The turbulence visible in American foreign policy, the friction with NATO allies, the debates over the Iran campaign, the resistance to nation-building, and the emphasis on domestic economic interests over international commitments are not signs of strategic incoherence but rather the predictable consequence of a country moving between two grand strategic eras while its institutions and rhetoric have not yet fully caught up.
That is the central argument Jason Smith, professor of national security strategy at the National War College, fleet seminar program instructor at the Naval War College, former National Security Council official, senior US Senate adviser, and retired Coast Guard and Army officer, brought to Chicago’s Morning Answer in a conversation that ranged from the theory of American grand strategy to the immediate tactical situation in the Strait of Hormuz.
Smith’s research starts from what he considers an encouraging democratic premise: American foreign policy is ultimately driven by the preferences of the American people rather than being purely an elite project, but the translation of popular sentiment into institutional behavior is slow and produces significant turbulence in the transition. He traces the current shift away from liberal internationalism back through several decades of accumulating signals that were visible long before Trump named them explicitly. The buy American movement of the 1980s was an early expression of discomfort with the economic costs of globalization. The questions about why the United States needed to be the world’s policeman grew louder through the 1990s. Nation-building skepticism crystallized in the 2000s following the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences. The 2008 financial crisis was the decisive turning point, he said, because it produced a widespread popular conclusion that globalization had delivered on its promises for some and not for others, and that the people on the short end of that bargain had been misled.
Trump tapped into that accumulated sentiment a decade ago and has been riding it since. Smith said the paradigm that is emerging can be described as reconstituting selective engagement, an approach that acknowledges America cannot be everywhere doing everything, focuses inward while remaining willing to act decisively where core American interests are directly at stake, and applies a consistent test of whether any given commitment serves the economic and security interests of the American people. He said the healthy thing about the current moment, even with its turbulence, is that elected officials are being held accountable to that popular preference in ways that represent democracy functioning as intended, even if the lag between public sentiment and institutional adjustment is uncomfortable to live through.
He acknowledged the tension within Trump’s own coalition, noting that some of his most committed supporters are uncomfortable with the Iran campaign precisely because they absorbed the America First orientation so thoroughly that any large-scale military engagement abroad triggers alarm regardless of the justification. He said this is a natural consequence of the paradigm shift Trump himself catalyzed, and that the debate is healthy even when it is inconvenient for the president who started it.
On the military culture shift from the Biden administration to the current one, Smith said the armed forces will salute and execute whatever their civilian leadership directs, which is exactly as it should be in a constitutional democracy. But he said the refocus on warfighting competence, merit-based advancement, recruiting goals centered on mission readiness, and the elevation of the Western Hemisphere as a strategic priority in the national security, national defense, and national military strategies represents a genuine and visible reorientation that the people running these institutions clearly believe was necessary.
On the Iran situation specifically, the discussion touched on the Navy’s estimate that fully sweeping and clearing the Strait of Hormuz of mines could take up to six months, and Trump’s reported issuance of a shoot-to-kill order against Iranian speedboats engaged in mine-laying and piracy. Smith said the American military will execute whatever order comes down with complete effectiveness, and expressed his honest sympathy for the Iranian boat crews who will be on the receiving end of that execution. He said his instinct as a strategist is not to judge a strategy while it is still in progress, and that the critical question any strategic adviser needs answered before plotting a course is simply what the desired end state actually is. Once that is defined clearly, he said, the military has the capability to get there regardless of what specific combination of actions is required.
Proft raised the question of whether the Iran campaign is actually consistent with America First grand strategy rather than in tension with it, arguing that forty-seven years of jawboning Iran without action while allowing the regime to kill Americans and pursue nuclear weapons is itself a form of failure that the current campaign is correcting. Smith said he did not disagree that Iran has been killing Americans for decades and would continue doing so if given the opportunity, and that the real analytical question is whether the strategy being employed gets to the desired end state at acceptable cost, a judgment he preferred to reserve until the outcome is known.
He closed by endorsing Proft’s observation about the quality of the officers attending senior professional military education programs like the Naval War College and Army War College, saying his greatest challenge teaching at the National War College is walking into a classroom full of senior officers who are already smarter than he is and hoping he can nonetheless add something to what they already know.