Despite Obama and Trump, America just proved it’s still the ‘indispensable power’

to Syria’s dictator. When Bashar al-Assad proceeded to ignore the then US president and used chemical weapons against his own people, Obama did nothing. That threshold moment, Obama’s unenforced “red line” of 2013, was seen as a green light to authoritarians worldwide.on the contested reefs of the Spratly Islands.

But Obama was not uniquely or solely responsible for emboldening authoritarian expansionism with his vacillation; Donald Trump was even more understanding of autocrats and their ambitions. Putin expanded his occupation of eastern Ukraine to a full-scale invasion of the entire country in 2022; the war is still raging today.

Some of these countries – Jordan and Saudi Arabia – then actively joined in the defence of Israel against the 350 or so Iranian missiles and armed drones that swarmed Israel’s skies in the hope of overwhelming its air defence systems. The US then successfully negotiated with Israel to curtail Jerusalem’s military hit-back against Iran, helping avert a state-on-state war in the Middle East. Again, no other country could have prevailed effectively on Israel in this way.

But it’s also true that no other nation would give Israel such a decisive edge over its rivals, and no other would give Taiwan the kit and confidence to sustain its de facto independence against a looming Beijing.

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