By supporting the Israeli strikes launched against the leaders of the Iranian regime, Donald Trump has once again surprised world opinion. Above all, he disconcerted his supporters who thought the time of American military interventionism was over. The Secretary of State for Defense tried to justify his country’s commitment in the name of the moral obligation that his vocation is incumbent upon him to fulfill. Like a return to the sources of Puritan messianism?
By striking Iran’s decision-making centers, Donald Trump carried out his 7th military intervention since his re-election. Barack Obama ordered as much before winning the Nobel Peace Prize. If the idea of winning this prize is tenacious among the current tenant of the White House, the reasons for this new attack are undoubtedly a little more substantial. Seen from afar, the “Imperial Republic” would only reconnect with the force it has regularly used since the end of the 19th century.
Forgetting their atavism for war, the Democrats are taking the opportunity to denounce the president’s unilateral “warmongering” and some Republicans are even wondering how the “president of peace” could have engaged in this type of operation, even against the advice of his electoral base. However, on closer inspection, the recurrence of the United States’ military commitment does not necessarily contradict America’s original vocation, driven by the irenicism of the Founding Fathers, to bring about a pacified society… by arms if necessary.
Evangelist vocation
When the Puritans of the Mayflower reached the New World in 1620, they hoped to leave behind the persecution to which their communities had been subjected in Europe. The establishment of their New Jerusalem must be free from violence and the House on the Hill distrusts any imperial desire which would force it to come into contact with an outside world that is necessarily corrupt. But the egalitarian utopia of these radical Calvinists immediately encountered resistance from Indian tribes.
Convinced of their moral superiority, the first Americans then drew their messianic vocation from their exceptionalism. If it has to resort to war, the chosen people will do it in the name of their evangelist vocation. Thomas Paine confirms the regenerative ambition which requires “The Empire of Good” has “start the world again”. While waiting to Americanize the planet, the United States is trying to accomplish its “Manifest Destiny” in their Latin backyard. In the 19th century, the Monroe Doctrine and the “Big Stick” policy experienced their first armed interventions in Cuba and the Caribbean. This expansionism is still circumscribed by a profoundly isolationist pacifism.
For the first time in its history, in 1945, America maintained the mobilization of armies in peacetime
In 1916, the Democrat Wilson broke with a policy of more or less firm neutrality to engage his country in the Great War. This son of a pastor reconnects with the original Presbyterian moralism claiming to pacify the world through a final war and impose common rules on the world. Its 14 points translate into international law this Kantian desire to rebuild geopolitics. The Republicans in power, however, refuse to “direct the destiny of the world” and to participate in a League of Nations which would force them to send – in an unconstitutional manner – their troops to foreign theaters of operations.
In 1941, it was Roosevelt’s turn to thwart the “Republican” isolationism underway since 1918. The Democratic president then took an eschatological tone to denounce the “infamous day” of the attack on Pearl Harbor and call for “democratic crusade” thus hoping to galvanize an opinion resistant to war. After having naively believed that the United Nations would put Wilsonian principles into practice, the United States must resolve to resort again to the balance of power. The Cold War then prolongs the struggle between Good and Evil.
For the first time in its history, in 1945, America maintained the mobilization of its armies in peacetime. The permanent state of war, supported by the famous “military-industrial complex” then became commonplace. The Democrats intervened in Korea and Vietnam, the Republicans, Eisenhower on the one hand, Nixon on the other, put an end to it. In 1979, the Iranian revolution humiliated Carter’s America. The Democrats will never stop calling for the affront to be washed away. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was already urging the preemptive bombing of Iran. Less driven by an evangelical messianism, but just as concerned with protecting the free world, the Republicans, from Reagan to Bush Jr, out of anti-communism or in defense of the West, have also made the clash of arms resonate to impose their liberal democracy. In 2003, Bush Jr. completed his father’s unfinished business by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The Washington tenant also saw it as an opportunity to put an end to the “green diagonal” encouraged by his predecessor.
Clintonian…and Trumpian interventionism
Indeed, Bill Clinton’s unbridled interventionism played the radical Islam card in Kosovo and Bosnia and favored the integration of Turkey into the European Union to weaken it. Washington also continued to support, after the fall of the Wall, the Taliban who had fought in Afghanistan against the USSR. After the untimely bombings of Iraq, the September 11 attacks brutally revealed the bankruptcy of these unnatural alliances.
The United States then thought to protect itself from the Axis of Evil by modifying the political map of the Middle East. But from armed interventions to special operations, their expectations are always disappointed. Driven out of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban returned to Kabul. In Syria, the Kurds have been abandoned to their fate since Obama. In Iraq or Libya, the stabilization process is still fragile. Informed of these unfortunate precedents, Donald Trump had sworn not to engage the country in such hazardous expeditions.
The American president is content to launch “Viking” raids
The American president’s bellicose policy therefore struggles to convince of its coherence. However, it intends to maintain the objective of reducing the financial and military participation of Americans outside their borders. The bet of “do not start wars”held during the first mandate, is however found wanting. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sees this as an opportunity for a new crusade, “like (that) of our Christian brothers a thousand years ago”.
But Trumpian interventionism seems far removed from any form of messianism. Refusing to engage America in a long conflict, the American president is content to launch “Viking” raids which, as in Venezuela, Yemen and currently in Iran, have the objective, beyond the assumed choice of bringing down tyrants, to protect American interests. This will probably not guarantee him the Nobel Peace Prize, but he will at least have the feeling of having remained faithful to his apostrophe: “Make America Great Again.” »
