March 19, 2025 (EIRNS)—Writing in the American Conservative March 18 author Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the CATO Institute, warns that Trump’s statement from his inaugural address that “we will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” is now in jeopardy. There are, he adds, forces inside and outside the administration that are trying to drag the President into new wars in the Middle East. One option is to continue an expansion of the low-level war “that Joe Biden lost to the Houthis” in the Red Sea and the other, and more consequential, would be a full-blown war against Iran. Both wars, Logan says, “would be losers that would damage both the country and Trump’s legacy.”
Logan argues that the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea haven’t really damaged American shipping because U.S. trade via the Atlantic or Pacific doesn’t really rely on the Mideast. He complains that by protecting shipping through the Red Sea the U.S. is really “subsidizing China’s trade with Europe.” Plus, the U.S. is doing the heavy lifting militarily, spending a lot of money to “defend European and Chinese shipping from low-tech Houthi drones and missiles.” This is not putting America First, he warns. Should Trump escalate the campaign against the Houthis, the outcome isn’t likely to be any different than what it is now. He points to several military leaders who’ve complained about the drain on resources due to the combined Ukraine war and Red Sea campaign and that a war with Iran would be even more costly.
On the other side, he mentions National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and CENTCOM commander Michael E. Kurilla, who have advocated the U.S. going to war against Iran.
But Logan says plunging into a war against a country that is much larger and more populous than Iraq “would be throwing gasoline onto a fire which would then probably spread across the region.” He quotes Vice President J.D. Vance’s remarks from last October, in which he warned that U.S. and Israeli interests may not always coincide, “and our interest very much is not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.” Vance is right, Logan says. It makes no sense to squander American munitions in a “ticky-tack” campaign against the Houthis, and “plunging into a war with Iran is the exact opposite of the solution Trump says he wants: a deal. To protect his legacy and to put Americans first, President Trump should say no to those pushing him into another Middle Eastern war—if not `you’re fired.’”
