Latest news with #TrumpDoctrine
Observer
a day ago
- Politics
- Observer
When a scandal weakens superpower's influence
'All politics is local.' That simple rule, drilled into former students of political science major like myself, has never felt more relevant. To truly understand the US's aggressive foreign policy, its preference for coercion over cooperation in conflicts and trade wars, we must first understand its domestic pressures. Today, few domestic issues are more radioactive than the Epstein Files. Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced teacher-turned-financier with ties to some of the world's most powerful elites, was convicted of trafficking of minors and died under highly suspicious circumstances while in federal custody in 2019. His case seemed buried, until now. In mid-2025, major US media outlets confirmed that the FBI had alerted President Donald Trump that his name appears in the sealed Epstein documents. The news shook an already divided nation and ignited a firestorm among both supporters and critics of the current administration. President Trump's reaction has followed a familiar script: Deny, distract, discredit. From threatening lawsuits to dismissing the news as a political hoax, his team has gone into full damage-control mode. However, this time, it might not be enough. What makes this moment different is the dissent rising from within Trump's own conservative base. Influential Republican commentators, legal experts, and even some key donors have expressed concern over the President's lack of transparency. They're not just worried about the legal implications, they fear political collapse. The Epstein Files risk becoming a national wake-up call, not just for Trump, but for the broader political establishment that has long insulated itself from accountability. Here's where the international significance comes in. Trump's foreign policy, often called the 'Trump Doctrine,' has been marked by unilateralism, economic extortion, and an unrelenting push to extract strategic and financial concessions from allies and adversaries alike. From China to Europe, the Global South to SWANA - South West Asia North Africa, US diplomacy has too often been replaced by tariffs, sanctions and threats. Many in these regions see a pattern of bullying, one driven more by domestic political calculations than by coherent international strategy. With the Epstein scandal threatening to implode whatever is left of Trump's moral authority, that bullying stance may finally soften. Internationally, there is growing hope that America will be forced to retreat inward to clean up its own house before it can continue exerting pressure on others. The US, distracted by scandal and divided by distrust, may soon find it harder to command obedience abroad. This doesn't mean a complete pivot to diplomacy overnight. Nevertheless, it could mean a reduced appetite for foreign adventurism. As domestic investigations into the Epstein Files widen, potentially implicating other prominent figures across party lines, the bandwidth for aggressive foreign policy will shrink. Winners and Losers from the Epstein Files Fallout Winners: Global South economies including the AGCC: Nations previously targeted by US sanctions or trade pressure may find temporary relief and room to recalibrate. Multilateral institutions: With US distraction, bodies like the UN, BRICS and Asean may have more space to operate independently and broker regional solutions. Whistleblowers and victims' advocates: The public attention on Epstein may empower new calls for transparency and justice across borders. Losers: The US foreign policy establishment: Long accustomed to operating with impunity, evident in the genocide in Palestine, the scandal could weaken its grip on global influence. Allies of convenience: Governments that hitched their strategy to Trump's aggressive policies, such as the Israeli Occupation, may find themselves isolated. Wall Street hawks: A distracted or discredited administration could rattle financial markets tied to defence, surveillance and foreign interventions. In the end, the Epstein Files are not just a domestic scandal. They are a political earthquake whose aftershocks could be felt in every capital around the world. For those seeking a fairer and more balanced international order, this may be the unexpected turning point.
Al Jazeera
6 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Analysis: ‘Bomb first' – Trump's approach to war-making in his second term
Washington, DC – During the first six months of his second term, Donald Trump pushed the limits of US presidential power while aiming to reorient US foreign policy to 'America First'. His first months in office have also offered a window into the future of his administration's approach to war-making, what analysts characterise as an at times contradictory tactic that oscillates between avowed anti-interventionism and quicksilver military attacks, justified as 'peace through strength'. While questions remain over whether Trump has indeed pursued a coherent strategy when it comes to direct US involvement in international conflict, one thing has been clear in the first portion of Trump's second four-year term: US air attacks, long Washington's tool of choice since launching the so-called 'war on terror' in the early 2000s, have again surged. According to a report released last week by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), since Trump's re-entry into office on January 20, the US has carried out 529 air attacks in 240 locations across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. That figure, which accounts for just the first five months of Trump's four-year term as president, is already nearing the 555 attacks launched by the administration of US President Joe Biden over his whole term from 2021 to 2025. 'The most extreme tool at his disposal – targeted airstrikes – is being used not as a last resort, but as the first move,' Clionadh Raleigh, a professor of political geography and conflict and founder of ACLED, said in a statement accompanying the report. 'While Trump has repeatedly promised to end America's 'forever wars', he has rarely elaborated on how. These early months suggest the plan may be to use overwhelming firepower to end fights before they begin, or before they drag on.' A 'Trump Doctrine'? Trump's willingness to unleash lethal force abroad – and the inherent risk that the brazen approach carries of dragging the US into protracted conflict – has already roiled influential segments of the president's Make America Great Again (MAGA) base, coming to a head over Trump's six-week bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen and, more recently, his June decision to strike three nuclear facilities in Iran amid Israel's offensive on its neighbour. In turn, Trump's top officials have sought to bring coherence to the strategy, with Vice President JD Vance in late June offering the clearest vision yet of a Trump blueprint for foreign intervention. 'What I call the 'Trump Doctrine' is quite simple,' Vance said at the Ohio speech. 'Number one, you articulate a clear American interest, and that's in this case that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.' 'Number two, you try to aggressively diplomatically solve that problem,' he said. 'And 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 ever becomes a protracted conflict.' But the reality of Trump's early diplomatic and military adventures has not matched the vision outlined by Vance, according to Michael Wahid Hanna, the US Program Director at Crisis Group. He called the statement an attempt to 'retrofit coherence'. While Hanna cautioned against putting too much stock into a unified strategy, he did point to one 'consistent thread': a diplomatic approach that appears 'haphazard, not fully conceived, and characterised by impatience'. 'For all of the talk about being a peacemaker and wanting to see quick deals, Trump has a particularly unrealistic view of the ways in which diplomacy can work,' he told Al Jazeera. The US president had vowed to transform peace efforts in the Russia-Ukraine war, but an earlier pressure campaign against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has since seen Trump circle back to the Biden administration's hardline approach to Russia, with little progress made in between. After an initial ceasefire in Gaza, Trump officials have failed to make meaningful progress in reigning in Israel's war, leaving the threat of knock-on conflicts, including with Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, unanswered. Earlier diplomatic overtures to address Iran's nuclear programme stalled as Trump took a maximalist approach seeking to block any uranium enrichment. The effort dissolved after the US failed to constrain Israel's military campaign against Tehran, as the US continues to provide billions in military funding to the 'ironclad ally'. 'It's hard to argue, as Vance did, that the United States has really pushed as hard as they can on diplomacy,' Hanna told Al Jazeera. Under Vance's logic, he added, 'that leaves them with no other means than to respond militarily'. 'Bomb first and ask questions later'? The early emphasis on air attacks has been accompanied by vows by Trump and his Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth to restore a 'warrior ethos' within the US military. Indeed, Trump has appeared to relish the military actions, posting a video of the attack on an ISIL (ISIS) affiliated target in Somalia on February 1, just 10 days after taking office. He made a point to draw a comparison to Biden, who tightened rules of engagement policies Trump had loosened during his first term and entered office vowing to severely limit the reliance on US strikes. Trump wrote that 'Biden and his cronies wouldn't act quickly enough to get the job done'. 'I did! The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that 'WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!' All told since taking office six months ago, Trump has carried out at least 44 air strikes in Somalia, where the US has long targeted both a local ISIL offshoot and al-Shabab, according to ACLED data. The Biden administration carried out just over 60 such strikes during his entire four years in office. The US president has posted similarly boastful messages about strikes in Yemen, where his administration conducted a bombing campaign from March to May, accounting for the vast majority of overall strikes during his second term, as well as US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, which Trump declared were 'obliterated like nobody's ever seen before', long before any in-depth assessment had been made. Raleigh, who is also a professor of political geography and conflict at the University of Sussex, said the increase could possibly be attributed to Trump's pivot away from the soft-power policy of Biden, which has included shearing down the US State Department and dismantling the US foreign aid apparatus. That could further be viewed as an effort by Trump to place the US as a 'player in a new internationalised conflict environment', where overall violence by state actors on foreign soil has increased steadily in recent years, currently accounting for 30 percent of all violent events ACLED tracks globally. 'But I would say there's still no clear Trump doctrine, as much as Vance wants to claim that there is,' Raleigh told Al Jazeera. 'And at the moment, it's looking a little bit like 'bomb first and ask questions later.'' That approach has proven to have particularly deadly consequences, according to Emily Tripp, the director of Airwars. She drew a parallel to Trump's first term, when he also surged air strikes, outpacing those of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who himself oversaw an expansion of drone warfare abroad. The monitor has tracked 224 reported civilian casualties in Yemen from US strikes under Trump in 2025, nearly totaling the 258 reported civilian casualties from US actions in the country during the 23 years prior. The administration has also used particularly powerful – and expensive – munitions in its strikes, which Airwars has assessed as appearing to have been deployed against a broader set of targets than under Biden. Two of the Trump administration's strikes on Yemen, one on Ras Isa Port and another on a migrant detention centre in Saada, have been deemed possible war crimes by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. 'That's not typical, or necessarily something you'd expect in a campaign whose remit, as defined by Trump, Hegseth, and [US Central Command], is on largely economic targets,' Tripp told Al Jazeera. 'There's really no reason for there to be such high levels of civilian harm,' she said. Tripp added she was still waiting to assess how the Pentagon approaches civilian casualty investigations and transparency under Trump's second term. Questions over efficacy It remains unclear whether the administration's reliance on swift and powerful military strikes will actually prove effective in keeping the US troops out of protracted conflict. While a tenuous ceasefire continues to hold with the Houthis, the results of the US bombing campaign 'have been pretty underwhelming', the Crisis Group's Hanna said, noting that few underlying conditions have changed. The group has continued to strike vessels in the Red Sea and to launch missiles at Israel in opposition to the war in Gaza. An attack in early July prompted State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce to warn the US 'will continue to take necessary action to protect freedom of navigation and commercial shipping'. The jury also remains out on whether Trump's strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities will lead to a diplomatic breakthrough on Iran's nuclear programme, as the White House has maintained. Little progress has been made since a ceasefire was reached shortly after Tehran launched retaliatory strikes on a US base in Qatar. Crisis Group's Hanna assessed that Trump has relied on air strikes in part because they have become somewhat 'antiseptic' in US society, with their toll 'shielded from a lot of public scrutiny'. But, he added: 'There are limits in terms of what air power alone can do…That's just the reality.'
Al Jazeera
6 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
‘Bomb first': Trump's approach to US war-making in his second term
Washington, DC – During the first six months of his second term, Donald Trump pushed the limits of US presidential power while aiming to reorient US foreign policy to 'America First'. His first months in office have also offered a window into the future of his administration's approach to war-making, what analysts characterise as an at times contradictory tactic that oscillates between avowed anti-interventionism and quicksilver military attacks, justified as 'peace through strength'. While questions remain over whether Trump has indeed pursued a coherent strategy when it comes to direct US involvement in international conflict, one thing has been clear in the first portion of Trump's second four-year term: US air attacks, long Washington's tool of choice since launching the so-called 'war on terror' in the early 2000s, have again surged. According to a report released last week by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), since Trump's re-entry into office on January 20, the US has carried out 529 air attacks in 240 locations across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. That figure, which accounts for just the first five months of Trump's four-year term as president, is already nearing the 555 attacks launched by the administration of US President Joe Biden over his whole term from 2021 to 2025. 'The most extreme tool at his disposal – targeted airstrikes – is being used not as a last resort, but as the first move,' Clionadh Raleigh, a professor of political geography and conflict and founder of ACLED, said in a statement accompanying the report. 'While Trump has repeatedly promised to end America's 'forever wars', he has rarely elaborated on how. These early months suggest the plan may be to use overwhelming firepower to end fights before they begin, or before they drag on.' A 'Trump Doctrine'? Trump's willingness to unleash lethal force abroad – and the inherent risk that the brazen approach carries of dragging the US into protracted conflict – has already roiled influential segments of the president's Make America Great Again (MAGA) base, coming to a head over Trump's six-week bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen and, more recently, his June decision to strike three nuclear facilities in Iran amid Israel's offensive on its neighbour. In turn, Trump's top officials have sought to bring coherence to the strategy, with Vice President JD Vance in late June offering the clearest vision yet of a Trump blueprint for foreign intervention. 'What I call the 'Trump Doctrine' is quite simple,' Vance said at the Ohio speech. 'Number one, you articulate a clear American interest, and that's in this case that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.' 'Number two, you try to aggressively diplomatically solve that problem,' he said. 'And 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 ever becomes a protracted conflict.' But the reality of Trump's early diplomatic and military adventures has not matched the vision outlined by Vance, according to Michael Wahid Hanna, the US Program Director at Crisis Group. He called the statement an attempt to 'retrofit coherence'. While Hanna cautioned against putting too much stock into a unified strategy, he did point to one 'consistent thread': a diplomatic approach that appears 'haphazard, not fully conceived, and characterised by impatience'. 'For all of the talk about being a peacemaker and wanting to see quick deals, Trump has a particularly unrealistic view of the ways in which diplomacy can work,' he told Al Jazeera. The US president had vowed to transform peace efforts in the Russia-Ukraine war, but an earlier pressure campaign against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has since seen Trump circle back to the Biden administration's hardline approach to Russia, with little progress made in between. After an initial ceasefire in Gaza, Trump officials have failed to make meaningful progress in reigning in Israel's war, leaving the threat of knock-on conflicts, including with Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, unanswered. Earlier diplomatic overtures to address Iran's nuclear programme stalled as Trump took a maximalist approach seeking to block any uranium enrichment. The effort dissolved after the US failed to constrain Israel's military campaign against Tehran, as the US continues to provide billions in military funding to the 'ironclad ally'. 'It's hard to argue, as Vance did, that the United States has really pushed as hard as they can on diplomacy,' Hanna told Al Jazeera. Under Vance's logic, he added, 'that leaves them with no other means than to respond militarily'. 'Bomb first and ask questions later'? The early emphasis on air attacks has been accompanied by vows by Trump and his Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth to restore a 'warrior ethos' within the US military. Indeed, Trump has appeared to relish the military actions, posting a video of the attack on an ISIL (ISIS) affiliated target in Somalia on February 1, just 10 days after taking office. He made a point to draw a comparison to Biden, who tightened rules of engagement policies Trump had loosened during his first term and entered office vowing to severely limit the reliance on US strikes. Trump wrote that 'Biden and his cronies wouldn't act quickly enough to get the job done'. 'I did! The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that 'WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!' All told since taking office six months ago, Trump has carried out at least 44 air strikes in Somalia, where the US has long targeted both a local ISIL offshoot and al-Shabab, according to ACLED data. The Biden administration carried out just over 60 such strikes during his entire four years in office. The US president has posted similarly boastful messages about strikes in Yemen, where his administration conducted a bombing campaign from March to May, accounting for the vast majority of overall strikes during his second term, as well as US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, which Trump declared were 'obliterated like nobody's ever seen before', long before any in-depth assessment had been made. Raleigh, who is also a professor of political geography and conflict at the University of Sussex, said the increase could possibly be attributed to Trump's pivot away from the soft-power policy of Biden, which has included shearing down the US State Department and dismantling the US foreign aid apparatus. That could further be viewed as an effort by Trump to place the US as a 'player in a new internationalised conflict environment', where overall violence by state actors on foreign soil has increased steadily in recent years, currently accounting for 30 percent of all violent events ACLED tracks globally. 'But I would say there's still no clear Trump doctrine, as much as Vance wants to claim that there is,' Raleigh told Al Jazeera. 'And at the moment, it's looking a little bit like 'bomb first and ask questions later.'' That approach has proven to have particularly deadly consequences, according to Emily Tripp, the director of Airwars. She drew a parallel to Trump's first term, when he also surged air strikes, outpacing those of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who himself oversaw an expansion of drone warfare abroad. The monitor has tracked 224 reported civilian casualties in Yemen from US strikes under Trump in 2025, nearly totaling the 258 reported civilian casualties from US actions in the country during the 23 years prior. The administration has also used particularly powerful – and expensive – munitions in its strikes, which Airwars has assessed as appearing to have been deployed against a broader set of targets than under Biden. Two of the Trump administration's strikes on Yemen, one on Ras Isa Port and another on a migrant detention centre in Saada, have been deemed possible war crimes by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. 'That's not typical, or necessarily something you'd expect in a campaign whose remit, as defined by Trump, Hegseth, and [US Central Command], is on largely economic targets,' Tripp told Al Jazeera. 'There's really no reason for there to be such high levels of civilian harm,' she said. Tripp added she was still waiting to assess how the Pentagon approaches civilian casualty investigations and transparency under Trump's second term. Questions over efficacy It remains unclear whether the administration's reliance on swift and powerful military strikes will actually prove effective in keeping the US troops out of protracted conflict. While a tenuous ceasefire continues to hold with the Houthis, the results of the US bombing campaign 'have been pretty underwhelming', the Crisis Group's Hanna said, noting that few underlying conditions have changed. The group has continued to strike vessels in the Red Sea and to launch missiles at Israel in opposition to the war in Gaza. An attack in early July prompted State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce to warn the US 'will continue to take necessary action to protect freedom of navigation and commercial shipping'. The jury also remains out on whether Trump's strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities will lead to a diplomatic breakthrough on Iran's nuclear programme, as the White House has maintained. Little progress has been made since a ceasefire was reached shortly after Tehran launched retaliatory strikes on a US base in Qatar. Crisis Group's Hanna assessed that Trump has relied on air strikes in part because they have become somewhat 'antiseptic' in US society, with their toll 'shielded from a lot of public scrutiny'. But, he added: 'There are limits in terms of what air power alone can do…That's just the reality.'
Japan Times
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
The 'Trump Doctrine' is wishful thinking
U.S. Vice President JD Vance recently tried to cast President Donald Trump's strikes on Iran's nuclear infrastructure as a wildly successful example of the 'Trump Doctrine.' According to Vance, the doctrine is simple: you identify a problem that threatens U.S. interests, which 'you try to aggressively diplomatically solve.' If diplomacy fails, 'you use overwhelming military power to solve it and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict.' If only it were that easy. What Vance describes is neither a doctrine nor unique to Trump. It is the same wishful thinking that produced many of the long, costly and unsuccessful U.S. military interventions that Vance himself has often decried. If Vance thinks that the strikes 'solved' the problem of Iran's nuclear program, then he must believe that they fully destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities: its centrifuges, its stocks of enriched uranium and any other materials used for weaponization. Either that, or he views this display of America's military might as powerful enough to persuade the Islamic Republic to abandon its nuclear program and not reconstitute it in the future. There is no question that the U.S. strike severely damaged the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities. But it is far from clear that the bombing of these sites, coupled with Israel's assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientists, has set Iran back to zero. It appears more likely that Iran's program has only been delayed, though estimates of the setback vary from months to years. Unless and until there is sufficient evidence to support the claim that Iran's nuclear program was completely obliterated, then Vance must rely on the belief that, as U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth put it, 'American deterrence is back.' The Trump administration is not the first to be tempted by the idea that short, sharp displays of military strength can convince other countries to capitulate to U.S. demands. Since achieving its unquestioned military primacy in 1990, the United States has compiled a long record of such attempts, many of which failed. Some targets of U.S. military coercion proved willing to tolerate more pain than American officials anticipated. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq endured multiple U.S.-led bombing campaigns for repeatedly obstructing International Atomic Energy Agency and United Nations weapons inspectors. This cycle, as Vance knows well, culminated in 2003 with America's 'shock and awe' campaign, which set off a grinding eight-year war that killed thousands of U.S. service members and roughly a half-million Iraqis. Similarly, in the 1990s, NATO's threats, blockades and shows of force did not deter Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic from waging brutal wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In particular, Milosevic was unmoved by NATO's early bombing campaign in Kosovo, which was restricted to military targets and did not threaten his hold on power. The air strikes that were supposed to last a matter of days ended up continuing for months without success. The presumption, in other words, that simply bringing superior force to bear would convince Milosevic to abandon a cause he was deeply committed to was dead wrong. It was only when NATO shifted from targeting Serbian forces to targeting infrastructure in and around Belgrade — which threatened to undermine the Serbian elite's support for Milosevic — that he agreed to leave Kosovo. Other targets have played possum when faced with U.S. military threats, seeming to concede in the moment before resuming their unwanted behaviors weeks, months, or even years later. North Korea has long taken this approach. Despite repeated reminders of the U.S. military's overwhelming strength, the country eventually resorts to its old ways, issuing nuclear threats, conducting missile tests, launching satellites and engaging in other provocations. China's behavior follows a similar pattern. In 2016, America successfully used an ostentatious joint military exercise to deter Chinese island building and claims around the Philippines. But just a few months ago, the Chinese Coast Guard landed on an island that the Philippines claims as its own. Still others have responded by inflicting pain on the U.S. The Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid found that killing a few Americans is all it takes for the world's most powerful military to back down. Iran seems willing to do all three. The Islamic Republic has displayed an ability to absorb both economic and military blows. Its military provocations and nuclear activities have ebbed and flowed, sometimes in sync with — and other times irrespective of — the intensity of U.S. responses. And as Iran expert Vali Nasr recently recounted, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei apparently shares Aidid's assessment, having told his advisers that 'America is like a dog. If you back off, it will lunge at you, but if you lunge at it, it will recoil and back off.' It is understandable that Vance wants to believe — and wants Trump's anti-interventionist constituency to believe — that impressive demonstrations of the U.S. military's reach and power are uniquely persuasive. But if short-of-war displays of military power were sufficient to achieve U.S. political objectives — especially ones as difficult to achieve as convincing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions — then they would be a pillar of every president's doctrine. Melanie W. Sisson, senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, is co-editor of "Military Coercion and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Use of Force Short of War" (Routledge, 2020) and author of "The United States, China, and the Competition for Control" (Routledge, 2024). © Project Syndicate, 2025
Fox News
18-07-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Trump gives Putin strict ultimatum to make a deal on Ukraine or face consequences
President Donald Trump put Russian President Vladimir Putin on a 50-day clock. To drive Putin to a deal on Ukraine, Trump has a new plan: massive air defenses backed up by the Trump doctrine, where rade wins wars. But what's truly at stake is Trump's unique vision for U.S. power and prosperity. In the Oval Office with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday, July 14, Trump announced more U.S. aid to Ukraine and a 100% tariff to hit Russia's oil customers like China by early September. "I use trade for a lot of things ... it's good for settling wars," Trump said. Trump cited the example of how he employed trade threats to simmer down India and Pakistan in May. However, as he said Monday, "The only one we haven't been able to get to yet is Russia." So, Trump has turned up the heat. The 100% tariffs would hit the $240 billion Russia-China trade and reverberate to India, Brazil and others. This tariff appears to be distinct from the potential 500% secondary sanctions in the Senate bill co-sponsored by Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal, which Trump views as a back-up plan. The second component of Trump's new strategy is to deprive Putin of gains from the mass air barrages of drones and missiles attacking Ukraine. Significantly, Trump has now put his personal backing behind aid to Ukraine in the form of a surge of air defenses. Trump and Rutte discussed no less than 17 Patriot air defense batteries. That's astonishing, considering that Ukraine has six batteries in operation now, including three from the U.S. and others sent from Germany, Poland and Romania. Patriot is the gold standard for air defense. It's a full commitment by Trump and NATO to stopping Putin's brutal war. Trump is also brandishing Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles like a stiletto in a street fight. TLAMs could swiftly decimate Russia's air force. Trump says he won't give Ukraine TLAMs or other long-range missiles that could hit targets in Russia just now, but then, we all remember the head-fake prior to the B-2 strike on Iran, don't we? Russia has taken 100,000 casualties since January for paltry ground gains. With Trump empowering NATO, Putin is targeting Ukraine's power grid and infrastructure alongside indiscriminate terror attacks. The salvos consist mainly of Iranian Shahed drones, some of which are now manufactured in Russia, along with decoys. Each barrage includes a handful of weapons that are hard to intercept: Iskander ballistic missiles, KH-101 cruise missiles and even old Soviet air defense missiles converted for ground attack. The bad news is that Russia has literally thousands of older missile types. Ukraine's air defenders are top notch, due to considerable assistance from the U.S, NATO partners and others. Sophisticated monitoring and tracking have enabled Ukraine to shoot down most of Putin's air weapons, but this spring's saturation attacks have been challenging. Air defense is a group effort. The joint U.S.-Norwegian NASAMS use the converted AIM-120 fighter plane air-to-air missile and boast a 94% success rate. Another favorite is the "Frankenstein SAM" which combines old Soviet-style Buk launchers rewired by clever Americans to fire U.S. missiles like the Sea Sparrow. Australia has deployed its sophisticated E-7 Wedgetail radar surveillance plane to monitor drone and missile trajectories for intercept. If worse comes to worst, a few NATO partner F-35s could scour the skies. Done right, the air defenses and TLAM threats will diminish the damage to Ukraine and secure Europe against Russia's ongoing weapons build-up, too. There is nothing the NATO allies want more than to protect their strategic ports, railways and capitals from any threat of Russian drones and missiles. Air defense also ties back to Trump's primary goal, which is a ceasefire to stop the killing and a peace deal that will leave Ukraine with a viable economy. He's already shifted more of the financial burden to NATO and is a good sign that the European Union on Wednesday proposed $116 billion for Ukraine's economic reconstruction. Make no mistake. This is very high stakes move by President Trump. Success with the squeeze of secondary sanctions will take agile behind-the-scenes negotiation and a bit of luck. If his stratagem works, Trump will have proved the duo of tariffs and selective military power can defeat the Russia-China cabal. America will be in a strong position to reconfigure our military posture and economic strategy to face down China's global menace.
