Talk Tough & Carry a Little Stick
On 2 January 2026, I was on the “Deep Dive” with Lt. Col. (ret.) Danny Davis talking mainly about:1) Trump’s foreign policy after almost a year in office, 2) where the negotiations over Ukraine are headed, and 3) the prospects for war over Taiwan in East Asia.
I argued that Trump likes to talk tough and make it seem like he is going to employ the US military in a devastating way to achieve certain foreign policy goals. In fact, he has used military force against seven countries since taking office — Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, where he picked a fight with the Houthis. Most of these attacks were pin pricks and all of them failed to achieve their objective. For those who think the 22 June 2025 attack on Iran was a success, why are Israel and the US talking about the need to attack Iran again? What is going on here? It is quite clear that Trump — to his credit — does not want to get involved in another forever war. But at the same time he wants to maintain his image as Mr. Tough Guy.
Regarding the negotiations to end the Ukraine war, this is Kabuki theater at its best. The Americans, the Europeans, and the Ukrainians engage in endless fights about the details of a peace proposal that stands zero chance of being accepted by the Russians. At the same time, the Russians engage in endless discussions with the Trump administration, when they surely understand they are participating in a charade. What is going on here? My best guess is that this is all part of the war for public opinion in which all sides want to look like they are reasonable and committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the war. But the war that matters is the one on the battlefield, and there the Russians are in the driver’s seat.
East Asia is paid relatively little attention these days because so much of our attention is focused on Ukraine and Israel. But the potential for trouble between China and the United States as well as China and Japan is not to be underestimated. Taiwan is an especially dangerous flashpoint, although thankfully it does not appear that a war over Taiwan is likely anytime soon. The main reason is that there would be no winner in that conflict, which means neither side has an incentive to start a war and in fact both sides have an incentive to avoid a fight.
The United States and Venezuela: Great Power, Near Abroad — and the Use of Force
The United States does not attack Venezuela because it is undemocratic. That moral narrative explains little. Washington routinely cooperates with authoritarian regimes when it serves U.S. interests. The decisive factor is not regime type — it is geopolitics.
In an anarchic international system, no state can rely on others for its security. Great powers therefore seek to maximize power and minimize risk. The goal is regional dominance. The United States is the only state to have achieved this — in the Western Hemisphere — and it has spent more than two centuries defending that position.
Venezuela is problematic for Washington not because of what it is, but because of where it is and how it aligns. A Caracas that cooperates with Russia or China, controls significant energy resources, and challenges U.S. economic and political dominance is, in real-political terms, unacceptable.
Great powers do not tolerate rivals in their near abroad. Just as the United States would not accept Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, it will not accept a durable anti-American power platform in Venezuela today. This is not about values; it is about security and the balance of power.
From an offensive-realist perspective, the use of military force is often rational. Uncertainty about future intentions is more dangerous than action today. The cost of striking early may be lower than the cost of waiting until a rival has consolidated its position.
Venezuela also illustrates the tragedy of small states. Formal sovereignty offers little protection inside a great power’s sphere of influence. Attempts to balance the United States by courting rival powers may increase autonomy on paper, but they reduce security in practice.
Moral condemnation of the United States may be satisfying, but it explains little. Great powers do not act because they are good or evil; they act because the system rewards power and punishes vulnerability. Venezuela is not an exception. It is a textbook case.
What is notable in Mearsheimer’s recent remarks is not a retreat from realism but its adaptation to a world in which power is constrained by logistics and legitimacy as much as by force. Domestic politics, once treated as a black box, now visibly shapes how and when military power can be used, while supply chains discipline escalation in ways balance-of-power theory never had to confront. In such conditions, performative strikes, ritualised diplomacy over Ukraine, and caution over Taiwan are not inconsistencies but rational responses to a tightly coupled system in which total victory is neither affordable nor recoverable. This looks less like the end of realism than realism finally absorbing globalisation.
It is here that “Requisite Realism” enters the picture. Rather than rejecting realism’s tragic sensibility, it asks a harder question: under what conditions do military coercion and enforcement remain viable in a globally provisioned world, and where do inherited assumptions about conquest and coercion no longer obtain? The task is not to sentimentalise restraint, but to specify what power now requires in order to exist at all. If realism is to remain explanatory rather than rhetorical, it must account for the material, logistical, and political prerequisites of force in an interdependent system. An essay developing this argument will follow in The Gadfly Doctrine.