Articles

The 12-day war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran is over. Now the questions begin over what it did — and did not — accomplish.

Despite the impressive advances in airpower since the 1950s—like the precision-guided munitions employed in Saturday’s attack—there is only so much airstrikes can accomplish.

The U.S. attack on Iran is another ripple effect from Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The more time that goes by, the more significant 10/7 looms. It is one of those hinge points in history — like 11/9 (the day the Berlin Wall fell in 1989) or the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States — after which nothing will ever be the same again.

To bomb or not to bomb? That is the question which, quite unexpectedly, has come to dominate U.S. politics in the past day or so.

I arrived for the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary parade in Washington on a drizzly Saturday afternoon with considerable consternation and concern.

I knew that President Donald Trump had been agitating for such a spectacle since 2017, but that his first secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, had refused, because he viewed this as something that occurred in dictatorships such as Russia and North Korea. In private, Mattis reportedly said he would rather “swallow acid” than have troops parading through the capital.

You have to give President Donald Trump credit. For all of his bellicose bluster (remember when he threatened to rain “fire and fury” down on North Korea?), he is not a warmonger — except, possibly, in California. In the international arena, he clearly wants peace. He just doesn’t know how to achieve it.

U.S. history should make any president cautious about deploying troops — whether the National Guard or active-duty personnel — to quell domestic disturbances. One of the events that led to the American Revolution, after all, occurred in Boston in 1770 when British troops deployed in response to anti-tax protests. Rather than putting down an incipient uprising, the Redcoats ignited it by opening fire and killing five protesters in what became known as the Boston Massacre.

I know there are many bigger outrages in the world, but today I would like to share with you the frustration that gnaws at me as a fan of the New York Knicks following the firing on Tuesday of our gruff but beloved — and widely respected — head coach, Tom Thibodeau.

On June 14 — the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, not so coincidentally, the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump — a gaudy display of U.S. military power will parade through Washington. No doubt Trump thinks that all of the tanks and soldiers on display will make America, and its president, look tough and strong.

On Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy rewrote the rules of warfare. Almost no one had imagined that the Japanese could sneak across an entire ocean to attack an “impregnable fortress,” as U.S. strategists had described Hawaii. Yet that is just what they did. Japanese aircraft launched from six aircraft carriers managed to destroy or damage 328 U.S. aircraft and 19 U.S. Navy ships, including eight battleships. The Pearl Harbor attack signaled the ascendance of aircraft carriers as the dominant force in naval warfare.

The future of war has arrived in Ukraine. That country’s defenders are able to hold back a Russian advance, even though the Russians have a manpower advantage of as much as 5-to-1 along some parts of the front line, largely by using drones. By some estimates, unmanned aerial systems are now inflicting 70 percent of all casualties on both sides, reducing traditional weapons such as tanks and artillery almost to irrelevance. The war has also ushered in the use of ground-based and sea-based drones — indeed, using the latter, Ukraine managed to defeat Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

President Trump suggested after the call that the United States could “back away” if Russia and Ukraine peace talks don’t advance. That could leave it to Europe to keep Ukraine in the fight.

President Donald Trump is not known for being patient or forgiving with those who defy his will. In just the past few days, he has lashed out at New York Attorney General Letitia James, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and former FBI director James B. Comey — all of whom have incurred his wrath for various reasons. Yet when it comes to dealing with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — who continues to sabotage Trump’s showcase efforts to end the war in Ukraine — the president seems to have an endless supply of patience, goodwill and understanding.

To visit the White House website is to enter an alternative reality where President Donald Trump is constantly concluding “breakthrough” deals and ushering in a “New Golden Age.” Reflecting the president’s immodest self-appraisal, the website is full of oleaginous praise for Trump as the “dealmaker-in-chief” who is delivering — make that “rapidly delivering” — on his promises.

With President Donald Trump now having been in office for more than 100 days, concern is growing that he is accumulating so much executive authority that American democracy is in peril. A New Yorker headline asks — in reference to “other countries” that “have watched their democracies slip away gradually” — “Is It Happening Here?” I put the question last week to one of the world’s foremost authorities on democracy. Larry Diamond is the Mosbacher senior fellow of global democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

In its well intentioned but rushed and ham-handed attempts to end the war in Ukraine, the Trump administration is flirting with disaster. Apparently, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, has crafted a peace plan after traveling to Moscow for three lengthy meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin — but never once going to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The one-sided plan is now being presented to the Ukrainians on a “take it or leave it” basis, with Trump on Wednesday writing online that Zelensky “can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country.”

Is there a better example of the Peter Principle — the theory that, sooner or later, most employees get promoted above their level of competence — than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth?

By many accounts, he appeared to do well as a junior officer in the Army National Guard, serving as a platoon commander at the Guantánamo detention facility and in Iraq, and later as a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. On the battlefield, Hegseth appeared calm and levelheaded, two soldiers who served with him told The Post’s Dan Lamothe, even though in Iraq, Hegseth was part of a brigade that was notorious for its brutal tactics.

Since suffering the worst attack in Israel’s history on Oct. 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces have won one battle after another against both Hamas and Hezbollah, greatly diminishing the threat posed by both terrorist groups. But is Israel’s military getting dangerously overextended in a “forever war” in the Gaza Strip?

In 2014, eminent political scientist Graham Allison published an influential book called “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” The subtitle referred to a famous passage in Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War”: “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.”

Nobody would ever accuse President Donald Trump of being a coherent or consistent thinker. But, less than three months into his second term, a recognizable Trump Doctrine is emerging in foreign policy. It can be summed up with these famous words of Thucydides: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Unlike most of his predecessors in the Oval Office, Trump shows no interest in promoting or defending democracy, the rule of law or free trade. He is all about power politics in a crude and blustering way that is a disturbing and dangerous throwback to the 19th century.