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It was just a couple of weeks into his war in Iran that President Trump began demanding other countries solve the problem he had created.
“Many Countries,” he said on social media on March 14, “will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the [Hormuz] Strait open and safe.” He added that “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others” would put their own sailors in harm’s way on his behalf.
They didn’t.
“This is not our war, we have not started it,” said the German defense minister, and other countries had the same response. Trump quickly turned petulant.
“Whether we get support or not, I can say this, and I said it to them: We will remember,” he said.
Two months have passed since then, and Trump is still trying to convince someone else to fix what he broke. That was one of the goals of his trip last week to China, as he thought he might persuade Xi Jinping to intercede with Iran and pressure the regime to allow unimpeded traffic through the strait to resume.
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“We hope to convince them to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they’re doing now,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Xi Jinping, however, was unconvinced.
At the end of Trump’s trip, the White House issued a statement saying the two “agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to support the free flow of energy.” But China is not doing anything to make that happen. The problem may be that Trump is asking China to bail him out, but offering nothing in return for that favor. It’s one of his favorite negotiating techniques: Demand everything, offer nothing, and wait for the other side to submit. But it doesn’t work.
So this is where we stand: The only person who can bring Donald Trump’s war to an end is Donald Trump.
Eisenhower he ain’t
When Trump is asked about the war, his answers inevitably feature a description of what a grand military success it has been: We destroyed their navy, their air force lies in rubble, our military is an unstoppable force! The administration even says that “Operation Epic Fury” has now concluded in glory, and if we have to start bombing again, we’ll call it “Operation Sledgehammer” this time, forcing Iran to cower in the face of our muscular war-naming powers.
“All [Iran’s leaders] understand is bombs,” Trump reportedly told an aide, which is quite clearly the opposite of the truth; if anything, he was describing himself.