White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that President Donald Trump, despite being a teetotaler, has an “alcoholic’s personality.” The president himself agreed that he has an “addictive type personality.” What Trump seems to be addicted to, at the moment, is the use of military force.
Even before the stunningly successful Delta Force raid to seize Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 3, Trump had already attacked as many countries (seven) in 2025 as he did during his entire first term. After the Maduro operation, which the president said he watched “like … a television show,” he has threatened to take military action in many more places, including Iran, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Greenland — and now Minnesota.
Like many of his predecessors, Trump is likely to learn there are sharp limits to what even the fabled U.S. armed forces can achieve. Many problems around the world are more effectively addressed with soft power, but Trump has decimated America’s ability to persuade and attract people around the world, and it will take a long time to undo the damage.
If you want to see the limits of U.S. military power, look at the Christmas Day strike on what Trump described as “ISIS Terrorist Scum” in Nigeria. This came after Trump’s social media post threatening to go into that country “guns-a-blazing” if Islamic militants did not stop killing “our CHERISHED Christians.”
As The Post reported, U.S. forces fired 16 Tomahawk cruise missiles (cost: $2 million each) at a forest in northern Nigeria. At least four of the missiles did not explode. The rest, apparently, did cause casualties among members of an obscure al-Qaeda (not Islamic State) affiliate called Lakurawa, but its leaders survived, and the group has gone on the offensive since the U.S. attack, killing more civilians. “I’m not sure,” a former U.S. official told The Post, if the fighters targeted “are worth the price of one Tomahawk.”
A similar dilemma — how to use force effectively? — confronts the Trump administration in Iran. The Islamic regime’s slaughter of protesters is heinous, but it’s not clear how the United States could stop the repression or overthrow the ayatollahs by bombing a few regime targets or even killing a few regime leaders. A U.S. strike could even backfire and lead to a larger conflict, which is why both Israel and the Gulf states are urging Trump not to attack. In any case, it’s hard for Trump to act now when so many U.S. naval forces have been deployed to the Caribbean for the Maduro operation; even the U.S. can’t strike everywhere at once.
U.S. airpower has been most effective when deployed in support of ground forces, whether American troops in Iraq in 2003 or local fighters in Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Libya in 2011. But the confrontation in Iran today pits the regime’s security forces against civilians; the protesters don’t have a leadership structure, much less an army, of their own.
This is a situation that calls for — helping Iranian protesters evade internet censorship, organize their efforts, foster fissures among the ruling elite, and spread accurate information about regime abuses. But Trump did massive damage to U.S. soft power by unleashing Elon Musk and his misnamed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy and other critical institutions designed to champion U.S. ideals abroad.
In March, Trump issued an executive order calling for the dismantlement of the USAGM, which oversees, among others, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Open Technology Fund (which fights online censorship). Trump’s appointee to run the USAGM, Kari Lake, placed more than 1,300 VOA stafferson administrative leave and temporarily halted broadcasting for the first time since its founding in 1942. Some of the laid-off staffers fought the move in court, helping to at least keep the lights on.
Now, following the arrest of Maduro and the uprising against the ayatollahs, Lake is scrambling to ramp up broadcasting to both Iran and Venezuela. A notorious conspiracy-monger, Lake once told Congress — without evidence — that the USAGM was “incompetent, corrupt, biased and a threat to America’s national security.” Now she’s suddenly discovered a need for broadcasting after all, telling Fox News that the Iranian people “don’t get honest coverage over there” and “we’ve been able to provide them with honest coverage.” But Lake is still blocking Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from accessing a USAGM-owned transmitter in Kuwait to broadcast to Iran.
Bipartisan majorities in Congress are recognizing the need for the USAGM and other “soft power” outlets. An appropriations bill that passed in the House last week includes $643 million for the USAGM, down from $867 million last year but more than four times the amount that Trump asked for. The National Endowment for Democracy, which supports dissidents in countries including Venezuela and Iran, will receive $315 million, the same as last year, despite Trump’s attempts to eliminate it altogether.
Assuming the administration spends the money appropriated by Congress — which is no sure thing anymore — U.S. soft power institutions will survive DOGE’s reckless assault. But you can’t rebuild overnight capacities that took decades to develop.
A former VOA employee tells me that, in the past, the agency normally had at least six hours of original Farsi-language television programming a day and more during a crisis. “Now they’re up to two hours, but it’s been much less until recently,” says this former staffer, adding that the VOA’s Persian division is now about a third of its former strength of 150 journalists. That’s better than nothing but not good enough at a time when the Iranian regime could be teetering on the brink.
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