Not to rehash Clausewitz, but the old Prussian said some smart stuff. The Clausewitz trilogy reminds us there are multiple facets of war a leader has to get right to make a good effort—aligning the people, the government, and the military. If you don’t align the three, you don’t have a good strategy.
Have no idea if the president has ever read Clausewitz. Doesn’t matter. He knows what he is doing.
Clausewitz believed that mastering war was more than being a master theoretician. It was more important to be an experienced and skilled warfighter, expressing “the genius of war” (a term I am sure Trump would find enamoring).
There are lots of reasons why Americans ought to believe Trump knows what he is doing. The president is one of the most experienced leaders in the world. He has effectively overseen a diverse range of military operations. In his first term, he hammered the ISIS caliphate into the sand and killed their leader, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. Before Biden got spooked and pulled the plug, Trump had completely and successfully revamped Obama’s sprawling, costly occupation in Afghanistan and made it manageable, dramatically reducing cost and troop levels and eliminating U.S. casualties. He took out Soleimani. In his second term, Trump decapitated the regime of the illegitimate thug running Venezuela. He has waged a successful war against narco-terrorists in Latin America. Trump drove the rebuilding of NATO, the world’s most important military alliance. Few modern presidents can match his successful use of military power.
He must be doing something right.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member