During four years in the White House, former US President Donald Trump did not open any new war front anywhere in the world at the cost of American taxpayer’s cash. Instead he took a number of initiatives in establishing peace in the world – including repeated efforts of resolving tensions in the Korean Peninsula by convincing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to disband his nuclear facilities although it did not succeed, while according to latest media reports, Pyongyang has already reached its goal of achieving the capabilities of emerging into a nuclear nation. Some analysts say, should Trump continue his second term as the US president, he would finally succeed in resolving the tensions through extended diplomatic approaches.
In 2022, the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) held a three-move space war game that focused on North Korea’s potential use of nuclear weapons in low-earth orbit or near-space to knock out low-Earth orbit satellites. Initially, the game’s participants found this possibility a bit fantastic. Mid-way through the game, though, they warmed to the idea.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, who served as deputy for nonproliferation in the Defense Department wrote in the National Interest:
“The war game NPEC designed and played begins in the spring of 2029. The DPRK tests an inter-continental ballistic missile that inadvertently flies further than intended, triggering US missile defenses in Alaska. No interception is made, but the United States demands North Korea show a good-faith effort to avoid further provocations by garrisoning its mobile missile force. Washington orders reconnaissance flights near North Korea and subsequently asks the United Nations to approve a selective blockade of North Korea while placing US strategic forces on Defcon 3.
“North Korea refuses America’s demands, begins to mobilize, and warns Washington that if the United States fails to end its alert and refuses to schedule the removal of its troops from South Korea (ROK), war will ensue. Tensions continue to build. Then early in June, North Korea launches a satellite into orbit and warns of a possible nuclear explosion in space unless the US and ROK stand down. Washington contacts Beijing in hopes of getting China to pressure the North Koreans to relent. Chinese officials counsel Washington to negotiate with Pyongyang directly, noting that North Korea has not yet violated any treaty. The United States goes to the UN Security Council with a sanctions resolution against Pyongyang. Russia and China block its approval.
“Throughout this crisis, US officials try to determine if North Korea’s satellite is carrying a nuclear payload but are unable to do so. In mid-June of 2029, North Korea launches another payload into space, this time over the North Pacific. Well before it enters full orbit, the payload detonates, releasing 10–20 kilotons of nuclear energy into low-Earth orbit. All satellites in line of sight of the explosion are immediately disabled. US space experts predict that the rest of the world’s satellites in lower low-Earth orbit will be disabled in a matter of days to several weeks. Shortly after the detonation, North Korea invades South Korea”.
Donald Trump, a genuine American patriot
Donald Trump has been always against sending American troops to foreign lands for facing attacks from the opposite sites. This was reflected when within less than a month after entering the White House in 2017, Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base to attend the dignified transfer ceremony for Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens, a Navy SEAL who was the first US service member killed in action during Donald Trump’s presidency.
According to eye witness, shortly after he somberly received news of Owen’s death it impacted him so deeply that he would go on to bring up the Owens family – and in particular Owen’s widow, Carryn – many times in the months and years to come. Other presidents have undoubtedly felt the weight of sending Americans into harm’s way and remember the first time that one of their orders resulted in an American servicemember being killed in action. But the reality is, most presidents in recent history have not let these harsh realities of war stop them from sending Americans to die in conflicts that are hard to justify, from mission creep in Afghanistan that turned into America’s longest war, to invasion of Iraq, and beyond.
Senator JD Vance rightly hailed Donald Trump’s greatest policy success as simply not starting any new wars. There is not a singular explanation for how Donald Trump accomplished this, but it certainly was not because of pacifist sentimentality, although the above anecdote illustrates his deep emotional connection to the troops. After all, just two months after his first trip to Dover, he launched fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria in response to a chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime.
Trump’s intuitive approach means something very specific to America’s enemies: There is always the possibility that he will use overwhelming and shocking violence if he feels they have harmed or humiliated the United States. Unrestrained savagery doesn’t fit neatly beside the foreign policy elite’s favorite euphemisms, like “targeted killings” and “kinetic military action”, but no matter what Trump critics would call it, it proved to be an effective restraint on America’s most vicious adversaries.
When Trump’s military advisors proposed a menu of options to deal with Iranian terrorist general Qasem Soleimani – an evil man with Americans’ blood on his hands, who was actively plotting more attacks, Trump chose the most aggressive option. In the middle of the night, as Soleimani was being whisked away from an Iraqi airport, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone unleashed a Hellfire missile that tore him to pieces, along with several other members of Iran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The move was so intense that Joe Biden had openly criticized Trump’s actions stating it could bring the Middle East to “the brink of a major conflict”. But Biden’s forecast was wrong. Instead, Donald Trump doubled down, warning the Iranian regime that the United States has targeted “52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture, making it clear that if they responded by harming Americans, they would be “hit very hard and very fast”.
Unfortunately, Iranian attacks have skyrocketed since President Biden took office. Most recently, an Iranian drone attack in Syria killed one American and injured six others. The Biden administration responded with what they called “proportionate and deliberate action”, an air strike against Iranian-backed militia facilities. Iranian proxy forces responded the very next day with attacks against US troops. And while there were no casualties, it was a clear indication that they have priced in the Biden Administration’s predictable response as just the cost of doing business.
