PALM BEACH, Fla. — Suddenly Donald Trump, who arguably has some mastery of the business arts, is in defiance of one of the fundamental principles of his trade: Hope is not a strategy.
We’re not talking Jesse Jackson-style hope, which actually was a strategy. (“Keep hope alive” was a rallying cry.) We’re not talking Barack Obama-style hope, which was a tactic. (The iconic Shepard Fairey image of the 2008 Democratic nominee with the all-caps HOPE at the bottom conveyed a message the Illinois senator wanted to promote.) We’re not even talking Emily Dickinson-style hope (“the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul,” which for decades has provided solace for the sick and promise for the young).
Instead, the president increasingly has invested his plans with hope. Perhaps Trump, though ordinarily chary of adhering to the principles of his predecessors, is channeling a president whose boundless energy matches his. (Theodore Roosevelt: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”)
But as a onetime casino tycoon, he also knows risks. He’s discovering some of them this month. As a result, right now he seems to be relying on one of the maxims of Martin Luther King Jr., whom he otherwise mainly quotes in proclamations of the holiday commemorating the civil rights leader’s birthday. (“Carve a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.”)
Nonetheless, in the instances below, Trump seems to be clinging to the phrase from the biblical Book of Hebrews (“We have this hope as an anchor of the soul”) that has inspired both the seal and flag of Rhode Island for generations:
• The hope that Iranian citizens, weary of the oppressive theocracy governing them since 1979, would rise up, oust the clerics and form a government more congenial to the United States.
This was an unusual hope for a leader who has foresworn nation-building, though strictly speaking, Trump was promoting less the process of building a new nation than of laying the groundwork for Iranians themselves to do it.
Even so, it’s a big ask for an unarmed citizenry facing an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps of as many as 200,000 combatants. Of course, a small group of dissidents (see Russian Communist Party of 1917) was able to topple a dynastic monarchy that ruled for more than three centuries and had as many as 7 million in arms (see Romanovs, also 1917), though many of them were dispatched to a hopeless war.
A State Department cable in recent days indicated Iran’s government is “not cracking” and any Iranians who rose up in rebellion would “get slaughtered.”
• The hope that the Strait of Hormuz wouldn’t become a choke point in global energy supplies.
It’s inconceivable that Pentagon planners didn’t anticipate this tactic from the Iranians, who have been at the center of earlier energy crises before. The inevitable conclusion must be they hoped that what is essentially a blockade wouldn’t occur or would be overcome easily.
Not so. A fifth of the world’s oil traverses that waterway, so its blockage inevitably means economic distress across the globe — even for the United States, which arguably has energy independence. This represents the resiliency of an element of the global order that Trump’s MAGA movement has sought to repress: interdependency. An energy crisis in energy-importing countries means one in energy-exporting countries, too.
To wit: Gasoline prices in the U.S. now average $3.84, according to AAA figures — a rise of more than a quarter since the conflict began. But the next time Trump’s motorcade travels from Palm Beach International Airport (which Florida lawmakers voted last month to rename after Trump) on his way to Mar-a-Lago, he will pass signs putting gas at $4.19 a gallon ($4.29 for credit cards). That is the figure I paid Tuesday morning on that very route.
• The hope that America’s traditional allies would rally to the U.S. side and help keep the strait open.
Ordinarily, this would be a given. Even during the very controversial 2003 Iraq War, Great Britain, Spain, Poland and Australia came to American aid. Not this time. The reason is simple: They don’t like the war, and they really don’t like Trump.
The president has a good case in arguing that the U.S. created and sustained NATO and other alliances and thus might expect some cooperation. Indeed, clearing the strait would benefit all the countries that have rebuffed Trump. But after hearing him hector and lecture them at Davos, they are not eager to side with an American leader they regard as vulgar, ignorant and dangerous.
That’s only fueled Trump’s resentment. The result was this Truth Social message:
“Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID! Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea. In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”
One caveat: “No man is an island / Entire of itself.” (John Donne, 1624)
• The hope that Cuba might collapse of its own heavy communist weight.
This one might work. “I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said. He also has riffed that he thinks “I can do anything I want with it.” At the very least, he may prevail in the toppling of President Miguel Diaz-Canel, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba.
The island is in economic torpor, or worse. Its health system, never as robust as Castro-era claims, is in collapse. Its energy sector is basically inoperative; American oil blockades and an aging infrastructure have plunged the country into a real and symbolic darkness. Its vaunted 99.9% youth literacy race (tied with Barbados and Estonia!) will be no good in this crisis, and not only because people can’t read in the dark. (That didn’t stop Abraham Lincoln, who read the Bible, which eventually provided so many allusions in his speeches, by firelight and candlelight. Though the Bible hasn’t been banned in Cuba since 1969, it’s not exactly on every nightstand.)
Epilogue: Here great wisdom comes from a Republican presidential predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, speaking at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in 1957: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Or perhaps the great wisdom of my mother: “Man plans, God laughs.”
David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.