It is hard to overestimate the extent to which Donald Trump’s foreign-policy and national-security postures depend on overseas perceptions of his willingness to make credible threats in defense of U.S. interests. In almost every arena, he has suggested that his overpowering projection of “strength” will prevent wars and even force their resolution. That means that for the 47th president, more than for most of his predecessors, it’s essential that he maintain credibility in issuing threats of military force. Having eschewed as “weak” treaties and alliances and every other form of “soft power” in dealings with hostile countries, when Trump rattles a saber, the world needs to believe he means what he says. Otherwise, his words will quickly lose their potency in deterring bad actors. So despite his habit of overstatement on domestic matters, when it comes to matters of peace and war, his exact words need to be carefully chosen.
That’s why the threat he just made to Hamas was poorly worded to a dangerous degree:
President-elect Donald Trump threatened severe consequences if Hamas does not release the hostages before his inauguration. pic.twitter.com/Kdp6riTGSH
— Israel National News - Arutz Sheva (@ArutzSheva_En) December 2, 2024
In 1945, not that very long ago in the “storied History of the United States of America,” this country attacked the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. I’d say that’s “hitting them” pretty hard. If for some reason you want to exclude nukes as literally incredible, there were U.S. conventional strategic-bombing attacks on German and Japanese cities in World War II that killed tens of thousands (or in some cases perhaps hundreds of thousands) of civilians. Tens of thousands of North Vietnamese civilians were killed in U.S. air strikes during the extended Operation Rolling Thunder operation from 1965 to 1968. The initial U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 killed an estimated 7,500 civilians. So what, exactly, is Trump telling the hardened cynics of Hamas he’s going to do? And if he’s just blowing smoke about what he intends to do the minute he takes office, why should anyone believe with any precision his future threats?
Somebody close to the president-elect really needs to remind him that the world is not domestic politics and that the White House isn’t a social-media platform on which he can breathe fire without sincerity or consequences.
