And then it got even worse for Trump. Yakovleff is no random talking head. He's a three-star general, former commander of the legendary French Foreign Legion, and held senior positions within NATO itself. He is one of the most respected military voices in France and regularly weighs in on matters of international security. So, when he was asked about Trump's desperate pleas for Europe to join his Iran catastrophe, his answer carried serious weight. He didn't mince words. He laid out five distinct reasons why every European nation should flatly refuse. And each one is more damaging than the last.
First, Trump doesn't understand how NATO actually works. You don't get to launch your own unilateral bombing campaign and then invite allies to run a separate operation underneath you. That's not how alliances function. If Trump wants NATO involved, NATO takes command. One operation, one flag, one chain of command. "I don't think he understood that," Yakovleff said. That alone is a devastating indictment of a man who claims to be the greatest dealmaker on earth.
Second, nobody knows what the actual strategic goals are. Beyond forcing
open the Strait of Hormuz, what is the endgame? Regime change? Containment? A
negotiated settlement? Trump hasn't said. He apparently can't say, because he
doesn't know himself.
Third, and this one is particularly brutal, you can't coordinate a
multinational military campaign through tweets that change every two minutes.
If allied nations are going to put their soldiers in harm's way, they need
explicit, written objectives from the United States. As Yakovleff put it,
"It's going to be necessary for Trump himself to know what he wants."
The quiet contempt in that sentence could strip paint off a wall.
Fourth, there is the fundamental issue of trust. Trump has abandoned
allies before and everyone knows he would do it again without hesitation the
moment it became politically useful. The Kurds know it. The Afghans know it.
Europe knows it. "He would let us down whenever it suited him," the
general said. Why would any nation put troops on the line for a leader with
that track record?
And fifth, the knockout punch. Yakovleff cited a principle he said he
learned at the U.S. Army War College: "You don't reinforce failure. You
move on. You find something else." A decorated French general is using
American military doctrine, taught in American war colleges, to explain to the
world why following this American president into battle would be strategic
malpractice.
The global response has been just as damning. Japan said no. Australia said no.
The United Kingdom said no. The European Union said no. Meanwhile, Iranian
missiles and drones have made the Strait of Hormuz so dangerous that insurance
companies won't cover oil tankers passing through it. Twenty percent of the
world's petroleum normally flows through that strait. Oil prices are
skyrocketing and consumers everywhere are feeling it. Trump started this. He
escalated it. He isolated America from its allies in the process.

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