When President Donald Trump first sought to stage a military parade in Washington, a four-star general argued against it, telling him that “it’s what dictators do”. Trump was unbothered by the comparison, and so on Saturday, tanks rolled down the streets of the nation’s capital for the first time in decades.
Nor was Trump evidently concerned about being accused of authoritarian excess for deploying troops to Los Angeles to quell protests against his immigration crackdown. If anything, he seemed to revel in the moment, vowing to “hit” anyone who so much as spit at a police officer and even threatening “very big force” against protesters in Washington.
Yet as a real war broke out this week in West Asia, Trump seemed reluctant to get involved, declining to join Israel in its aerial blitz against Iran’s nuclear facilities despite years of chest-thumping threats of “obliteration” against the Islamic regime. While he authorised US forces to help defend Israel from Iran’s subsequent retaliation, in keeping with past practice, Trump made clear that he would not target Iran himself, at least for now, and instead urged it to return to the negotiating table.
The seemingly disparate postures of recent days — strongman at home, peace-seeker abroad — speak to Trump’s complicated relationship with the military. He has ordered more troops to Los Angeles and Washington than he currently has stationed in Syria and Iraq combined. He seems more willing at the moment to use the military against Americans than against Iranians. He celebrates a show of force on US soil even as he denounces “endless wars” outside its borders.
Trump has always been a contradictory commander in chief, one unlike any other in American history. A graduate of a high school military academy, he never actually served in the armed forces, avoided being drafted for Vietnam thanks to a dubious bone spurs diagnosis, publicly denigrated Senator John McCain’s wartime heroism and was quoted privately dismissing veterans as “suckers” and “losers” (which he denied).
Yet as President, Trump has used the military to serve his political goals. He surrounded himself with “my generals” and purged those he deemed insufficiently loyal. He entertained a recommendation to impose a form of martial law to overturn the 2020 election that he lost. In recent days, he has given speeches at the US Military Academy at West Point and Fort Bragg, NC, that sounded like campaign rallies.
Trump enjoys strong support among many active-duty service members and veterans who appreciate his vocal backing and admire his unvarnished bravado, according to polls and analysts. Yet some career officers said the President clearly does not understand the ethos of service or the nonpartisan tradition of the American armed forces.
The demonstration of military might on American streets this week feels jarring, coming at the same time as a full-blown West Asia crisis in which the US has taken a backseat. Trump has been trying to negotiate an agreement with Iran to end its nuclear programme peacefully, only to be overtaken by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who decided to take matters into his own hands with a ferocious bombardment.
Trump publicly complimented the Israelis on their success on Friday but did not endorse further military action, instead reaching out to Iran to resume talks. Some Republican hawks expressed consternation that he would not be willing to more directly support Israel’s military campaign.
“Trump is more focused on his birthday parade, or so it seems, than on helping Israel and the West to eliminate a serious nuclear threat,” said Charles M. Kupperman, who served as Trump’s deputy national security adviser in his first term. “Trump can keep mouthing ‘peace through strength’, but just mouthing doesn’t make it real, and words don’t eliminate threats. Actions do.”
Trump has at times been willing to use force overseas, notably in assassinating a top Iranian commander in his first term and striking Houthi militants in the early months of his second. But his “America First” foreign policy has emphasised extracting the US from foreign wars, not starting new ones.
Even Trump’s limited support for Israel was enough to draw fire from an important supporter, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, who has long lobbied against military action against Iran. After the Israeli attack, Carlson wrote in a newsletter that Trump was “complicit in the act of war”, saying that “years of funding and sending weapons” to Israel “undeniably place the US at the centre of last night’s events”.
New York Times News Service