Trump’s “Destroy and Deal” Doctrine: Impulse, Improvisation and Empire

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, as we’ve been hearing, America’s shifting objectives for its war with Iran are giving the world whiplash. But what’s behind the uncertainty? Well, New York Times diplomatic correspondent Edward Wong says it’s all part of the president’s destroy and deal doctrine. And he’s joining Walter Isaacson to explain and also about China’s increasingly complicated role in the Middle East.

 

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Edward Wong, welcome back to the show.

 

EDWARD WONG: Hi, Walter. It’s great to be here.

 

ISAACSON: Let me ask you a broad-brush question about the year and a half or so we’re about to see of the Trump administration. You had Greenland — you had him making that big obsession — and then kind of backing off. Likewise, President Maduro in Venezuela, he goes in, has a regime change, doesn’t embrace the opposition, however. Now we’ve seen this in Iran where he’s going back and forth. Is there some method in this madness that maybe it’s the art of the deal and he’s very transactional? Is there a Trump doctrine or is it just improvisation?

 

WONG: I would say it’s mostly improvisation. I remember speaking to a very senior official who worked in the first Trump administration when I was doing reporting for an article. And this official, this former now former official, said that, You reporters, you journalists and analysts like to somehow draw a picture that connects all these dots in Trump’s policies and says, Oh, here’s the strategy that he’s pursuing. But in fact, from here, inside the administration, what we’re seeing is just day-to-day decisions, ramblings you know, off kilter remarks and lots of waffling depending on the president’s impulse of the day. And so he he said that that’s what we should keep in mind when we’re assessing Trump’s remarks and what he’s up to. And I’ve kept that — his like advice — in my head ever since then. I think that’s important for all of us to remember.

 

I do think though, that when we look at Trump’s foreign policy in the second term, there are some broad things that we can say are consistent and thus paint a picture of how Trump thinks about the world and about America’s role in the world. One is that I do think Trump thinks you know, whether he explicitly thinks in these terms in his head or not, that the idea of empire is a good one. That America and other Western nations were at in their greatest glory when they exercised coercive control over countries around the world. And that Trump would like to do this again. I think that’s been borne out very clearly by his policies. And that includes acquiring territory. 

 

The other thing I think that we’re seeing that is in terms of this exercise of American coercive power and military power overseas, he is very happy to bomb countries to send forces into a region to send, even in the case of Venezuela, to send U.S. ground troops in to seize the leader of a country. But he also shies away from this idea of nation building.

 

And so what I see is him seeking regime compliance rather than regime change around the world. And I call it doctrine of destroy and deal that he’s going to destroy parts of countries in order to get them to submit, and then he’s willing to make deals with a level of leadership that he thinks will comply with him or that will obey him once he, he’s gotten rid of the tier of leadership above them. So I think that that’s a very consistent action we’re seeing. And Iran, even though he talks about regime change, in reality there has been no regime change and in fact, he’s seeking someone in the current leadership that he can do a deal with.

 

ISAACSON: Well, do you think some of the people in the administration actually buy the fact that we got a good re — I mean a regime change? ‘Cause it’s certainly a more hard-line regime led by an ayatollah?

 

WONG: Well Pete Hegseth said very unequivocally that the regime has changed in Iran. Hegseth has usually stuck to Trump’s talking points. On the other hand, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who’s also the White House National Security Advisor, has been very skeptical of whether there has been real change in Iran. I think that comes across since public comments. He said in several recent interviews that the problem with Iran is what he calls the radical Shia clerics that run it. He uses the present tense when talking about them, meaning including the current leadership, the one that is now in power after the killings of the Supreme leader and his top aides. And Rubio has made the assertion that the U.S. has to completely degrade Iran’s conventional weapons capabilities because the current leadership can’t be trusted. The current leadership is essentially adversary. And so the U.S. has to take those measures. And so it’s clear, I think that Rubio is much more skeptical than Trump or Hegseth that there has been regime changes in Iran.

 

ISAACSON: Well, that’s really interesting because there do seem, there does seem to be some light between Rubio and his clear objectives for the war. And President Trump’s objectives for the war. Is there some light daylight between them?

 

WONG: I’m not sure there’s daylight. As much as Rubio wants to present publicly a list of war aims that Trump can credibly say the U.S. has achieved, and so can declare victory and pull U.S. out of combat operations in the country if he chose to do so. So I think that Rubio is playing a certain role here. And Rubio just this week listed four very concrete war aims. They’re all centered around Iran’s conventional weapons capabilities and includes degrading and destroying the Iranian Air Force, their Navy. What he calls severely diminishing their capability to launch missiles. And then also destroying factories that produce those weapons. So these, the U.S. can, I think at this point, credibly claim that it, along with Israel, has accomplished most of those goals. And so Trump could essentially hang up a “mission accomplished” banner if he chose to do so.

 

But Trump himself has been all over the map on his war goals. He has said things from, We want to eradicate their, you know, their nuclear stockpiles, which could involve sending in ground troops to seize highly-enriched uranium. It. He has also said, We wanna do regime change and we’ve done regime change. So that’s probably the most ambitious goal. And as I’ve said, not many people who look at Iran today think that there has been regime change.

 

ISAACSON: In the past week or two, Trump has said, Oh yeah, we’re having talks. We’re not having talks. Like, and Pakistan was involved in some of those talks. To what extent was there some truth to that?

 

WONG: Well, there is a passing of messages between the two countries. It’s mostly being done via intermediaries and Pakistan is one of them. Pakistan has a high-ranking official who is General Munir who is in touch with military officials in Iran. And right now we think that military officials in Iran essentially have, hold much of the power in Iran, even though the son of the former supreme leader is currently named as the top leader in Iran. And so that’s a channel that is open. The U.S. is relaying messages via Pakistan. Iran is doing the same. And we’ve recently seen Pakistan go to China and ask for China to help act as a mediator in this. And China and Pakistan have then put out a five-point joint statement saying that there needs to be an end immediately to hostilities in the region.

 

ISAACSON: So China’s involvement is very interesting here. Has this whole thing made China more of a player on the stage? And what will this mean if and when President Trump is scheduled to go to meet with President Xi in a month or so?

 

WONG: Well, China, as we know, is a country that is somewhat close to Iran. I wouldn’t say that they are ideologically aligned, but it’s the biggest purchaser of oil from Iran. They share commercial and military ties. And it’s also Pakistan’s closest ally. So there is a confluence of interests here. And China stepping to diplomacy is an interesting development. I think China has made some effort to get involved in Middle East diplomacy in recent years. It often tries to stay away from conflicts in the Middle East or other parts of the world because it feels that that might work against its interest. And I think it’s seen how the U.S. gets involved and entwined in these conflicts in the Middle East often because of decisions by American administrations. And it says it doesn’t want any part of that type of scenario.

 

But when it feels that there is an end goal that can be achieved with China’s help, it does step in. We, a few years ago during the Biden administration, we saw that China came into final help Iran and Saudi Arabia finalize a diplomatic opening after those two countries have been negotiating for several years on this opening. So China does take an interest when it feels it can, it might be able to accomplish something. And so I think it’s interesting that China is now partnering with Pakistan to try and push for negotiations towards a ceasefire. 

 

And also in their five-point statement, they’re pushing for an opening of shipping across the Strait of Hormuz, which as we know is probably the thorniest issue right now in the conflict. The fact that the Iranian military in order to exert leverage has essentially closed off the strait by threatening ships with attacks if ships carrying oil and gas go across the strait. Iran does allow certain ships to go across if they’re Pakistani-flagged, for instance, or if they’re bound for China. So China has been getting energy supplies from Iran, but at the same time, the closure to most ships of the Strait has really sent energy markets around the world into turmoil. And I’m sure all your viewers who go get gasoline for their cars have noticed this. So I think China and Pakistan both have vested interest in trying to get the hostilities to end as soon as possible.

 

ISAACSON: There have been reports that the Iranians are allowing ships through the Straits of Hormuz, both with Pakistani flags, as you’ve said, but also paying in Chinese currency sometime. Do you think this whole thing will increase the influence that China has over the Straits of Hormuz?

 

WONG: Well, I think China has been trying to get various countries in the Middle East — as other regions too  — pay for goods and services in yuan or renminbi, because they’re trying to make their currency into a reserve currency for the world, just like the U.S. dollar is that, along with its military power, the fact that the dollar is a reserve currency underpins U.S. power around the world, and China knows that, and so —

 

ISAACSON: Well wait, could that actually be a successful strategy so that the petro dollar is no longer the main use of currency?

 

WONG: I mean, if China achieves that, it would be a successful strategy, you know. But it, they’re still a long ways from achieving that. So I think they’re making efforts. They’ve been in talks of Saudi Arabia to get Saudi Arabia to pay for, to sort of take payment in renminbi. And they’ve had some success, but at the same time they still have a lot of work to do. 

 

So the Strait of Hormuz and the toll, if Iran decides to do that is, I think that’s a question that’s up in the air, but it is in, I think it’s an interesting development that we’re hearing about this. And I think it does show that China has certain strategic ambitions and that the war, this war, could bolster those strategic ambitions on the part of China. 

 

I think that the main way that China probably benefits from the war is that, it diverts U.S. attention away from China’s own military buildup in the Asia Pacific region. We know that certain officials in the Trump administration, very high ranking officials in the Pentagon elsewhere, have been seeing for years that the U.S. has to build up military arms and presence in the Asia Pacific in order to deter any Chinese notion of an invasion of Taiwan or aggression against other countries in the area. And what we’re seeing now is the U.S. diverting huge amounts of military resources away from the Asian Pacific region to the Middle East, which is exactly the opposite of what Trump and other presidents have been saying they wanted to do for about a decade or more now.

 

ISAACSON: What does all this pretend for the President Trump’s scheduled summit with President Xi? What do you expect to happen there?

 

WONG: Well, I think that when Trump goes to meet with Xi, in Trump’s mind, he would like to have leverage over China. He started a trade war with China, as you know, his second major trade war with China. And it really caused chaos in global markets. It was a tariff war, just like he imposed tariffs on allies in other countries. But it had a much bigger impact on markets because of China, that because of the fact that China is the world’s second largest economy and America’s biggest trading partner. And so he wanted to basically pummel China to get what he considers to be better trade terms. But China called his bluff and said, We will limit or stop the export of processed rare earths and critical minerals to the U.S. if you go ahead with this. And so Trump backed down and he called a halt to that trade war. 

 

So he wants to have leverage going into a meeting with Xi. He sees China as an economic rival. He doesn’t see it as a strategic rival, in my opinion. He hasn’t talked about its military technological advances. He doesn’t talk about its system of governance and whether that’s a challenge to U.S. influence and power overseas. He talks in very positive terms about Xi Jinping. He said, he says Xi is a very good friend. He has talked in terms that show his admiration for actually the authoritarian system that Xi runs. And so I think he wants to be seen as an equal to China on trade. And that’s essentially his main goal. 

 

But the Iran war and the fact that the U.S. is mired in this conflict in the Middle East, and the fact that it has caused chaos in global markets actually gives him less of a hand to play in talks with China, because I think that he goes into this summit, probably more cautious than he would otherwise. He, if he threatens to escalate or restart the trade war, then I think China might call his bluff on that. He knows that the markets depend on his every move at this point, whether it’s in Iran or China. And I think he wants to reassure markets that there won’t be more turbulence going ahead. So I think that in a way constricts the type of arguments or assertions that he can make in the summit with Xi.

 

ISAACSON: At the very beginning of this war, Trump talked about six weeks as being something he wanted to talk about. Well, it’s been about six weeks. Do you think this was always part of his plan?

 

WONG: Trump has been all over the map on stating when the war would end and how long it would take. I mean, he said six weeks. At one point he said early in the war, he said, We’re well ahead of schedule and it’ll be another couple weeks. And that was, you know more than two or three weeks ago. So people who observe Trump’s statements have said he often says two weeks, like two weeks is a timeframe that he often throws out there, and things very often take longer than the two weeks that he cites. So we should approach the timeline that he lays out with some skepticism. And of course, as we know, when the U.S. got involved in wars, started wars or supported wars in other places, U.S. officials would often say, Oh, we’ll turn the corner in a couple weeks or, or in a month or so. And of course, those turn into many months and then many years. And, American leaders and American politicians don’t seem to really have learned a lesson from their, those previous statements.

 

ISAACSON: Edward Wong, thank you so much for joining us.

 

WONG: Thanks a lot, Walter.