The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

As many have observed over the last decade, competing world orders are emerging that center on Russia, China and Iran challenging the world order organized by the US.  It is also a challenge that focuses on democracy versus authoritarian dictatorship.  Putin, Xi and Khamenei argue that democracy does not work.  People, they argue, are willing to surrender their rights in exchange of order and stability.  The US is the only nation that can serve as a buffer against the forces of evil represented by Russia, China and Iran.  Recently, it is in the Middle East where these competing world orders are being challenged.

Since 7 October 2023, the Middle East has been in turmoil.  On that day, Hamas killed more Jews in one day than in any day since the Holocaust.  That bold atrocity caused Israel to decapitate and largely destroy Hezbollah as a political force in Lebanon and Syria and do the same with Hamas in Gaza.  Gaza is now basically uninhabitable.  Similarly, Israel has decapitated the key political and scientific leadership of Iran, bombed almost all the major military facilities within Iran.  President Trump then ordered the bombing of three key nuclear facilities within Iran.  As columnist Thomas Friedman has observed, “this regional war for the players in the Middle East was the equivalent of World War II for Europe:  It completely shakes up the status quo and opens the way for something new.”  What this “new” will be is completely uncertain at this point in time.

For that reason, it is important to step back and examine this significant crossroads in foreign policy—and examine it solely from the perspective of the United States.  It requires a focus on Iran, Russia and China.  During the Cold War, the focal point of US foreign policy was the containment of communism.  The US accepted the existence of communism in the USSR and China, but the US would do everything to contain it and prevent its spread.  By and large, that policy was successful.  Today, the key term that should define US foreign policy is deterrence.  And, the US must lead the free world in deterring the growing threat of Iran, Russia and China.

First, Iran.   President Trump basically issued an ultimatum to Tehran: Dismantle your nuclear program in verifiable ways, or the U.S. will dismantle it by force.   Therefore, Iran tried to do what it had always done in negotiations: String out talks and press for loopholes that will let it retain the ability for a nuclear breakout on short order. That’s what the dispute over Iran’s domestic uranium enrichment was all about.  Israel’s actions and the US bombing of the nuclear facilities was the answer of deterrence to Iran.  As Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Taekyh have argued, Ayatollah Khamenei’s “military leadership is decapitated, his intelligence services penetrated, and his air defenses diminished.  The nuclear program he has incessantly celebrated lies in ruins.  The regime is in jeopardy and its rescue requires careful calibration of competing mandates.”  He will seek revenge but in the short run, the actions of Israel and the US have successfully deterred Iran.  As Kori Schake, a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, has argued, “we have sent the important signal to Iran’s leadership that we’re willing to use force to prevent their acquisition of nuclear weapons. The last five U.S. presidential administrations have had that as our policy, but none of them were willing to pull the trigger, despite substantial Iranian progress toward a weapon.”

Second is Russia and Ukraine.  President Trump entered office promising to end the war in short order, but Vladimir Putin isn’t cooperating. As the Wall Street Journal commented editorially, “The Russian seems intent on continuing the war until Ukraine submits to his terms, and he is mobilizing forces for a summer offensive.  Ukraine will soon confront weapons shortages that make it more vulnerable to a Russian breakthrough. That’s especially true for air defenses, including U.S.-made Patriot missile interceptors. Ukraine has been able to block most of Mr. Putin’s recent barrages of drones and missiles. But as its defenses wane, Ukraine will have to choose between defending its civilians in cities or its forces on the front lines. Mr. Trump is worried about needless deaths, and rightly so. Those deaths will increase if he fails to rearm Ukraine.”

The greatest challenge in successfully pursuing a policy of deterrence with Russia is understanding Vladimir Putin. Tom Rogan, national-security writer for the Washington Examiner, provides an insightful analysis of Putin.  “Donald Trump says he wants peace in Ukraine. The problem is that Mr. Trump sees Vladimir Putin for who he wishes Mr. Putin to be, a hardened but practical interlocutor, rather than for who he is, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who revels in the dark art of ruthless manipulation. Mr. Trump was shaped by the wheeler-dealer New York City real-estate scene. Mr. Putin was shaped by the brutal maximalism of the KGB’s Red Banner Institute.  But Mr. Trump isn’t the first U.S. president to take an unrealistic view of his Russian counterpart. Consider his predecessors’ experiences.”

• The first American president to deal with Putin, Bill Clinton, chose to remain largely silent on human-rights concerns in Russia, including Putin’s wanton disregard for civilian casualties during the Second Chechen War. Clinton instead focused on wooing Putin to join the post-Cold War democratic international order.  Putin did nothing of the sort. He intimidated the Russian media, cultivated an inner circle of oligarchs who traded vast wealth for political loyalty, and embedded politically vested corruption into the Russian economy—all while Clinton stood idly by.
• Next came George W. Bush. Meeting Putin in June 2001, Bush said he “looked the man in the eye” and “found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy,” adding that he gained “a sense of his soul.” Bush had been duped by Putin’s KGB mind games. Putin appealed to Bush, a born-again Christian, with a story about his mother’s Orthodox cross being rescued from a fire in her dacha. Putin adopted a similar tactic with Trump’s chief foreign-affairs negotiator, Steve Witkoff, telling Witkoff that he had prayed for Trump when he learned of the assassination attempt against him last July.   Putin was never the pro-modernization leader Bush hoped he might be. By the end of the Bush presidency, Putin had launched a vicious cyberattack on North Atlantic Treaty Organization member Estonia, heavily supported Iran’s nuclear program, and invaded Georgia.
• Then there was Barack Obama. Soon after taking office in 2009, Obama essentially excused Russia’s invasion of Georgia five months prior, publicly seeking a “reset” in relations. That July Obama traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin. Obama adviser Michael McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia from 2012 through 2014, recounts in his 2018 book how Putin quickly asserted dominance over the American president:  “Putin spoke uninterrupted for nearly the entire time scheduled for the meeting, documenting the injustices of the Bush administration. This was a guy with a chip on his shoulder. Obama listened patiently, maybe too patiently. . . . It was my assignment to read out this meeting to our press corps later that day. I couldn’t tell them that Obama had merely listened the entire time!”  Putin reveled in Obama’s policy of appeasement. Beginning around 2008, Russia persistently breached the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (The U.S. didn’t withdraw from the treaty until 2019, under Trump.) In 2016 members of Russia’s Federal Security Service attacked and harassed U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers in Moscow. During the intervening years, Russia seized Crimea and southeastern Ukraine, militarily intervened to save Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from defeat in his country’s civil war, and downed a civilian passenger plane flying over eastern Ukraine.  Obama was so fearful of standing against Putin’s aggression that he refused to provide Ukraine with lethal military support.
• Finally there was Joe Biden. In June 2021 Biden met with Putin in Geneva. At the end of the summit, Biden said, “All foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships. It’s the way human nature functions. The tone of the entire meeting was good, positive.” Putin invaded Ukraine eight months later.  Biden helped facilitate robust international sanctions on Russia after the invasion. But he repeatedly hesitated before providing Ukraine with antitank weapons, long-range artillery rockets and F-16 fighter jets. He also limited the paths that U.S. drones could take over the Black Sea to avoid confrontations with Russia. By contrast, even after Russia fired a missile near a British spy plane in 2022, Britain continued to send planes into the region with fighter escorts.

If the US is to have a viable policy of deterrence against Russia, President Trump must consider Putin’s history:  Putin is a master at playing American presidents.

Finally is China. Xi Jinping sees powerful forces leading to the decline of the West and the ineluctable rise of the East.  As The Economist observes, “This process can be hastened by a disciplined Communist Party that understands the dialectical process.”  Xi advocates for “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049, when the party marks the centenary of its rule.  One of its defining objectives of this “rejuvenation” is “reunification” with Taiwan.

Curiously, President Trump told the Wall Street Journal editors in October that “Xi Jinping of China wouldn’t blockade or invade Taiwan because the Chinese leader knows Mr. Trump would impose crippling tariffs. But the President has already imposed such tariffs and retreated when financial markets rebelled. This can’t have impressed Mr. Xi. The problem is that broad-based tariffs hurt the U.S. as much as they do China, which is why Mr. Trump backed down.  Mr. Trump has to decide what kind of relationship he wants with China, and on much more than trade. Mr. Xi will want to use any trade concessions he makes, if he offers any, to win Mr. Trump’s concessions on Taiwan or America’s role in the Pacific. But so far it isn’t clear what Mr. Trump wants—other than a smaller U.S. trade deficit.”  A policy of deterrence with China must involve far beyond that a tariff policy.  The world waits to see what the President really wants with China.

Finally, how do Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Ayatollah Khamenei view the United States and the larger West?  Historian Mikhail Zygar demonstrates that “The idea that the United States is entering the final stage of its history has been kicking around Russia for some time. For years, it was confined to fringe voices. But since around 2020, figures from the Kremlin have been making the argument, too. Leading the charge was Nikolai Patrushev, a former director of the Federal Security Service and one of Mr. Putin’s key advisers. Widely regarded as Russia’s leading hard-liner, he was among the first to claim that America was on an inexorable path to implosion . . .  Mr. Putin himself had laid out a similar view of territorial disintegration. ‘As a former citizen of the former Soviet Union, I’ll tell you the problem with empires: They believe they are so powerful that they can afford minor mistakes,’ he said in 2021. ‘But the problems accumulate, and a moment comes when they are no longer manageable. The United States is confidently, firmly marching down the same path as the Soviet Union.’ This still seems to represent Mr. Putin’s fundamental assessment of the country. He is convinced that America is nearing its end.”

What has occurred in Iran is evidence that Putin and Xi’s thesis is not correct.  But, is it enough to deter the expansionist visions of both Putin in Ukraine and China in Taiwan?  The US must be resolute in pursuing a policy of deterrence.  What we say must be backed up by what we are willing to do.

See Thomas Friedman in the New York Times (26 June 2025); Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh in the Wall Street Journal (24 June 2025); Wall Street Journal editorial (28 May 2025); Tom Rogan in the Wall Street Journal (14 May 2025); David French’s interview with Kori Schake in the New York Times (25 June 2025); The Economist (23 November 2024), pp. 34-35; and Edward Carr in The World Ahead 2025, p. 11.