Strategy On Fire

Escalatory rhetoric, quiet force movements, and a politicized NDS point to a system where words no longer constrain actions.

Good morning,

Venezuelan acting president Delcy Rodriguez is getting fed up with Washington calling the shots and meddling in her country. This has led to threats of the use of force from administration officials to coerce her to do as they want.

At the same time, the U.S. military has quietly surged forces into the Middle East, signaling a rising probability of renewed strikes against Iran. That probability accelerated sharply as President Trump escalated his rhetoric, warning that ‘our next attack will be far worse’ than Operation Midnight Hammer.

So much for the National Security and National Defense Strategies that explicitly proclaim an end to interventionism, endless wars, regime change, and nation building.

The gap between declaratory policy and reality is widening by the moment.

Another clear warning sign comes from the NDS—published last Friday—in the prose itself.

For decades, across administrations of both parties, U.S. defense strategies deliberately avoided naming p…