No president really wants to be compared to Jimmy Carter (God rest his soul) – but in the case of Donald Trump, the parallels are now hard to miss. Carter’s presidency was marred by a hostage crisis in Iran: in 1979, supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini seized the US Embassy and held 66 Americans – most of them – for more than a year. The standoff unfolded as a television drama, gave birth to Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” and became inextricably linked in the collective memory with runaway inflation, skyrocketing interest rates and gasoline prices as Carter begged Americans to turn down the heat and put on a sweater. All of this sent a signal: the country is spiraling out of control and the president is not up to the task.
Nearly half a century later, Trump stumbled into his own intractable Iran hostage crisis — this time one that was entirely of his own making. Iran has been keeping the Strait of Hormuz – and thus the global economy – under constant pressure for several weeks. The chances of a lasting resolution to the conflict fluctuate daily as Trump desperately searches for a way out. As I write this, the most likely scenario seems to be a humiliating surrender by Trump: Iran loosens its grip on oil supplies in return for some vague language about future gains.
Once again, the Americans have linked the confrontation to rising costs and economic instability – both of which are likely to continue long after the military crisis has passed. In May, Trump’s approval ratings dipped into the 35 percent range – not quite as low as Carter’s all-time low, but a far cry from the level of support Carter had in the first months after the hostage crisis.
War on credit
In recent weeks, the debate over strategy in Iran has given way to a discussion of whether the entire undertaking was even worth the economic costs. After years of battling post-pandemic inflation, Americans are once again seeing a surge in gasoline and food prices as hope for the lower interest rates Trump keeps promising fades. The Pentagon has spent – conservatively estimated – over $30 billion on the war and has requested $1.5 trillion from Congress for the next budget – around 50 percent more than last year.
Trump, for his part, has dismissed the rise in gasoline prices as “peanuts.” Asked whether he considered the costs to American consumers when negotiating with Iran, he gave an answer that was breathtaking, even by his standards. “Not even close,” Trump said. “The only thing that matters when I talk about Iran is that they can’t get a nuclear weapon. I’m not thinking about the Americans’ financial situation.” If AI server farms aren’t crippling the country’s power grid, perhaps the Democratic campaign strategists who are currently downloading this clip en masse will.
It’s not normally my style to defend Trump – but before we caricature him as a hopelessly out-of-touch billionaire and warmonger, let’s consider the possibility that he was right on this point. Anyone who is drawn into a war in which the fate of innocent Americans and allied countries is at stake is acting short-sightedly if they focus primarily on the costs to taxpayers. It might also be economically foolish: an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel or America would almost certainly have far worse economic consequences for everyone. Nothing about Trump’s statement is fundamentally inconsistent with how wartime presidents before him have assessed immediate threats – except perhaps the chutzpah to say it so openly.
War as a matter of course
In the last century, America fought World War II, followed by long engagements in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq—and that was without the covert conflicts around the globe in the name of fighting communism or the trillions of dollars consumed by the arms race. And yet we have rarely discussed war as a spreadsheet.
We argued – almost to the breaking point – about the loss of American lives, especially in Vietnam, and a few people put stickers on their cars with sayings like: “It will be a great day when schools get everything they need and the Air Force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber.” But by and large, the financial costs of war were a footnote in the debate about politics. Partly because the country – even after the peak of the industrial age – was wealthy enough to look the other way. But partly because we took the economic burden of being a superpower for granted. If war had to be waged, who else would wage it?
So there is a world in which I would agree with Trump’s response and perhaps even find it admirable. Only we don’t live in this world – we live in the real one. And in this world, there is so much wrong with Trump’s theory that it’s hard to know where to start.
No bomb, no plan
FIRST OF ALL, Iran didn’t have a nuclear weapon and wasn’t close to getting one. That’s not my personal assessment as a self-proclaimed nuclear detective – that’s Trump’s own Defense Department, which estimated last year that Iran needed about nine years before a weapons test. A deadline that could have been extended by an agreement with a surveillance regime if someone had come up with the idea. Oh wait – someone came up with that idea! But Trump tore up that agreement as soon as he entered the White House because it had Barack Obama’s signature on it.
It is true: Iran was significantly closer to the enriched uranium needed to build a bomb. But even now, Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, apparently have no plan to get that uranium back—unless he includes sending in Jack Ryan (whom Hegseth may believe is a real person). Instead, as I write this, Trump is negotiating a deal that will closely resemble the Obama deal in its treatment of what he calls “nuclear dust” – except that it will return significantly more money to the Iranian regime than Obama was ever willing to release. And if anything, this regime will continue to do so in the future more determined be to build a bomb – because without it, Iran has little leverage to avert another attack.
Besides, if Trump’s war was a war of necessity and not a matter of choice, why didn’t he bother to make this case beforehand? In the brief run-up to the war (a blink of an eye compared to the time George W. Bush spent selling his invasion of Iraq), Trump talked more about Iranian protesters and regime change than about an urgent nuclear threat. And that was even before his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, revealed the most plausible reason for the attack: Israel would have done it anyway – so why not. The truth is that Trump, who consistently railed against foreign wars during the campaign, somehow believed that he didn’t need a clear justification for war. It is therefore hardly surprising that two thirds of the population reject the entire adventure.
Belt tightened, cash register open
And the idea that American families should sacrifice themselves for the cause would be considerably less outrageous if the president weren’t so busy wasting public money on every ridiculous, neronic idea that comes to mind. We should all tighten our belts and carpool more often while Trump spends hundreds of billions of our dollars on a ballroom, a sculpture garden, and a gigantic Napoleonic triumphal arch – not to mention that he has brokered a deal with his own government that will virtually permanently shield him and his sons from paying taxes, and possibly hand out money – again: Her Money – to supporters who were unfairly persecuted for the patriotic act of breaking into the Capitol and threatening their elected representatives. The attitude “I just can’t worry about your household budget” rings a bit hollow.
The bottom line is: Trump is absolutely right that the economic costs of war are not the real problem. The problem is the war itself – and the way it has drawn us into it. This is now paralyzing his presidency. I’m not a big fan of catchy blanket rules for often complicated situations, but if I had one for a president, it would be this: If the debate over war focuses on the economic costs, you probably shouldn’t even start it. Because when Americans clearly see the need for military intervention, they don’t ask about the price. And if you can’t convey the need to them, you have no right to demand sacrifices from them.
That, after all, is the essence of leadership – persuading people to put the national interest above their own. Carter was a thoroughly decent man who failed because of this claim. Trump only meets one of the two requirements.
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