Trump, Unleashed

U.S. President Donald J. Trump has the uncanny ability to get away with nearly anything. In American domestic politics, scandal after scandal passes him by, with little effect on his average favorability. Does that ability extend to the international sphere – to acts of war? That question is in the process of being answered. The strike on Major General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ infamous Quds Force, was tantamount to an act of war by the United States against Iran, but, aside from a series of Iranian ballistic missile strikes on a U.S. base in Iraq that resulted in zero American deaths, further escalation has been averted. Still, tensions remain high and the possibility of further retaliation by the Iranians does not seem remote.

For the Asia-Pacific region, the risks stemming from U.S.-Iran tensions have been under consideration for some time. After all, long before the strike on Soleimani, the Persian Gulf had experienced instability. In 2019, oil tankers – including one owned by Japan – were attacked, purportedly by Iran-linked proxies. (Iran officially denied involvement in the attacks.) Separately, even the assuredness of Saudi oil supply to the region came under doubt after a spectacular strike on two Saudi Aramco installations – Abqaiq and Khurais – by weaponized drones and cruise missiles. The Iran-aligned Houthi movement claimed responsibility for the strikes, which shut down some 5 percent of global oil production. For Asia’s large net importers of Gulf oil – China, India, Japan, and South Korea, for instance – these risks have long been apparent.

The lead-up to the strike on Soleimani is telling of the Trump administration’s broken national security decision-making process. The decision to authorize Soleimani specifically as a conditional target for a U.S. targeted strike had been made seven months before the actual strike, according to reporting by NBC News. Trump would still have to sign off on the actual hit, but the assassination had been added to a “menu” of options for the administration as it pursued a calculated strategy of pressure against Iran: one that was always likely to lead to blowback and escalation on U.S. interests. The administration’s post-strike justification of Soleimani’s involvement in planning for an “imminent” attack on American diplomats in the Middle East has been thoroughly undermined in the weeks since the strike.

Soleimani was taken out on January 2, not long after U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper issued a warning that the United States would “not accept continued attacks against our personnel and forces in the region.” Esper’s remarks came days after a dramatic series of events in Iraq. On December 27, 2019, in the final week of the year, Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-aligned militia, fired rockets on a military base near Kirkuk. An American contractor died in the strike, leading the Trump administration to retaliate with interest: American airstrikes on December 29 killed some two dozen militia members. Kataib Hezbollah supporters, inflamed by the disproportionate act of retaliation, stormed the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, leading to a tense standoff. Trump, incensed at the siege, took to Twitter on New Year’s Eve to hold Iran responsible and promised “They will pay a very BIG PRICE!”

Two days later, on his way out of Baghdad airport, Qasem Soleimani was struck and killed. Soleimani’s position in the Iranian system was second only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – at least in matters of regional statecraft. The Pentagon justified the strike by noting that Soleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

Since the strike, every Asian capital with significant equities in the Middle East has been on edge, expressing hopes that escalation remains at bay. A spike in oil prices – one of the first order effects of a major bout of escalation – could be disastrous for an already fiscally fragile emerging economy like India, and challenge energy security for China. Beijing was unequivocally opposed to the strike on Soleimani; days prior, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited Beijing, winning support from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In the aftermath of the strike, China, alongside Russia, stonewalled U.S. efforts to seek a United Nations Security Council statement condemning the Baghdad embassy siege. Both Moscow and Beijing felt that, after the Soleimani strike, any statement from the Council should “have complete coverage of the whole thing,” as Zhang Jun, the Chinese permanent representative put it.

The strike on Soleimani had the unfortunate coincidence of coming just days after North Korea convened the Fifth Plenum of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea – a high-level event that substituted for Kim’s 2020 New Year’s Day address and marked the formalization of a harder line toward the United States. Many analysts have observed that the strike on Soleimani will only reaffirm North Korea’s convictions that its nuclear weapons cannot be bartered with and, while that’s true, it is not a lesson that Pyongyang only learned recently. For years, North Korea has talked about the ill-advised steps former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi took in reaching disarmament agreements with the United States. The strike on Soleimani has been handled delicately in North Korea’s state media, in the meantime, with superficial coverage; it has yet to become the subject of a major editorial or commentary on the country’s foreign policy and approach toward the United States.

For North Korea, the U.S. strike on Soleimani will likely only harden resolve. It will also seal in a reputation for Trump as an erratic madman – a reputation that may come to play a role in a renewed bout of U.S.-North Korea crisis. The Soleimani strike goes to show that the president was drawn to the elimination of a high-value target – all with the intention of making a point. Could that feature of the American president’s decision-making come to take on relevance on the Korean Peninsula? In late 2017, the Trump administration was reportedly considering a limited strike on North Korea to give Kim a “bloody nose.” Could that option come back on the table should North Korea resume testing long-range missiles?

Ultimately, what the strike on Soleimani indicates is that the president has few guardrails around him as the Trump administration enters the final year of what could either be its only term or its first term. Gone are the days when observers could point to conventionally minded individuals within the administration serving as a check on the president’s worst instincts. With no one to second guess him, Trump’s decision-making is likely to manifest his impulses – a prospect that is sure to give pause to adversaries and American allies alike.