OPINION:
Bombing Iran was the easy part.
No one doubts the overwhelming power of American forces in the Middle East, including two aircraft carriers. We can be sure that the Israelis, with American-made fighters, can overwhelm Iranian missiles and planes, including long-outdated U.S. fighters acquired before the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Islamic regime in 1979.
The hard part is showing the same resolve and courage in defending beleaguered regimes and people elsewhere. If President Trump sounded tough in going after Iran’s bloodthirsty dictatorship, he has shown anything but the same resolve in his willingness to defend other governments and people.
Among the most obvious is Ukraine, where American leaders have been hesitant to provide all that is needed to turn the tide and drive the Russians back across the borders into their own territory. Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign claims of his ability to talk Russian President Vladimir Putin into settling his differences with Ukraine in a day have gone for naught.
With the Russians advancing slowly but inexorably, Mr. Trump is not about to consider the air support for which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been begging since the Biden presidency. He has hesitated to deluge Ukraine with the weapons to stand up to the Russians, backed up by North Korean troops after Mr. Putin and Kim Jong-un met at the Vostochny Сosmodrome near the Amur River in eastern Siberia in 2023.
Mr. Trump, with Israel, has the guts to destroy Iran’s leadership, bases and supply chains, but he has refused to heed America’s NATO allies and turn the tide in Ukraine.
In Asia, our president’s fear of plunging into wars against enemies that might prove superior to Iran is pathetically clear. Probably the most obvious target is Taiwan, the independent island province of China that Chinese leaders have been vowing to seize ever since the victory of Mao’s Red Army in 1949.
Mr. Trump has authorized the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons to Taiwan, but is he ready to deploy warplanes, naval vessels and ground forces?
What if Mr. Xi were to take Mr. Trump’s deployment of air power against Iran as a lesson that China might emulate, especially with U.S. forces tied up in the Middle East? Would Mr. Trump be willing or able to fight two or three wars on different sides of the globe? Would he heed the urgent requests of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te with the same alacrity with which he responded to the requests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
The danger of American betrayal (or at least failure to act decisively as with Iran) extends north and south from Taiwan. To the south, the Philippines, though buttressed by American aid and advice, cannot stave off Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, where the Chinese are expanding bases on small islands and atolls.
Across the South China Sea, the communist rulers in Hanoi — more than half a century since “North” Vietnam conquered the American-backed Saigon regime — now need American arms, including patrol boats, to defend against the Chinese. China has taken over oil and natural gas deposits in nearby waters.
Would Mr. Trump arm and equip them in a showdown?
Those questions are still more acute in northeast Asia, where the South Korean government is searching in vain for dialogue with nuclear-armed North Korea. Mr. Trump still claims Kim Jong-un as a bosom buddy based on their summits in Singapore in June 2018, in Hanoi in February 2019 and a brief third meeting on the North-South line at Panmunjom four months later. In all of them, he failed to persuade Mr. Kim to give up his nukes and missiles.
Why would Mr. Trump possess such warm feelings toward Mr. Kim, who is responsible for far more deaths of his own people than the cruel Iranian ayatollahs? Could Iran’s nuclear program, far from producing a nuclear warhead after American bombers obliterated deep underground sites in June, be more dangerous than that of North Korea, estimated to have produced 100 or so nukes?
Possibly the least secure in Asia are the Japanese. Japan’s right-leaning prime minister, Sanae Takaichi — under intense fire from Beijing for stating that an attack on Taiwan would threaten Japan’s survival — has resolved to build up Japan’s armed forces.
Mr. Trump gets along fine with Ms. Takaichi, but he will be visiting Beijing soon, kowtowing before Mr. Xi, who presents a far greater threat to America than an Iranian regime on the verge of collapse.
Japanese and Koreans with whom I have spoken question whether Mr. Trump would defend them despite the presence of 55,000 American troops in Japan and 28,500 in Korea. They fear that he may withdraw most of these troops.
Mr. Trump must place top priority on defense against China and North Korea while cutting short the Iranian adventure now that he has done away with the ayatollah and many of his henchmen.
• Donald Kirk is a former Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the old Washington Star.
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