Trump must treat China, Iran, Russia and North Korea as a package deal

In the last few weeks, President Trump has begun reinstating many of America’s hardline positions with respect to both China and Iran. And that is a good thing for both U.S. national security and global security.

China remains focused on global repression, military expansion, dominating the global economy and exploiting emerging technology to its advantage, including significant cyber hacking against the United States. For its part, Iran remains the leading supporter of terrorism globally and the most persistent threat to American interests in the Middle East, where it routinely attacks our allies and actively seeks to kill Americans through proxies.

Calling them both out and hitting back directly is the right call when it comes to these two nations.

But it is important that Trump also realize that on the global stage, China and Iran are a package deal with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, and any appeasement or leniency toward any of them would embolden the others. In that regard, we very much agree with incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who recently called China, Russia, and North Korea an “unholy alliance”; he previously included Iran on that list as well.

First, these actors provide direct military and intelligence support to one another. Dozens of Iranian officers are operating drones from within Ukraine, while over 10,000 North Korean troops are in Russia, aiding efforts to reclaim territory and secure Russian gains.

In exchange, Iran gets access to American and allied equipment captured by Russia, which it can use to prepare for future confrontations. Meanwhile, North Korea gets advanced air defenses to help protect its fledgling nuclear missile fleet.

For its part, China has built a “no limits” partnership with Russia, reportedly sharing advanced military technology in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine and conducting joint naval and air exercises. Russia, in exchange, has shared submarines, missiles and other key military equipment with China.

The ties aren’t just military in nature. In 2023, Russia became China's largest oil supplier, while China remains the biggest buyer of Iranian oil. Of course, the long-standing economic ties between China and North Korea prop up the latter regime and allow it to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on military and nuclear capabilities.

More importantly, American foreign policy choices have repercussions elsewhere on the world stage.

For example, many foreign policy experts, us included, believe that Putin was emboldened to invade Ukraine in 2014 to annex Crimea following the U.S. failure to enforce its redline against Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons against civilians. Prior to his recent ouster, of course, Assad had long been an Iranian and Russian proxy, so the message that our inaction sent to both nations was clear.

Likewise, the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan portrayed America in retreat, encouraging Russia to launch its ongoing war in Ukraine and emboldening Iran to take more aggressive actions to support Hamas, resume efforts to kill Americans in Jordan and the Red Sea and directly attack Israel from its own territory.

Bold action is overdue to respond to the numerous crises fostered by American weakness. Trump can — and should — take such decisive action to reassert American strength, defend its interests and deter our adversaries. With electoral winds at his back, Trump ought to make clear to all our adversaries that we will act forcefully to defend our interests when threatened and thereby restore true American deterrence.

Doing so is the best way to reduce risk; ambiguity about whether and with how much resolve the U.S. might respond when provoked is exactly what causes our adversaries to test our boundaries. As Trump recently said, paraphrasing President Ronald Reagan, what America desperately needs now is “peace through strength.”

Consider, for example, China’s military ambitions with respect to Taiwan and the South China Sea. For decades, the U.S. has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” refusing to take a firm position with respect to China’s claims to Taiwan.

While this policy has certainly preserved the option to deploy economic, diplomatic and military assets in defense of Taiwan for decades, its lack of decisiveness has only created more risk, not less. Coupled with other displays of American hesitation and retreat, China has become increasingly aggressive and now threatens an invasion in the near future.

The same has been true in Ukraine. The Biden administration's tentative and halting provision of badly needed equipment to Ukraine has severely hindered its ability to defend itself and encouraged Russia to continue fighting. The 11th-hour decision to allow the use of long-range U.S. missiles to gain an edge was the right one, but the failure to permit such use earlier significantly hobbled Ukraine’s capabilities during critical points in the conflict and has likely caused more deaths in the process.

Tepid U.S. assertions of strength against Iran have also encouraged that regime to continue direct and proxy attacks on American forces and our allies in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

These mounting global challenges, while serious, create unique openings for transformative American leadership. Trump therefore has a series of extraordinary opportunities to achieve historic diplomatic breakthroughs that could address many of the ongoing hot spots, create new partnerships and strategic alliances, and ease simmering tensions.

But strong diplomacy relies on an underlying projection of real strength as its foundation. Indeed, Nixon’s successful detente with Russia’s Brezhnev was only made possible by his track record of deploying a variety of aggressive tools, across a variety of international theaters, to protect U.S. interests.

Foreign aggressors have to believe that the U.S. is willing to defend our interests and those of our allies. They also must know that when they cross us, we will respond decisively. When our adversaries see us as weak, they take advantage and broader and more dangerous global conflicts can ensue.

During his first term, Trump demonstrated American strength globally. Among other things, he struck Qaseem Soleimani in Iran, oversaw the collapse of ISIS and brokered the Abraham Accords. Such decisive actions could be models for his approach in his second term. Adversaries beware: the United States means business.

So what does all this mean for the coming early months of the Trump Administration?

If Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, he will tell Putin that he must return Ukrainian land or face a Ukraine backed with the full force — albeit not troops — of U.S. military power. That we will give the Ukrainians every piece of gear they need and let them use it how they want.

Conversely, if Trump rewards Putin for his aggression by letting him keep Ukrainian territory, he will — like administrations prior — signal to China, Iran, North Korea and others that they can operate with relative impunity.

If Trump is serious about ending the war in Gaza, he will continue to support Israel against aggression from Iran and its proxies, including supporting a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Assad’s recent ouster forcefully demonstrates both the vulnerability of Iran to its dangerous ambitions for the region and the weakened state of Russian influence. Trump can use these opportunities to strengthen American interests in the region.

But critically, he must also use the goodwill he has previously established with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make clear that Israel’s long-term security requires a stable solution that enhances Israel’s security and ensures it fulfills the promise of tolerance, democracy, equality and freedom for all contained in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, including by comprehensively addressing Palestinian aspirations once and for all, and by deepening and expanding the strategic alliances between Israel and its neighbors forged by his prior administration in the Abraham Accords.

Likewise, if Trump is serious about China (and North Korea), he will preposition U.S. military capabilities near and around Taiwan to make clear to China that it would pay a massive price (and would ultimately fail) in trying to take Taiwan or otherwise disrupt its critical chipmaking capabilities. Here too, weakness with respect to Taiwan or in the South China Sea would reverberate worldwide, signaling that America is in retreat — a message Trump most certainly does not want to convey.

In sum, if Trump is serious about restoring America's strength in the world and making it truly great again, he needs to take decisive action.

We must act like a superpower, making our allies confident in our resolve, and making our adversaries think twice before challenging American power. We must set clear redlines and enforce them when they are crossed. We must once again make America the superpower it always has been.

Jamil N. Jaffer is the founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School, former chief counsel and senior advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former associate counsel to President George W. Bush. DJ Rosenthal is a fellow with the National Security Institute at George Mason University's Scalia Law School. He previously served as director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice.

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