Will Walldorf, a professor of international relations at Wake Forest University and a fellow at the anti-interventionist think tank Defense Priorities, published an essay for Foreign Policy on July 21, 2026, entitled “Trump Needs to Defy History to End the Iran War.”
The headline does the piece justice. “Ending” is not synonymous with “victory,” and Walldorf advises President Donald Trump to accept a defeat like in Afghanistan. But he fails to consider the extremely grave consequences of such an outcome.
Walldorf describes the president’s reasoning for continuing the war as maintaining U.S. credibility and a desire to “transform the Middle East.” The latter would be a fool’s errand, as the primary driver of change in the region will have to be Middle Easterners.
But it is also a straw man argument. The president never stated that as his objective. Walldorf’s supposed evidence otherwise is Trump’s remark, “Look, for 47 years, no president was willing to do what I’m doing.” It’s a mystery how one arrives at the conclusion that this remark about standing up to Iran amounts to expressing a desire to transform an entire region.
Walldorf’s discussion of U.S. credibility deserves more serious consideration. In trying to explain why a desire to maintain credibility is an impediment to peace, Walldorf points to the U.S. failure to reach a “peace treaty” with North Korea. He blames President Truman’s desire to preserve U.S. credibility by setting “rigid terms” in negotiations. He suggests the same dynamics were at play with Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama in relation to Vietnam and Afghanistan, respectively.
Walldorf argues that Trump should do the opposite:
Admit failure and loosen terms to get a deal to permanently end the conflict. President Richard Nixon showed that kind of pragmatism to end direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, as did Trump to broker peace in Afghanistan.
What does that deal look like?
With Iran, that kind of pragmatism will likely mean accepting its red lines to enrich uranium and ensure some kind of Iranian authority over the Strait of Hormuz, which is the primary reason Tehran restarted conflict recently.
Walldorf is correct in observing that credibility has been an impediment to ending wars in the past. But he never engages with the arguments for preserving credibility, as if none exist. How easy it is to win an argument when you can simply ignore every counterargument.
President Obama’s infamous failure in 2013 to enforce his own red line in Syria is a useful example. It had consequences outside the Middle East too. It emboldened enemies and frightened allies that the United States might abandon them. A year later, sensing U.S. weakness, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, initiating the conflict with Ukraine. Many Russia experts, from retired ambassador Eric Edelman to journalist Anne Applebaum, point to the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan, which Walldorf hails as a successful model, as having played a role in Russia’s decision to launch its full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Military and civilian experts, including James Mattis, Lloyd Austin, and H.R. McMaster, all agree that deterrence requires both military capabilities and credibility. Losing to Iran after mere months would signal to America’s enemies a lack of resolve and perseverance, that they can beat the United States simply by not losing for a few months. That’s a recipe for a more dangerous world.
The aftereffects will be even worse than with Afghanistan. Walldorf writes that “the costs of this war are significantly higher than the benefits to U.S. security, which remain few given reduced U.S. interests in the Middle East and the rise of more important challenges elsewhere, especially in Asia.”
First, “reduced U.S. interests in the Middle East” is a fantasy, stemming from the illusion of U.S. oil independence. One would think that rising gas prices would have ended this myth by now after exposing how U.S. prices still reflect global production. On top of that, U.S. allies and partners in Asia and Europe, which Walldorf elevates as priorities, need Middle Eastern oil for their own economies.
Second, what happens in the Middle East does not stay in the Middle East, as was the case with Syria. If the United States fails to open the Strait of Hormuz and concedes it to Iran, it will have shirked the responsibility of ensuring the freedom of navigation, which, alongside respect for sovereign borders, has been one of the two pillars of the international order since the 17th century.
This principle emerged when the Dutch navy safeguarded shipping in international waters; the Royal Navy upheld it and expanded it to the whole world, including straits, in the 19th century; and the U.S. Navy inherited the responsibility after World War II. Increased commercial ties and economic dependencies have increased the incentives for peace as a result.
Today, the primary threat to world peace comes from the Chinese navy, and the United States also cannot credibly claim that it will safeguard the Taiwan Strait against China if it refuses to do so against Iran.
Lastly, Walldorf prescribes conceding uranium enrichment to Iran on top of reducing commitments in the Middle East, but fails to consider the second and third order effects of such a decision. Other states in the region are already worried about being left defenseless against a nuclear-armed Iran with aggressive, regional ambitions. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are pursuing nuclear programs. Others would likely follow.
Walldorf’s only objective is ending the war, regardless of the consequences and geopolitical tradeoffs. He calls it pragmatism, but a more accurate term would be “anti-strategy.” It is shocking that such a short-sighted piece of commentary survived muster of the editors of Foreign Policy, a premier international relations journal.