In January, Stephen Miller gave a blustery and revealing interview to CNN journalist Jake Tapper. Flush with the triumph of the military raid to abduct Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, Miller was taking a victory lap. America was done being the world’s nice guy, footing the bill for a global order that no longer served its interests. From now on, he said, the gloves were off. America would act boldly and with unapologetic force to impose its will on the world.
This was seemingly the purest expression of Donald Trump’s theory of power, spoken by perhaps the most hard-line member of the administration. Indeed, America is the most powerful nation the world has ever known. Its economy is, by most measures, the world’s largest, and its currency dominates global markets. Above all, it commands the most advanced military on the planet, fueled by expensive, high-tech wizardry and the derring-do of its special forces.
It was with this pugnacious certainty that the Trump administration barreled into a reckless, unprovoked war against Iran more than two months ago. Trump clearly thought it would be a showcase of American might, unshackled from what Miller called the “niceties” of international law and powered by ruthless “kinetic” action, to borrow a favorite word of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
