President Donald Trump does not want to be a wartime president.
He wants to be the president who, as he did at Mar-a-Lago in 2017, enjoyed “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever seen,” as he informed Chinese President Xi Jinping that the U.S. had just dropped bombs on Syria.
Trump wants to be the U.S. president who uses military force sparingly. In 2017, the spark came from then-Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people.
Trump also wants to be the president who brings back the sheen to the U.S. military’s image. Last weekend’s brilliantly executed Operation Midnight Hammer rained missiles on three Iranian nuclear sites. For the time being, the threat of Iran’s nuclear ambitions appears to have been arrested.
Iran responded by sending missiles toward the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The missiles were intercepted. There was no American body count. Just the way Trump likes it.
It’s ironic that Democratic critics like Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., were accusing Trump of trying to gin up a “forever war” in the Middle East.
To the contrary, Trump subsequently announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire after 12 days. Will the ceasefire pay off? Time will tell. Meanwhile, Trump pushed for negotiations, not warfare.
At the same time, Trump isn’t afraid of a fight. As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News after U.S. forces struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, “Past presidents wanted to take this action, but they didn’t have the guts to make the decision.”
Leavitt didn’t need to name the former presidents who declared Iran should not have nukes without acting decisively: Joe Biden, Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
Trump doesn’t want to be another Bush. This president doesn’t want to deploy boots on the ground.
Two days after the nuclear sites were hit, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei posted a portrait of a burning American flag and a pledge that Iran will not surrender — as he was hiding in a bunker. That was before the ceasefire announcement.
On Tuesday, Trump flew to the NATO summit, where Western European leaders seemed genuinely in sync with his actions. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised Trump for his “decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do.”
From Berlin, Politico reported, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz noted, “There is no reason for us and also for me personally to criticize what Israel started a week ago and also no reason to criticize what America did last weekend. It is not without risk, but leaving it as it was wasn’t an option, either.”
NATO leaders also are praising Trump for pushing for them to increase their contribution to NATO’s defense spending to 5% of GDP. It turns out he was right to prod NATO to pony up during his first visit to a NATO summit, when, on paper, membership required a mere 2% of GDP.
At the time, Trump’s remarks seemed a shocking breach of decorum. Now they have the ring of an alarm that needed to be sounded.
Debra J. Saunders is the Washington columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal
