All successful political movements build coalitions, so in 2008 and 2012, when the Republican Party was still dominated by views associated with regime change and nation-building, the Ron Paul campaign pitched its antiwar message from several angles.
For the bleeding hearts, the Texas congressman and his surrogates could pitch you on the suffering caused by the “shock and awe” of the 2003 Iraq invasion and the Obama administration’s drone strikes. If you were interested in the strategic aspect, they could pitch 9/11 as blowback for earlier operations, including Clinton administration-era strikes. And lastly, if you were concerned about American debt levels and potential fiscal insolvency, they could take the “blood and treasure” pitch and describe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as the ultimate wastes of American resources.
By the 2020 presidential election it was clear which pitch has resonated with Donald Trump’s supporters. His administration had stepped up the pace of bombings even compared to President Barack Obama’s, had ordered strikes in Syria, had threatened a nuclear-armed power in Northeast Asia with complete annihilation, and had eliminated the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with a targeted attack. Yet he still positioned himself as the peace candidate, largely because he had not invested U.S. resources in any more long-term quixotic attempts to remake other countries in America’s image, especially in the Islamic world. This pitch was trotted out again for the 2024 campaign, with quotes about Trump’s unwillingness to commit Americans to foreign wars trotted out by future fixtures of his second-term government, including Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard.
Those quotes have been circulating with a note of irony since this weekend, as Trump 2.0 now seems to have abandoned the idea of non-interventionism for an entirely different approach. The capture of Nicolas Maduro in January 2025 and elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Iran in theory might have sounded like relatively low-cost endeavors to eliminate pesky U.S. adversaries and Chinese/Russian partners from the Western hemisphere and from the Middle East. By eliminating the person at the top, the theory probably went, the U.S. could deal a decisive blow without having to commit to nation building afterward.
Fans of The Sopranos might call it the Phil Leotardo Doctrine, after Tony Soprano’s final antagonist during the show’s run—the boss of the New York crime family who ordered the death of not only Tony, as boss of the New Jersey family, but also his underboss and consigliere. “We decapitate, and we do business with whatever’s left,” Leotardo notoriously declared in the penultimate episode.
In practice, it meant that the U.S. arrested Maduro while leaving his vice president in charge to curse U.S. actions and continue crackdowns on dissent. In Iran, it meant eliminating an 86-year-old ayatollah who was not long for this world to begin with and for whom succession plans appeared to already be in place. It has also meant Iranian retribution against U.S., Israeli, and partner country assets.
Which makes sense: Iran responded only performatively to previous attacks by the US and Israel to avoid a spiral into additional conflict. That approach appears to have invited further such actions, which it is now in Iran’s interests to deter. One thing we can expect is that the IRGC will remain powerful, the next supreme leader will remain a committed foe of the U.S., and Iranian families who lost loved ones will not welcome further American strikes as coming from liberators.
Had this mission gone off without prompting a major retaliation, similar actions would have followed. Trump and his surrogates have already spoken about seizing Greenland and “a friendly takeover” of Cuba. Without resistance, one wonders if they would have again turned their attention to North Korea, thinking (as Douglas MacArthur did in 1950) that decisive action would limit the likelihood of a counterattack. Such tactics might have encouraged similar thinking from China and Russia—the latter of whom attempted a similar decapitation strategy against Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2022.
In 2022 I warned that the emergence of like-minded “right-populist” coalitions in East and South Asia threatened Trump’s America First agenda, as such movements might seek to encourage greater American intervention in their disputes. Looking back, the concern was well-founded, if not the region: Since coming to power in November 2022, Israel’s right-learning cabinet has displayed certain similarities to Trump’s, clashing with the judiciary and the press, seeking decisive action to limit checks on its ability to act, and seeking to limit opposition within its home hemisphere.
But the Iran mission and its fallout shows that having similar inclinations is not the same as having the same interests. The bravado of unprecedented action is not the same as having a strategy.
And disregard for human life in other countries is not America First.
Phil Leotardo’s move to “decapitate” Tony Soprano’s crew illustrates as much: Fans of The Sopranos will recall that when the New York family’s initial mission failed, a protracted conflict inflicted heavy costs on both sides, ultimately resulting in the collapse of Leotardo’s support base and his betrayal.
If Trump wants to save America First and preserve American interests in an era of great-power competition, he needs to not only rethink his strategy, but rethink the members of his coalition who acceded to the “decapitate and move on” strategy.
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