Patriots limit 'Trump doctrine'

New Straits Times

2 days ago

AS some 20 Iranian ballistic missiles headed for the United States air base at Al Udeid in Qatar last month following US strikes against Iran, the only US personnel at the almost entirely evacuated base were some 40 air defence personnel manning a Patriot missile battery flown in a few weeks earlier.
According to a press briefing by US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Daniel Caine, a few days later, together with another Patriot detachment from the Qatari military also present at the base, the US team fired more of the defence missiles than in any previous engagement since the system was first deployed in the first Gulf War in 1991.
"They crushed it," he said, noting that damage to the base was minimal with no casualties.
On the surface, officials from the Trump administration have painted last month's US strikes against Iran as an unusually decisive use of US power, talking of a new "Trump doctrine" in which military force is used with much clearer aims than under previous presidents.
They argue it has "restored American deterrence", sending a clear signal to other potential foes, including Moscow and Beijing.
The administration had also presented its 52-day bombing campaign against Houthi militants in Yemen as being similarly successful in restoring freedom of navigation there — only for the Houthis to restart attacks on shipping in recent days.
All of that comes amid growing divisions within the administration over the future use of US military force.
On that front, recent events in the Gulf have had consequences in Washington and beyond.
According to reports last week, the US has barely 25 per cent of the Patriot missile stockpile the Pentagon believes it needs. Consumption of those missiles in the Middle East and Ukraine has made growing those stocks impossible despite heightened production.
Last week, that prompted a Pentagon edict stopping shipment of several weapons types to Ukraine, including Patriot, long-range HIMARS strike rockets and artillery shells, described at the time as a deliberate decision to help rebuild US stocks.
That decision, however, has since been reversed by President Donald Trump amid reports it had never received White House authorisation in the first place.
"We have to," Trump told a press conference in Washington. "They have to be able to defend themselves."
The US president has become increasingly critical of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in recent days, accusing him of being uninterested in Trump's efforts to mediate a peace deal as Russian forces have launched the largest drone strikes of the war against Ukraine.
That will likely worry the powerful group within the current administration known as "the restrainers", keen to rein in the multi-decade US tendency to make open-ended defence commitments.
On one side are several top US commanders who argue Ukraine should be supported as its defeat could embolden Moscow and Beijing to launch future attacks.
On the other are individuals, including Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Pentagon No. 3 civilian official Elbridge Colby, who have argued publicly that too much support to Ukraine helps China by driving down already limited US weapons stocks.
Ironically, the restrainers — including Vice-President JD Vance, among the most publicly committed US officials to reducing America's overseas military footprint — had been among the most supportive of Trump's actions on Iran.
"Number one: you articulate a clear American interest ... in this case, that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.
"Number two, you try to aggressively diplomatically solve that problem.
"Number three, when you can't solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it and then you get the hell out of there before it becomes a protracted conflict," Vance told an Ohio fundraising dinner last month.
Another even more significant challenge is that the threats the US now most needs to deter — a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, or a Russian assault into Eastern Europe — are likely impossible to counter through a single US strike.
Instead, Trump or his successors would likely face a choice between either unleashing a massive open-ended US conventional military campaign — at the very least an air, drone and missile offensive against advancing Russian or Chinese forces — or abandoning Taiwan and eastern European allies to their fate.