Op-Ed

Trump’s National Security Strategy isn’t isolationism, it’s a hard pivot toward a narrower, transactional worldview where borders and identity politics drive the threat picture, “Western civilization” becomes a tribal banner, and allies are left wondering if they’re partners or just the next line item to be renegotiated.

America is not collapsing from outside pressure but hollowing itself out from within, trading shared civic responsibility for grievance, celebrity worship, and the comforting lies of a cult that mistakes cruelty for strength and ignorance for conviction.

Zelensky’s refusal to trade away a single inch of Ukrainian soil is not stubbornness but the last solid line between a world of rules and a world where every dictator thinks they can redraw the map at gunpoint.

From where I sit in Phuket, watching FPV suicide drones carve into Thai positions from a frontier run by casinos and scam compounds, it is clear this is no border misunderstanding but a conflict engineered by foreign operators using Cambodia’s criminal economy as cover.

The American people will only continue to trust their military if its leaders meet them with the same honesty and courage we expect from every soldier who ever raised their right hand to serve.

Hard-nosed realism that trades away our commitment to democracy in favor of cutting deals with dictators is not strength; it is strategic blindness that will cost America both credibility and security.

America’s undeclared war on drugs has killed more of our people than any foreign enemy since World War II, yet it remains a conflict fought in legal and political shadows where no one has to admit we are at war or explain how it ends.

If the fall of Maduro means one less outpost for Moscow in our hemisphere, I will not pretend to be conflicted about it, because I have seen what his patrons do to men whose only crime was fighting back.

The Trump administration’s self-branded hard-nosed realism is in practice performative isolationism that abandons allies, emboldens authoritarians, and trades American leadership for short-term political theatrics.

Based on a lifetime in uniform, I believe these boat strike missions are illegal, immoral, strategically hollow, and a betrayal of the ethical standards that should govern American military power.

When we order troops to carry out morally questionable strikes, we don’t just risk the target, we plant moral injury that spreads through the force, wrecks morale and trust in leadership, and creates long-term damage to the institution unless we face it honestly and care for our people.

Switzerland was right to reject drafting women because any society that has seen real war knows you don’t coerce women into the zero line unless you’re out of men, and pretending biology, psychology, and the brutal math of ground combat don’t exist is how you trade restraint for barbarism.