Today, Hoover Institution Director Condoleezza Rice tells Fox News how she believes US strikes on Iran have helped restore American credibility. Victor Davis Hanson explores just how badly Iran was defeated by Israel and the US this month. Elizabeth Economy explores the prospect of a Pacific Defense Pact. And Hoover’s History Lab launches a new series to explore global policy challenges.
Determining America’s Role in the World
Speaking with Fox News Chief Political Anchor Bret Baier, Hoover Institution Director Condoleezza Rice says after Israeli and US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, it’s time for the Islamic Republic to make some hard choices. Although she cites the decades where the regime refused to cooperate with global powers, she says there is now a window for them to consider walking away from nuclearization altogether. “Do they want to step back from their disastrous policies of trying to build a nuclear weapon? From their disastrous policies of what they call the Ring of Fire: these proxies that were terrorizing Israelis and others? If they want to step back from that, then perhaps there is a way for the Iranians to begin to re-enter the international system, but I have my doubts given who they are.” She added that the strikes, combined with new defense spending commitments made by allies at the NATO summit, mean it’s been a very good time for “American credibility.” Watch the interview here.
Writing in American Greatness, Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson quantifies what he argues was the humiliating response Iran put up against Israeli and the US attacks over the past two weeks. Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity sits buried in rubble or smoldering on the surface. Its military is reduced to carrying out what Hanson describes as a “performance art” missile attack on a US base in Qatar that resulted in no casualties or even missile impacts. And its most hated regional rival, Israel, ran riot. “Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if it is necessary,” he writes. The same holds true for the US, Hanson says. American bombers are able to return if necessary, ensuring a nuclear weapons-capable Iran is much less likely than before this conflict began. Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
On the latest episode of China Considered, Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy interviews Ely Ratner, principal at the Marathon Initiative, about the possibility of a US-led Pacific Defense Pact among like-minded Asian states to counter China. As the author of a recent Foreign Affairs piece on the same topic, Ratner says his time spent working in the Biden administration was spent building “a constellation” of partnerships with like-minded Asian states, developing ways to counter China’s military threat. He and Economy agree the new US-Asia security agreements look nothing like NATO, but many Asian states have become concerned about the Chinese security threat on their own, without US encouragement. Watch or listen to the episode here.
Revitalizing History
In a new video, Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin introduces a new series, Hoover History Lab: Policy in Brief, where Hoover History Lab fellows explore global policy challenges using history as a guide to inform effective solutions. Policy in Brief offers insights on current policy issues and provides possible solutions through a historical lens. The first video in the series features Student Fellow Kate Tully arguing for the need for Europe to take a bigger role in Africa, as a means to counter the coercive powers wielded by China on the continent. Learn more here.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Andrew Roberts argues that Trump’s choice to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, when five previous US presidents would not, demonstrated timely and resolute leadership. Despite warnings about global backlash, the specter of a new lengthy ground war in the Middle East, and calls from his own movement to stay out of the fight, Roberts writes, Trump showed the same courage Churchill did when he bombed the French Navy anchored in Algeria in 1940. “If President Trump has shown Churchillian courage in attempting to destroy the Iranian nuclear threat, there is no doubt who has been playing the role of Neville Chamberlain in all this.” That role, Roberts writes, is now being played by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. With his insistence on “de-escalation” of the conflict and denying the possibility of a US strike only two days before it occurred, Roberts says Starmer was “humiliatingly out of the loop.” Read more here. (subscription required)
Revitalizing American Institutions
In a new post on his blog at Reason.com, Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh republishes an essay he wrote about the American media’s failure to overcome and expose efforts to hide President Joe Biden’s mental decline in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. It took until the debate in late June 2024 for many voices in the press to wake up to what was an obvious fact to others, giving the Democrats a very short timeline to select a new candidate. With time to hold a full primary, Volokh writes, perhaps “the candidate would have been more effective than Kamala Harris. Or perhaps the candidate would have still been Harris, but a Harris who was seen as having more legitimacy with the public.” Instead, significant criticisms of Biden’s acuity were dismissed by his supporters as disinformation, and large swaths of the press went along, until it was too late. Read more here.
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