The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Geostrategic, Top-Down ‘Way of War’

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Why attack Iran? Why reaffirm America’s dominance in Panama? Why capture Nicolás Maduro? Trump has scores to settle.  There’s a general pattern in the preemptive actions President Trump’s taken in both his terms in office.   A central theme to all his actions is that they’re geostrategic and top-down, explains Victor Davis Hanson on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”   “Pressuring the Panamanians to divorce themselves from China. Making sure the Venezuelan oil does not go to Russia or China by changing the government and capturing Maduro. Things like that suggest that the current Iranian operation has targeted China. … You're starting to see a pattern. These are wars of reckoning.” (00:00) Trump Way of War (02:12) Wars of Reckoning (03:37) Negotiations and Decapitation (04:57) No Nation Building (09:26) Results and Wrap Up 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1 👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You might be tempted to let Taco Bell's new Lux value menu go to your head. Because 10 indulgences for $5 or less makes you feel fancy. Like you might think you need cloth napkins. Well, you don't. Just use the ones that come in the bag. Don't let the Lux go to your head. We've seen Donald Trump's punitive action, preemptive actions in his first term and now in his second as well. And there's a general pattern here, a Trump way of war, we could call it.

One thing that's central to all of his action is they're geostrategic, pressuring the Panamanians to divorce themselves from China, making sure the Venezuelan oil does not go to Russia or China by changing the government and capturing Maduro. Things like that suggests that the current Iranian operation has targeted China. It's a major supplier of Chinese oil. China is one of the biggest, if not the biggest supplier of consumer goods, material goods to Iran. It supplies weaponry to Iran, and Iran has become a client more of China now than Russia, and it may be lost to China. As Venezuela was, and maybe Panama was, you're starting to see a pattern. These are wars of reckoning.

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preemptive actions in his first term and now in his second as well. And there's a general pattern here, a Trump way of war, we could call it. One thing that's central to all of his action is they're geostrategic, pressuring the Panamanians to divorce themselves from China, making sure the Venezuelan oil does not go to Russia or China by changing the government and kidnapping, capturing Maduro. Things like that suggests that the current Iranian operation has targeted China. It's a major supplier of Chinese oil.

China is one of the biggest, if not the biggest supplier of consumer goods, material goods to Iran. It supplies weaponry to Iran, and Iran has become a client more of China now than Russia, and it may be lost to China as Venezuela was and maybe Panama was. You're starting to see a pattern. These are wars of reckoning. So there's always people say, well, why are we attacking Iran? And Trump's way of reasoning, he's settling up old. scores. Panama was getting away with murder through a previous administration, maybe including his own, by stationing or allowing the Chinese to have strategic locations on the Panama Canal. It was time to say no more. Maduro was getting away with literally murder, sending drugs,

working with the cartels into the United States, sending hardened criminals into the United States as well, illegal aliens, and it was time to say, you're not going to cause a cast. Astroite Latin American Communist Revolution, we're going to stop it. And it was past time and Trump's way of thinking. All of these wars are in that way. Same thing with Iran. They have killed more Americans, as we all have been told, than any other terrorist clique or operation, going back even before the Iran-Iraq War, before our incursions

in the Gulf War. At the very beginning, that government was birthed on the idea of taking. American hostages and then subsequently blowing up our embassy, blowing up marine barracks, involvement in coal barred towers, using proxies like Hezbollah to hijack planes, assassinate America. It was time, in other words, to even up the score. These take place during negotiations. Notice that Trump was negotiating with Iranians during the summer hit on their nuclear facilities. He was negotiating with them in this current war. was negotiating with the Venezuelans, and that is his characteristic. He's saying to these different

entities, I want a peaceful solution. And even if he didn't want a peaceful solution, the idea that he is negotiating lessens the criticism that they're preemptive or preventative optional wars. In other words, he can say, well, I wanted to make peace, but the negotiations broke down. Notice they're down attacks they they go after Soleimani in the first term or Baghdadi or they go after Maduro or they go after Comenei common A the idea is everybody in the world should be on notice that the people themselves are not culpable they are Shanghai coerced by these terrible leaders and I Donald Trump will get rid of the leaders and start with the top rather than the bottom or the people.

And that's a very successful strategy. Of course, there's no nation building. Donald Trump ran against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The mega base says we don't want forever, optional wars, especially the Middle East. So there is no pretense that there's going to be a gender studies program on Iran, or there's going to be George Floyd Murals, or there's going to be a pride flag over the U.S. embassy and Iran.

There's no cultural imperialism, no desire to say we were going to make democracies all over the Middle East. We're not going to do that. And therefore, we're not going to, six, we're not going to have boots on the ground. We're not going to have ground groups unless emergencies. There's a weird exit strategy, too, that Donald Trump has in all of these. he determines when the war starts and when it ends. I don't know if he's going to be successful in all these cases, but he takes out the Iranian nuclear facilities,

and everybody says we're going to be in an endless tit-for-tat struggle now in the summer of 2025, and what happens? He allows Iran a performative art hit on American base in Gutter, and then he says, I want to make Iran great again, and that's the end of it. After the death of Soleimani, the same thing. already prematurely, perhaps, he's already talking about negotiations with Iran. And what that does is it sort of dampens the criticism of him, just as he went to war in the

midst of negotiations. He doesn't say, well, negotiations will not work. Maybe they will, and we can end this. But the war will start and end when he sees as favorable terms to the United States. There's no effort. an eighth aspect of the Trump way of war, there's no effort to go to the United Nations. No United Nations, no international criminal court, no EU consultation. NATO, we consult with them in matters European, but nobody talked about NATO.

The idea is that there's very little trust that these platforms that are multilateral have the wherewithal or the ability or the desire. to take prompt decisive action. And they will only clog up the process if you consult them and you hinge your decision-making on a foreign entity. Nine, there are showcases for U.S. arms. Have you noticed that? Everybody's talking about the greatest, biggest, strongest warship in the history of civilization. The Gerald R. Ford, new Ford-class carrier, 105,000 tons of displacement, $13 billion.

maybe 4,500 manned warship. Very impressive. We're talking about our new kamikaze one-way drones that we haven't seen before. You've seen the maps that the Pentagon has released that have been replicated by the news outlets. They show Iran in the middle, and then the four-sea. There's American assets all the way in the Indian Ocean. They're in the Red Sea. They're in the Mediterranean Sea.

They're in the Gulf of Oman. They're in the Straits of Hormuz. in the Persian Gulf, and they're all focus fixated on Iran. It's surrounded, and they want that to be known, that only the United States has this type of weaponry and this reach and these resources. And finally, there's no, I don't know how to put it, but he's not hiding U.S. self-interest.

Of course, he talks about it'll be much better for the greater Middle East, but we wouldn't have gone to war if it hadn't been for U.S. interests and what is U.S. interests. We're sick and tired of the Iranians attacking our allies, but more importantly, as the biggest killer of Americans, we didn't want them to, we don't want them to hijack planes anymore. We don't want them to stage assassination attempts in New York or in Washington against either dissidents or foreign entities like the Saudi ambassador. We don't like them to capture hostages and torture them. We don't like them sending lethal arms to kill Americans as they did during the Iraq war.

We don't want them to kidnap people in foreign countries or in Iran and hold them as hot. We're just sick of it. And it's on our interest in Trump's way of war to end it. Well, all of this work, I don't know. It's very hard to say, I'm going to decide when a war starts and I'm going to decide when a war ends. And we're not going to have ground troops and we're going to go across the world and settle scores. And yet, as we've seen before, the Trump way of war worked to get Soleimani, General Quasem Soleimani, the architect of the Iranian

terror state, Mr. Al-Baghdadi, who was taken out and ISIS was bombed proverbially into rubble, a clear end, a clear beginning, a clear end. The Wagner group, what we were going to do with them, this was a Russian entity. We killed more of them than any moment in the Cold War. I think 200 Russians were killed by Americans. And it followed the same script that I just outlined. We saw the same script during the first Iranian incursion in summer, and now we're seeing it again. It's a very strange idea. War doesn't change because human nature is immutable. So we know the rules of war, but the actual practice of it, that is not the struggle between humans and political entities to use the force of arms to persuade someone of your own political, cultural,

religious, material agenda. That's immutable. But how you do it, what are the tactics, what are the strategy, what are the weaponing, have changed, and no one has changed them more than Donald Trump. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features

in addition.