around 51%. America’s effective tariff rate with the whole world stands at around 14.1% today.
At no point since 2014 has it appeared remotely likely that sanctions would change President Putin’s stance towards Ukraine.
As far back as February 2022, the day after the war in Ukraine started, Tulsi Gabbard, now U.S. Director of National Intelligence, was quoted as saying, “sanctions don’t work… What we do know is that they will increase suffering and hardship for the American people. And this is (the) whole problem with the Biden administration: They are so focused on how do we punish Putin that they don’t care and are not focused on what is actually in the best interests of the American people.”
Meanwhile, Russia will continue to prosecute its grinding war against Ukraine with devastating consequences for that country.
Now President Trump has struck a deal to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine via NATO (NATO countries will be paying for them), putting the financial burden on Europe as foreshadowed in my previous article.
In widely reported comments, President Trump accused President Putin of throwing a lot of “bull****” about peace talks. But the core of his comments were about the capabilities of U.S. military equipment, how Washington has given Ukraine three times as much as Europe and how that balance should be “equalized.” He also refers to the “brilliant” U.S. defense contractors and urges Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “step them up” so that they can produce equipment more quickly.
My take is that, with a 5% NATO spending commitment pocketed, an increasingly frustrated President Trump increasingly looks upon the war as a business opportunity.
This follows approval of a one-time spending splurge of an additional $150 billion for the Department of Defense — more than twice Britain’s yearly military spending and the reversal of a decision to temporarily pause weapons shipments to Ukraine.
Trump says a major driver of this decision was the increase in Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities including Kyiv. Ukraine undoubtedly needs weapons to defend itself.
The rate at which Ukraine is losing territory on the battlefield has accelerated significantly in recent weeks. However, daily territorial gains remain objectively small, albeit at a punishing human cost in death and injury. But providing more “defensive” weapons won’t help Ukraine win, though it may arrest the speed of defeat. Not providing weapons won’t help Russia secure a spectacular breakthrough either.
Russia has, arguably since the collapse of the first Istanbul talks in April 2022, focused on the attritional nature of the war, bleeding Ukraine and its Western sponsors dry of the economic means to fight. This lurch back to arming Ukraine to the teeth won’t change that.
Longer term, the new NATO commitment to 5% defense spending will gradually shift the balance of military power in Europe, such that European NATO members could stand on their own two feet against Russia. But it won’t happen soon enough to help Ukraine snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Further talks between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russia counterpart Sergei Lavrov took place on July 10 in Kuala Lumpur. But the Russian Foreign Ministry statement on the talks was bland.
Beyond a brief reference to the search for peaceful solutions to conflict, it focused more on the reestablishment of “unhindered ties between their countries’ societies,” including through direct flights. A strategic reset of U.S.-Russia relations undoubtedly remains a big priority for the Kremlin. But right now, they appear in no hurry to settle. They, too, are consumed by a sense of déjà vu.
Going right back to the failed Minsk peace agreements of 2014 and 2015, peace efforts have always come to nought because of a desire by Western powers to force Russia to concede without imposing obligations on Ukraine to make concessions.
President Trump now needs to step back and look at the canvas.
While the texture of a future peace deal provides considerable scope for compromise on both sides, including on the issue of how the territorial status quo is described, one Russian demand will not change: NATO membership. Unless President Trump can broker Ukrainian acceptance that it will not join NATO, amidst resistance to any compromise from European allies, he will not bring peace to Ukraine, though he might dent the American economy.
Time to rip off that band-aid.
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