Gordon Chang warns U.S. hesitation risks repeating pre-WWII delays, comparing today’s Iran to 1930s Germany—where inaction enabled catastrophe—while Trump’s hardline policies could force regime collapse via "peace through strength." China’s 2019–2023 military doctrine frames a "people’s war" against the U.S., already lethal, yet dismissed as propaganda. Democracies’ institutional inertia, Tocqueville-style, may doom them if they ignore existential threats like Tehran’s nuclear progress and Beijing’s unrestricted warfare gambits. [Automatically generated summary]
One is that perhaps unusually, right, you know, basically the like or dislike of the Ayatollahs is kind of an 80-20 issue in Iran, from what I understand, i.e. 80% don't like them very much at all, and 20% are pro.
But the other fact that comes to my mind is that I don't think there's a lot of appetite in the U.S. electorate for regime change.
Now, you know, I don't know, like unpack that for me.
That's, of course, true.
And we know that.
And it's true not only among Democrats, but also among Republicans.
President Trump ran on being the no more foreign wars president.
But there are times when presidents have to do what is absolutely necessary to protect the American public.
You go back to Tocqueville, talked about how democracies are very slow to recognize threats, very slow to go to war.
And that's true.
You know, we've had a string of political scientists who have told us that, and that's absolutely true.
We ignored Osama bin Laden.
We ignored him after he killed six Americans by bombing the North Tower of the World Trade Center in February 1993.
We ignored him until one day when he reached out and killed 2,977 Americans.
And then we said, well, how did that happen?
Well, that's the nature of our democracy.
And yes, I understand that it is unpopular.
But that's the way we end up in situations where many Americans get killed.
World War II in Europe could have been avoided if Britain and France had exerted their power in 1936 and stopped the Third Reich from remilitarizing the Rhineland.
So we know that tens of millions died because Britain and France could not rouse themselves to do what was absolutely necessary.
Well, we're the Britain and France of this century until, of course, President Trump decided, no, we were not going to allow these threats to gather.
And I think that this is a profiles encouraged moment for the president.
Well, you know, it's interesting, you know, peace through strength, right?
That has also been the president's mantra, I think, throughout.
And I mean, I think the president would probably argue that this is an exercise of that.
Yes, and it certainly is.
He's ensuring peace in the long term because, among other things, he has started a chain of events that probably will lead to the end of the Iranian regime.
And he's, again, encircling the cities from the countryside, which is an important thing for us to do.
We Americans don't understand that we are in an existential struggle with the Communist Party.
We don't want to think that.
But remember, the party has declared a people's war on us.
That was a landmark editorial in People's Daily, the most authoritative publication in China in May 2019.
And we Americans, we just look at that and say, that's propaganda.
We can ignore it.
But that's a mistake.
It's a mistake because with its strident anti-Americanism, the party is trying to create a justification to strike America.
And by the way, as a footnote, In March of 2023, PLA Daily, which is the main propaganda organ of the Chinese military, defined people's war as, quote, total war.
China's Doctrine of Unrestricted Warfare00:00:05
So we know China has a doctrine of unrestricted warfare.