Noah Smith wrote a post1 a few days ago where he considers the likely (negative in his opinion) impact of a second Trump presidency on US foreign policy. In his coverage of the past he misses a few points that mean that he is wrong in his conclusion. In foreign policy the US and the world will, IMHO, strongly benefit from a Trump presidency compared to one where the current lot are running things.
The current lot say all sorts of things (e.g. Commie La Whoreish saying “Don’t” to the Iranians) but they regularly fail to back those words up with actions and the actions they take often seem to embolden rather than deter. In the middle east the administration’s words and actions in support of Hamas/Gaza (e.g. the idiotic pier) have undoubtedly negatively affected the Israeli effort against Hamass and Hez(no)ballah. In Ukraine, despite promising billions of dollars of weapons and words stating support for Ukraine, the administration has not in fact used billions of allocated dollars and has placed conditions on the use of provided weapons that severely limit Ukraine’s response to Russian aggression.
Trump, by contrast, was more direct in his approach to Iran and in his support for Israel. Trump also began the process of combating Chicom mercantile aggression through the use of tariffs. It is notable that under Trump the Russians failed to invade Ukraine, the Iranian proxies kept pretty quiet and the Chinese were less aggressive regarding Taiwan.
There are three current hotspots in the world
The Taiwan/West Taiwan cool war and the threat of West Taiwan to the world as a whole
The Ukraine Invasion and NATO’s defenses against Russia
The Middle East which mostly boils down to Iran causing trouble
[Partial aside: I wrote a substack about why I support Taiwan, Ukraine and Israel that explains my views on all three.]
Noah completely ignores 3 and thinks Trump will give in to the tyrannical aggressors in 1 & 2. He also totally ignores how incompetent the current Biden administration has been in both of those and situation 3.
It is also worth noting that the three are very definitely connected in that there seems to be a growing CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) alliance as this article at the intercept explains.
Most of what Smith does is look at various people’s pious hopes and political promises without checking what actually happened. That leads him astray. He also fails to check whether the US (particularly the US military, and even more particularly the US Navy) can actually do what people like Blinken threaten that they can.
The overstretched underresourced US Navy
Cdr Salamander and others (e.g. Sal Mercogliano and John Konrad) have been sounding the alarm over the general decline in USN capabilities over the last few years. There are multiple issues here (go read their substacks/xitters and follow links to others) but they seem to me to fall into three categories.
First is that the USN has, like the rest of the military gone dangeously woke and, as a result, is both discouraging recruitment and actively endangering sailors by forcing crews at sea to deny reality in terms of differences between the sexes and so on. Probably relatedly there are significant discipline issues that extend far up the chain2.
Secondly there is a failure to get serious about supplies and new ships. Again there are numerous Cdr Salamander posts about this of which the one below is the most recent:
The shipbuilding industry needed to both build new ships and repair existing ones is struggling to build ships that work on time and within budget. Part of that seems to be that the USN can’t order sensible numbers of sensible ship classes due to budget constraints caused by congress and its failure to pass spending bills but it is exacerbated by the shipbuilders themselves performing poorly.
Thirdly, and somewhat related to the first two, is the terrible shape of the supply chains. The grounding of the Big Horn in the Middle East is a good example both in that it shows the direct problem of (almost certainly) poor training/discipline in the crew but also because with the ship now out of action the USN around the Red Sea have major resupply issues because there aren’t any other oilers that can be sent to replace it.
You can put some blame Trump’s way for this in that he had four years to try and fix it - though he was, as we know now, partly stymied by the Pentagon and his top Admirals/Generals - but apart from those 4 years the presidency has been under the control of the Democrats - Obama and then whoever is pulling Biden’s strings. At no time have I seen any Obama or Biden person make any serious attempt to fix the US Navy and to the extent that they have tried to do things it has been to introduce the wokery that has made things worse.
Taiwan and the Chicoms
Noah Smith notes that Trump was the president who first introduced tariffs on the PRC and who sounded the alarm on PRC expansionism but he seems to think that the fact that Biden extended Trumps tariffs and subsidies for onshoring means Biden is better. Moreover he feels that Trump’s sympathy to TikTok amidst threats of it being banned is a sign that Trump wants to cozy up to the PRC.
That last is, IMHO, plain ridiculous. Trump’s sympathy for TikTok is undoubtedly driven by his experience of being censored on social media at the behest of the US government. My guess is that once he gets a decent brief on the issue he will change his mind because it is quite clear to me that Trump has not magically found that he likes Winnie the Flu and his minions. In particular I have absolutely no doubt that he blames the Chicoms for the Wuflu and his loss in 2020. I see absolutely no sign that Trump will do anything other than continue the policies he started in his first stint and which Biden extended regarding the PRC and its attempts to put competing industries out of business.
Whether he will do enough fast enough to stop West Taiwan doing something stupid regarding Taiwan is unclear but I expect him to be a lot more serious about rearming and ensuring that arms sent to US allies in the region (e.g. the Philippines and Taiwan) are delivered swiftly and are functional when delivered unlike the current administration.
Ukraine and NATO
The absolute biggest scandal of the Biden regime is how it has played escalation management to hobble Ukraine. Trump has said he thinks the limitations Biden’s idiots staff placed on Ukraine’s use of the weapons supplied is ridiculous and I would expect him to clearly state that Ukraine can use the arms provided in whatever way they wish. Now he may tie that permission to Russian refusal to negotiate and it is possible that Russia will string him along for a bit by pretending to negotiate but Trump is a very experienced negotiator, unlike Putin who has never had to negotiate for anything. My guess is that he make some kind of announcement that if no agreement is reached by date X he’ll grant full permission to use, Russia will bluster and threaten and fail to negotiate seriously and probably piss him off in the process.
My suspicion is that he is not going to be happy with the evidence that the Chicoms, Mullahs and the Norks are supplying Russia either (see that article about CRINKs) and a part of any peace deal is going to be that Russia not continue to get such aid. Russia can’t afford that but may well pretend to agree and then it will be caught lying. This kind of bad faith negotiation is definitely going to annoy him and hence lead him to actually increase supplies to Ukraine. And (see above re Taiwan) I strongly suspect Trump will stop the Biden administration failure to deliver on promised weapons and ensure that what is promised is delivered quickly.
Now it is possible that Trump will stop funding Ukraine and try and force some kind of ceasefire/peace talks while doing so. In which case I feel sorry for Ukraine because they have been left high and dry by a ton of their alleged “allies”. Specifically the European nations that have failed to step up and actually spend money to deliver actual useful aid. The nations that don’t understand that Russia views things rather differently to them.
This Xeet seems pretty much correct IMHO
For Russia, this is a war against the West, with Ukraine as the battleground.
For the West, Ukraine stands between it and direct conflict with Russia.
Russia thinks it is at war with the West, but the West doesn't think its at war with Russia.
On that note the other thing that Trump did as President was try and get NATO nations to get serious about their own defense. Despite Trump’s words and the invasion of Ukraine most NATO nations have done very little to improve their defense spending and few of them have been serious about building up the forces they will need if/when Russia decides to go after them after Ukraine. I don’t know whether he will have more success this time around but he can hardly do worse than he did last time and European nations do need to get serious about increasing spending. If Western Europe refuses to get serious about its defense then it deserves all the pain it will get from the reinvigorated central and eastern European nations who are very serious about defense and who are likely to use their now stronger military force as a bargaining tool in the EU and NATO. This is not Trump’s problem, or America’s problem and I expect he is going to completely ignore the shrill cries for places like Germany for help, especially when such nations go all out to demean him3.
Iran and the Middle East
Everyone not suffering from terminal TDS agrees that the Abraham accords were the major foreign policy triumph of Trump’s first term. Everyone is also well aware that Trump is an ardent supporter of Israel and not at all inclined to the wishy-washy “don’t hurt the poor widdle gazans” of the current administration. He is also unlikely to tolerate the Houthis meddling or to be particularly worried if Israel feels the need to smack Iran hard. Indeed one suspects a second Trump regime is going to do what it can to isolate Iran in every way possible and to make life a lot harder for the Mullahs. So sanctions are likely to be properly enforced, financial payments to the Mullahs will stop and Iranian assets abroad will be frozen again. Given the way the US Deep State and/or Biden administration seem happy to leak Israeli plans to the world as well as all the equivocation over Gaza I can’t see how Israel wants Commie La Whoreish as president and I don’t either. Moreover, I’m fairly sure that Trump will happily support further raprochement between Israel and Sunni arab nations who are apparently sending Israel back channel messages of support.
In other words, in the conflict that Smith ignores there is no doubt that Trump will support the forces of democracy and freedom over the nihilist terrorist supporting Iranians. Since those same terror supporting Iranians are also supporting Russia my guess is that Trump is going to end up not supporting Russia as much as people fear even if his support of Ukraine is less than I might like.
Drones and Satellites
Assuming that Trump is elected and does pick Elon Musk to head a group to put a Milei chainsaw to the Federal government then he’s undoubtedly going to get a ton of free advice on space policy, technology and so on from a person who actually has private sector experience building stuff despite government regulations. He’s also likely to get information about critical new war technologies like drones from people who are not connected to the usual set of beltway bandits. Many people (including me4) have observed that in both Ukraine and the Middle East drones are key to successful war fighting. The US military has made noises about drones but they don’t seem to grok that they key to drones is lots and lots of cheap ones. This rules out all the expensive custom sorts that the current beltway bandits produce.
Battlefield OWA Drones need to be about the price of a couple of artillery shells or a Javelin anti-tank missile. Longer ranged drones need to be cheaper than the ATACMS etc. missiles they compete with and so on. Drone defenses likewise need to be cheap. The Battleswarm blog has two posts on relatively cheap drone defense. The US government needs to fund these sorts of defenses and get them into production fast. Drones are going to be key to smashing any PLAN blockade of Taiwan. Surface and submersible drones in sufficient numbers (by the hundreds or thousands that is) can keep the PLAN stuck in port in the same way that Ukraine has kept the Russian Black Sea fleet mostly in port. Naval drone defenses need to also be developed because the Chicoms can make drones too and USN ships and fleets are just as vulnerable to mass drone attacks as PLAN ones.
I see few signs that the incumbent Democrat administration and the Pentagon top people are serious about drones. If war comes to involve the US military directly, it is going to have to handle drones. Trump is more likely to get the out-of-the-box thinking that is needed to come up with successful drone strategies and weapons than the current lot for whom thinking out of the box is a crime.
Summary
Noah is correct that the free world is teetering on the edge of a knife. But the greater danger is from continuation of the current semi-appeasement policies of the Obama/Biden administrations that end up providing enough support to keep a war going but not enough for a decisive victory. Trump is more direct and that is actually useful in international diplomacy, he is also far less likely to deal in half measures. The fear Noah and others have is that the CRINK dictators will bamboozle him because he has said things to the effect that he can do business with them. I think they misunderstand how Trump does business and how he reacts when a counter-party fails to deliver.
I appreciate the outside view.