Trump’s military ops in other countries test his Maga base

WASHINGTON – Nine months into his second term, US President Donald Trump has bombed Iran’s nuclear programme, struck Houthi rebels in Yemen and killed dozens of alleged narco-terrorists in Venezuela.

At the weekend, he threatened to

send US troops “guns-a-blazing” to Nigeria

to stop the killing of Christians.

As Mr Trump hails his peacemaking credentials, the White House has framed the attacks as targeted military operations and other forms of pressure aimed at protecting US interests – stemming immigration flows, countering drug trafficking, and even preserving what they see as Western culture.

But the attacks are also prompting an outcry among some mainstream Republicans, and even some of Mr Trump’s most ardent supporters, including Mr Steve Bannon and Mr Tucker Carlson.

That tension underscores just how delicately Mr Trump must walk a tightrope between his desire to restore a Reaganesque “peace through strength” foreign policy and holding close the Maga (Make America Great Again) loyalists who had touted his promise to end “forever wars” and to keep the US out of costly foreign entanglements. 

“For people who expected or hoped that the administration would pursue a more restrained foreign policy than its predecessors’, I think we’re seeing exactly the opposite,” said Dr Christopher Chivvis, director of the American Statecraft Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is anything but a foreign policy of restraint.”

The White House contends that Mr Trump has delivered on an America First mandate through “fairer trade deals, securing a 5 per cent defence spending pledge among Nato allies, killing narco-terrorists smuggling illicit narcotics into our homeland, and more”, spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in an e-mail.

“The President will always work to ensure peace through strength and advance American interests abroad.” 

Mr Trump at the weekend warned in a social media post of possible US military action against Islamist militants in Nigeria if the country’s government doesn’t halt the groups’ “killing of Christians”.

That would be the first time he has committed US military might over a religious motive, were he to follow through on his threats.

But it echoes comments he made in his speech to the UN General Assembly, when he called for the defence of the “most persecuted religion on the planet today – it’s called Christianity”.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is among the Republicans lauding the campaign against Nigeria, with the rallying cry also playing to evangelical Christians in the US that comprise part of Mr Trump’s political base.

Mr Trump and his allies have routinely derided what they have characterised as assaults on Western civilisation.

The President has also previously claimed

there is a genocide against White Afrikaner farmers

in South Africa, which led him to offer them refugee status in the US.

It is unclear how seriously committed the President is to action in Nigeria, but Mr Pete Hegseth, his Pentagon chief, replied to Mr Trump with “Yes sir”, adding in his own post that the Pentagon was “preparing for action”.

Even domestically, Mr Trump has criticised – and signed an executive order – to address what he says are historical narratives casting “Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive”. 

His administration likely drew lessons from his first term, said Dr Chivvis, pointing to the President’s authorisation of a targeted drone strike that

killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani

.

The lesson learnt was that the administration could use American military power, launch attacks from a distance or pursue covert operations, and not pay a political price domestically as long as US forces were kept out of harm’s way, Dr Chivvis said. 

Iran has been a case in point for Mr Trump’s second term, with one set of targeted strikes on its major nuclear facilities that has set back the country’s programme.

That weakened Iran’s status as a regional power and as a backer of its proxy groups like Hamas, ultimately paving the way for a peace deal between Hamas and Israel. 

Mr Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, and right-wing commentator Carlson initially had renounced the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, fearing greater entanglement. 

They are issuing similar warnings about Venezuela.

On his show last week, Mr Carlson said “it’s a little strange” that the US is telling another country that “‘we don’t like your leadership – leave or we’ll kill you’. But that’s what we’re doing. Is that a precedent you wanna set?”

Any further action in Venezuela to force President Nicolas Maduro from power is likely to follow a similar framework of targeted attacks, with air strikes designed not to put US forces at risk, according to Mr Matthew Kroenig, vice-president at the Atlantic Council. 

“The idea of an invasion, regime change, overthrow, occupation, kind of an Iraq- and Afghanistan-style military action, is not coming to this theatre any time soon,” he said.

Republican Senator Rand Paul, while maintaining that Mr Trump is the best president of his lifetime, has consistently railed against what he sees as extrajudicial targeting of vessels in the name of fighting Venezuelan drug traffickers.

In Ukraine, Mr Trump attempted to assuage both factions of his party – including more hawkish Republicans who want to see the US take a harder line on Russia – by no longer directly sending weapons to Ukraine while allowing European allies to purchase them on their behalf instead.  

Nigeria’s government has pushed back against the charge of a genocide against Christians in the country, saying ethnic violence is instead driven by limited access to resources and by terrorism from the likes of Boko Haram and Islamic State that largely kills Muslims.

Mr Trump also has previously refused to rule out using military force to take Panama and Greenland.

More interventions abroad also bring a danger that the US may not extricate itself as easily as it had hoped – particularly if the US were to commit to even a few boots on the ground somewhere. 

Ms Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow at Defence Priorities, said: “Once you do end up with US personnel on the ground, it becomes very tricky to pull them out because of the sunk-cost argument – once you’ve invested a certain amount, we have to keep going to achieve some kind of objective. 

“Things go wrong, objectives change and sometimes the US ends up getting sucked in deeper.” BLOOMBERG