From Mark Wauck’s “Is This Trump’s Latest Plan B?”

Excerpt from Mark Wauck’s “Is This Trump’s Latest Plan B?“:

As John Mearsheimer pointed out to Judge Nap this morning, Trump continues to move military assets into the region—he continues to escalate. Mearsheimer suggests two theories to account for the mess: First, Trump is a Mad King, and second, Trump now understands he’s in a no win situation and is simply “flailing” around, desperately seeking a way out—and almost all of those schemes involve escalation. Here are some brief excerpts from the Mearsheimer interview:

Trump: We’re having very good meetings both, directly and indirectly, and I think we’re getting a lot of very important points.

I.e., Trump says Iran is giving in all demands so Trump says he’ll make more demands.

Judge: In fact, these meetings don’t exist. I know. I don’t know what to say. What do you say about this?

Prof: [Laughing] The whole thing is just–it’s preposterous. The level of incoherence here is just off the charts. This is the president of the United States, the president of the most powerful country in the world. You can only wonder what other leaders around the world, other people around the world are thinking as they watch this. And it’s just hard to believe that this man is in charge of the United States.

Just as LBJ escalated in Vietnam without a winning strategy …

Trump is going up the escalation ladder. I can’t help thinking about Vietnam and how that war played itself out.

And this is the situation that Trump is in. He’s involved and he can’t walk away.

In part because of the Israelis, but even if the Israelis weren’t involved, this is the United States of America. It doesn’t walk away from a fight. That mentality is hardwired into us. So what he’s doing is he’s escalating as we read the newspapers today. What you see is that the administration is moving ground forces into the Middle East.

There’s no military solution here.

And behind closed doors there is wildeyed pessimism about where we’re headed.

And yet, the WSJ article—which Mearsheimer has read—directly states that Trump is planning to TACO, leaving Hormuz under Iranian control, and then to turn to “diplomacy.” While shifting more military assets to the region. While, according to reports, France, Spain, and Italy are now all refusing their air space to those shifts of US military assets.

In fact, of course, the world isn’t so simple as that, and US energy costs are also heading steadily upward.