Trump doesn’t need advice from Jimmy Carter on foreign policy

Former President Carter has urged the United States not to use military force in pursuing America’s foreign-policy, especially with respect to the use of chemical weapons by Syria.

This advice was consistent with what the former president, after his four years in office, declared as the most important accomplishment of his presidency: Never using military force.

The former president wasn’t alone. Considerable analysis on both the left and right urged the current administration not to use military force against Syria and involve ourselves in what was often described as “another war” in the Middle East.

{mosads}Indeed, the security landscape is a mess, including ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria, a nuclear armed North Korea, a potentially nuclear armed Iran and an aggressive and heavily armed Russia and China. And that is to say nothing of an Iranian missile-supplied terrorist communities of Hamas and Hezbollah.

As our secretary of defense aptly noted, we live in a security environment characterized by “mayhem”. Nonetheless, is the security advice from the former president worth noting? Yes, but not because we should heed such advice, but because we should reject it.

Carter warns Trump to keep country at peace: “Any nuclear exchange could involve catastrophe” https://t.co/fE6YpNbxm4 pic.twitter.com/4NPt8M6xco

— The Hill (@thehill) April 12, 2018

We should remember that President Carter’s experiment in nonaggression, punctuated by his idea to “love our enemies,” culminated during his administration in a decade in which many countries flipped from the West to join the Soviet orbit.

In 1979 alone, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, our ally Iran fell to the terrorist Mullahs, Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq, and the Islamic Grand Mosque in Mecca was seized by terrorists.

As numerous Soviet officials believed at the time, the “correlation of forces” now favored the Soviet Union and its empire.

Thus, before we wax nostalgic for the Carter administration and “nonviolence” as a foreign policy strategy, and before we ignore the soft power results of the Obama administration, we should take a hard look at what the new administration is trying to accomplish and whether indeed the judicious use of military power is justified.

The strikes against the Syrian chemical weapons facilities were in fact a reflection of a broader and serious minded Middle Eastern policy that consists of five key parts.

Trump’s base breaks with him over Syria strikes: We didn’t support him to go to war https://t.co/43BFhlVHaJ pic.twitter.com/Re6OSybasd

— The Hill (@thehill) April 18, 2018

First, a new informal coalition of Middle Eastern partners is emerging — including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Israel — that joined both France and Great Britain in carrying out and supporting the American led strike against the Syrian chemical weapons facilities.

Second, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the key element of reform in the entire Gulf region as the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has turned upside down decades of Saudi policy. There, the Muslim Brotherhood is being marginalized, the harsh sharia law adopted in 1979 is being pulled back, liberal reforms are taking root, and the focus on the Palestinian fight against Israel has been dropped (and the wrong-headed obsession of the West with the “peace process”.)

The parallels are obvious with Egyptian President Sadat’s 1977 visit to Israel that led to the Camp David Peace Accords. And the relative calm between Egypt and Israel this past four decades (a decidedly positive development in an otherwise gloomy decade).

Third, the United States and this coalition are concentrating attention toward Iran and its push for hegemonic control over the Persian Gulf region and the Saudi peninsula, an area that contains 70 percent of all the known conventional oil and gas resources in the world.

Fourth, the Trump administration has called on the Gulf nations to arm themselves effectively, to deter conflict but also fight the terrorist threats from Iran with their own resources.

McConnell praises Trump’s Syria response after some Republicans criticize missile strike https://t.co/RkoSBO4iNr pic.twitter.com/ARRXJAvo0a

— The Hill (@thehill) April 17, 2018

Part of this effort is to build effective missile defenses, critical, for example, in defending Saudi Arabia from Houthi rebel launched missiles. Another key part of this effort was the 2017 agreement to purchase $110 billion in American military hardware confirmed by the Saudi crown prince in early 2018 at the Washington summit.  

Fifth, reinforcing intelligent redlines. The April strike may very well have been connected to a recent UN report that revealed 40 illegal North Korean shipments of chemical weapons and missile technology to Syria since 2010, some no doubt destined for the facilities destroyed by the U.S.-led strikes.

Critics of the missile strike are worried it will simply lead to more war. But the historical record belies this fear. President Reagan, for example, used his military buildup sparingly, but because he spoke strongly and clearly about U.S. interests, our adversaries took him seriously.

Reagan used military force to take down Libyan forces in the Gulf of Sidra and to liberate Grenada. He used the threat of military force as well as to deter the Soviets and our other enemies. But he used the military sparingly although his defense buildup was formidable.

While Carter was praised by much of the media for his restraint, the former president bequeathed to us a hollow military unable to effectively deter bad actors and a dangerous strategic environment.  

We have had eight years of a similar Carter-like parallel administration whose hallmark was “leading from behind” and “strategic patience.” We know exactly where that has led us.

The Syrian strike, pushing NATO to rearm, building missile defenses and a strong nuclear deterrent, and getting tough with China on the South China Sea and Russia on Ukraine, is all part of a newly assertive American foreign and security policy. But a strong policy that uses all resources — political, economic, diplomatic and military — is perfectly consistent with not needlessly putting American forces in harm’s way.

The strike on Syria says there are redlines you do not cross — the use of chemical weapons is a taboo we as a great nation will absolutely enforce. Unlike drawing redlines in the sand that are erased by the first hint of diplomatic wind, the current American administration now has a reputation of being serious, building deterrent value. It is an echo of Reagan’s “peace through strength.”